Turks working on relocation map for villagers

TURKISH Cypriot ‘interior minister’ Ozkan Murat has announced that his department has concluded work on finding alternative locations for Turkish Cypriots and Turks who will be relocated if the UN’s Annan plan for Cyprus is implemented.

“We have now specified all the possible locations for all the villages that will have to be resettled,” he told a meeting of villagers in Filia, renamed Serhatkoy.

“We now have a document at hand that specifies where villages will be relocated. Moreover – I can be quite open about this – when Turkey and the Turkish side put forward a new map [for proposed territorial adjustments], it will, for the first time, include the proposed relocation site of affected villages,” Murat added.

Murat’s visit to Filia came as part of a village-by-village tour of the Morphou district aimed at reassuring Turkish Cypriots in the area that they would not be worse off as a result of the Annan plan’s implementation.

Murat – who took over the ‘interior ministry’ after the December 14 election in the north – told villagers he and his staff had been working relentlessly to “clean up the mess and corruption left behind by the previous regime”, and accused his predecessor of deliberately leaving people in the dark about where they were to be relocated.

Reacting to criticism that he was running a ‘yes’ campaign in favour of the Annan plan, Murat said: “In the same way as Denktash puts his views forward about the plan, I will put forward mine. It’s my job and my right”.

He added: “Our aim to see the peace process through to its most positive possible conclusion. Our future is with the EU and international norms, not with ad hoc lawmaking and illegality.

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