Akinci calls for focus on property

Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci said on Thursday it was up to the new ‘government’ to create funds and speed up the application process for the Immovable Property Commission (IPC).

“One of the first tasks of the new government should be the commission. Funds need to be found and the process sped up. It should not take years, as it does now,” Akinci said at a conference on the Cyprus problem at the Near East University in Nicosia.

Parliamentary elections will be held in the north on January 7.

Akinci was alluding to Tuesday’s European Court of Human Rights’ decision which unanimously upheld a complaint filed by a Greek Cypriot refugee against Turkey over the IPC’s lack of effectiveness.

The IPC was set up in 2005 to deal with Greek Cypriot claims for compensation for their occupied properties.

“Today, you might say the decision (ECHR) is not so severe, but tomorrow, we could face much worse results,” Akinci said.

On the stalled Cyprus negotiations, the Turkish Cypriot leader said there could be some movement following the presidential elections in the south, adding that “it is neither right to paint a completely bleak picture nor to say 2018 will be the year of a solution”.

Akinci also said that ‘open-ended, continuous negotiations are over’ and that he is ‘not ready to be part of such a process’.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.