Property Commission hits back at Greek Cypriot claims

THE head of the north’s property commission yesterday strongly rejected accusations by a Greek Cypriot lawyer that those applying for compensation or reinstatement to their properties in the north were being led “into a trap”.

The accusation was made over the weekend by Achilleas Demetriades, the lawyer representing Greek Cypriot Varosha refugee Myra Xenides-Arestis, who said Turkey and the Turkish Cypriot authorities had set up the commission in order to “trick the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR)” into believing an effective domestic remedy to Greek Cypriot property claims could be found in north Nicosia.

So far, 220 Greek Cypriots have applied to the commission asking for reinstatement to their properties, financial compensation, or exchange with those abandoned by Turkish Cypriots in the south.

Of that figure, 15 have received compensation, three have returned to their homes in the north, and two have opted for exchange. The head of the commission, Sumer Erkman, responded to Demetriades’ accusations yesterday by telling the Cyprus Mail that the validity of the commission would “not be decided by Greek Cypriot lawyers but the ECHR itself”.

Demetriades’ accusation was based on the case of a Greek Cypriot who is still waiting to receive £250,000 the commission said it would pay in compensation for his property in the north.

He also referred to a similar commission set up by Turkey to compensate around 1,500 Turks who had been displaced by fighting between the Turkish military and Kurdish separatists in the south east of the country.

That commission, he said, had “tricked” the ECHR into believing it would provide an effective domestic remedy while, in fact, only offering victims “absurdly low compensation amounts”.

Erkman yesterday rejected these accusations, saying that any delays in processing Greek Cypriot applications were due, not to unwillingness on its part, but to the length of time it needed to process each application.

“We are going as fast as we can. In one year, we have processed 20 applications and completed them to the satisfaction of the applicants,” she said, adding that a further 100 cases were currently being dealt with.

This weekend, the commission also came under fire from an applicant who told a Greek Cypriot daily that since making his application, a Turkish Cypriot-registered company had begun building on his property.

Erkman responded to this accusation by saying that even if building had begun, the rights of the applicant would take precedence, and that the company carrying out the construction was doing so “at the risk of losing the property and its investment”.

“Unfortunately, the commission does not have the authority to stop the building, but when processing the application, we base all our judgements on the situation on the date of the application. That means that if the application was made on April 20, before building had begun, the construction company will not be able to claim the land by saying it has been built on, whatever they have built on it,” Erkman said.