THE GOVERNMENT is being sued for millions for housing the Antiquities Department in a building in the capital owned by a Turkish Cypriot charitable trust.
The trust is now seeking rent in arrears, reinstatement of the property and compensation in a case billed by the trust’s lawyer as a “second Orams case” but for Turkish Cypriots.
Murat Metin Hakki, a Turkish Cypriot lawyer who passed the Cyprus bar exam last year, one of the few Turkish Cypriots to do so since 1974, yesterday filed the case in the Nicosia District Court against three defendants: the Electricity Authority of Cyprus (EAC), the Attorney-general as representative of the state and the Interior Minister as the Custodian of Turkish Cypriot properties.
The plaintiff in the case filed against the government is Inci Hakki, the current private trustee (mutevelli) of the Muslin charitable foundation (Vaqf) which is accountable to the Turkish Cypriot religious foundation EVKAF.
The building in question, formerly used as the premises of the Charleton Hotel Nicosia, sits on the corner of Omiros and Egypt Streets. The trustee estimates the value of the property to be at least €10m.
According to lawyer Hakki, the EAC rented the two-storey listed building and the adjacent parking area from the foundation in 1963. After the Turkish invasion in 1974, the EAC continued to pay rent until the end of 1975 after which “they changed their habits”.
They remained in the building without paying any rent or compensation to vaqf until 1978, he argues, after which the Republic of Cyprus took full control in 1979, using the premises for the offices of the Antiquities Department and parking for government employees.
After more than three decades of “rent-free” accommodation, the trustee is seeking reinstatement of the property, rent arrears with current rent value for the entire area estimated at €8,500 per month, and moral damages for property rights violations “as a result of discrimination based on ethnicity”.
The government (Attorney-general and Antiquities Department) and EAC have until September 19 to respond to the writ. If they don’t, Hakki will seek a default judgement in their absence.
“Our argument is that this building is part of the trust’s property, which along with neighbouring buildings, was not abandoned in 1974 and so does not come within the scope of the Guardian Law,” argued the lawyer.
“If this argument fails we can rely on a new amendment to the Guardian Law passed early this year. Section 6A adds that if a person claims their human rights, as protected under the European Convention of Human Rights, are infringed, this provides a course of action. Basically, if you think your human rights have been violated, then the violation itself is actionable,” he said.
This amendment came after the government gave another Turkish Cypriot property owner, Nezire Sofi, €500,000 in a settlement that prevented the case going all the way at the European Court of Human Rights.
“So, first we’ll argue the Guardian Law doesn’t apply in this case, and if it does, it still infringes human rights. We want it corrected, the property vacated and the trust compensated for 35 years infringement.”
Asked why the case did not come under the Guardian Law, he replied: “Neither the current mutevelli nor any previous mutevelli nor the trust itself is in possession of Greek Cypriot property in the north.”
Hakki also argued that the trust owned another property next door, which housed the Egyptian Embassy, from which it continued to exercise ownership control and extract rent until 2004.
Once the contract expired in 2004, the embassy left. Three years later, in 2007, the Antiquities Department moved in “illegally”. According to the Turkish Cypriot lawyer, no rent has been paid since. A complaint has been filed with the Ombudswoman for that second property.
Regarding the premises at the centre of this lawsuit, Hakki said: “It’s the Turkish equivalent of the Orams case again in the Republic of Cyprus. It’s a straightforward trespass case and we will be in a position to overcome whatever objections are raised in terms of any guardian law or doctrine of necessity,” he said.
The lawyer warned that if they lost the case, they would take it to the ECHR which “will expose some of the flaws in the guardianship law”.
Hakki said the government’s actions of restricting right of ownership in relation to property were “not defensible in any way”. He further highlighted that his main objective as a lawyer was “to defend the human rights of all, whether they be Greek Cypriots or Turkish Cypriots”.
