The north’s ‘transport minister’ Erhan Arikli on Thursday called for revenge to be taken on the Greek Cypriot side on the matter of property, in light of recent arrests, trials, and sentencings in the Republic over the buying and selling of Greek Cypriot-owned property in the north.
He focused his attention on the matter of Varosha, and said he and his party the YDP had initially been of the opinion that Varosha “should be opened to the settlement of the former owners under a Turkish administration and United Nations supervision, with a special status”.
He said the plan would allow Varosha to be “added to the TRNC’s economy without violating UN security council resolution 550”, which writes that the security council “considers attempts to considers attempts to settle any part of Varosha by people other than its inhabitants as inadmissible”.
It also stated that it “calls for the transfer of this area to the administration of the UN”.
He then said the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) had “suggested return, exchange, and compensation through the Immovable Property Commission” (IPC) as a remedy for Greek Cypriots who owned property in the north, “and advised the Greek Cypriots who did not accept these three alternatives to wait for the solution” of the Cyprus problem.
As such, he said, “the only thing to do here was to remove Varosha from the military zone area with a cabinet decision and transfer it to the IPC”, adding, “the rest would come in a heartbeat”.
It was at this point that he said, “I think it is high time to take revenge on the property issue”, though he did not specify what “revenge” would constitute.
His comments come at a time when the number of cases regarding the alleged illegal development of Greek Cypriot property in the north is on the rise, with two Hungarian nationals having become the first to be sentenced to prison over the matter last week.
They had admitted to promoting and advertising the sale of houses near Kyrenia on the internet.
Meanwhile, the case of a German national who reportedly spoke about selling property in the north to an off-duty police officer during a flight to Larnaca is ongoing, and arrest warrants were issued on Tuesday for four Turkish nationals in connection with developments in the Famagusta district village of Lefkoniko.
Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar had on Wednesday described the arrests as “acts of terrorism” and likened the moves to the violence faced by Turkish Cypriots in the 1960s.
