With a quarter of the population still displaced after four decades, it is virtually impossible to say what is fair in Cyprus. But while some still long to return to their former, predominantly rural, homes, many Cypriots seem better prepared to continue life in their newer, frequently urban, locations.
Nevertheless, the property issue remains one of the most emotive and intractable parts of the Cyprus problem – and one which lays at the heart of the four-decade division of the island.
Until recently, arguments over property polarised between the Greek Cypriot demand that all of its 160,000 refugees be allowed to return to their homes, hotels, farms and factories in the north, and the Turkish Cypriot one that the future of Cyprus would involve two separate ethnic zones, and therefore a global exchange of land was needed to allow this separateness to occur.
Today, however, a middle way may be in sight.
At the end of last week, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) made a long-awaited decision to give approval to a property compensation mechanism
Turkey and north Cyprus had put into action four years previously. Known as the
Immovable Properties Commission (IPC), the body, located in north Nicosia, sought to offer legal recourse to Greek Cypriots who had lost property in the north as a result of Turkey’s 1974 invasion. The aim was to provide an “effective local remedy” for the approximately 1,400 Greek Cypriot awaiting hearings at the ECHR, the hopeful outcome being that Turkey would have less compensation to pay, and a less embarrassing number of cases stacked against it in Strasbourg.
What the ECHR’s recognition of the IPC means is that Greek Cypriot refugees wishing to gain restitution of their property rights in the north will now have to go to the north and apply to the IPC for either financial compensation, restitution, or an exchange of their property for abandoned Turkish Cypriot property in the south. Going directly to the ECHR is no longer an option, for the Strasbourg court says it will not even look at an application that has not at least explored the avenues of the IPC first.
But despite the ruling’s clarity in telling refugees they must either go to the IPC or wait for a solution to the Cyprus problem, many are still confused about how the IPC works, its legality, and its effectiveness.
According to the Cyprus government, the IPC is not a good place to go. Since its inception, refugees have been warned not to apply on the grounds that doing so is disloyal to the Greek Cypriot cause, and that applicants will be short changed.
Despite the warnings, Greek Cypriot refugees have made around 450 applications to the IPC so far. Of these, around 100 cases have been amicably resolved, with the refugees receiving either compensation for their properties, or the restitution of their right to live there.
Although earlier expressing serious doubts over the genuine effectiveness of the IPC prior to the ECHR ruling, Greek Cypriot property lawyer Constantis Candounas now says he will use the IPC to gain restitution for his refugee clients.
Candounas is renowned for spearheading a landmark case that saw British couple Linda and David Orams forced out of a Greek Cypriot property in the north, and he is perhaps the last person one would expect to see applying to the IPC. He is, however, emphatic that since the ECHR ruling, the IPC is now the only place to go.
“Every Greek Cypriot refugee should apply. I am also applying,” Candounas told the Sunday Mail, declaring it was now “the only available means” for Greek Cypriots to seek restitution of their property rights.
“In the past people had the option to choose either the ECHR, which took a long time, or the IPC, which was a much quicker procedure. Now we only have the IPC as an option,” Candounas concluded Indeed, the relative speediness of the IPC’s work is what may help make the IPC more acceptable to refugees.
As a source close to the IPC told the Mail, “It might be seen as worth it for an individual to do in 40 days what politicians and the ECHR have failed to do in 40 years.”
Some Greek Cypriots, the source expands, might feel there may never be a reunification of the island, and decide that it will enhance their lives, along with perhaps those of their children or grandchildren, if they seek compensation. In short, the source says there is a strong correlation between the number of applicants to the IPC and the general gloom over a reunification deal being struck any time soon. The greater the gloom, the higher the rate of applications.
As well as trading on gloom, the IPC has also been accused of taking advantage of peoples’ financial vulnerability by paying out less than the going rate for properties in question. This question remains debatable, but Dr Mike Tymvios, a refugee who chose to exchange his 600 donums of land near Tymbou with a piece of Turkish Cypriot land near Larnaca, says there is no pressure to accept any deal you re not happy with.
“The IPC offered me several options: money, or the possible exchange of properties,” Tymvios says. He adds that negotiations took “a few months, at the end of which we reached an agreement, which I consider satisfactory. No one is forced into anything, because you can always say no.” Candounas too says that his clients are by no means desperate for money.
“They come from all economic groups,” he says.
So what are the drawbacks of applying to the IPC? For many Greek Cypriots an application represents an acceptance of the current status quo, the idea that Turkey’s invasion and division of the island has worked and become permanent.
For many on the Turkish Cypriot side however this is not a problem. As our source close to the IPC says, “If the IPC continues its work for the 20 years, it could create the bicommunality being sought through negotiations. And bizonality, or two ethnically separate zones, is generally what Turkish Cypriots want.” Interestingly, our source and his family was among the approximately 45,000 Turkish Cypriots displaced by the conflict, and says he would be happy to trade in his abandoned ancestral homelands for cash or land in the north.
Unfortunately however that option does not yet exist.
“If it had, I would definitely have applied,” the source insists.
And that is possibly the biggest drawback of the IPC system – that the Greek Cypriot government does not support or condone its work, making the full action of some of its rulings impossible.
Dr Tymvios’ case is a prime example. Although he swapped his land in the north for Turkish Cypriot land in the south, the land registry in Larnaca is refusing to allow him to take possession of the previously Turkish Cypriot property.
Tymvios describes how just last week he and a small group of Turkish Cypriot officials visited the land registry in yet another attempt to have the title deeds, those of a former Turkish Cypriot school in Larnaca, transferred to his name. Again the Greek Cypriot registrar presented the argument that Turkish Cypriot properties cannot be sold or bought because they are under the protection of a guardian law – a law supposedly established to prevent the exploitation of these properties in their owners’ absence.
Tymvios is confident however that he will eventually succeed in setting that precedence and “blow the guardian law out of the water”.
“I’ll take them to the ECHR and defeat the so-called guardian law,” he insists, saying that the ECHR ruling last week has “strengthened tremendously” his case against the Cyprus government.
Whatever the outcome of the eternal political machinations of Cyprus, one thing is clear – that the IPC will continue to make waves because it offers people the chance to realise assets they thought forever lost. As Tymvios says, “The government of Cyprus decided my land was worth nothing. Now I’m proving that it is worth something.”
