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THE TURKISH Cypriot administration yesterday strongly denied rumours that it had bought Titina Loizidou’s house in Kyrenia from its Turkish Cypriot ‘owners’ and was planning to hand it back to her.

Greek Cypriot refugee Loizidou won a case against Turkey at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in 2003 when the court ordered Turkey to pay almost one million pounds in compensation for preventing her from enjoying her property for almost 30 years.

But officials in the north were adamant that no sale had taken place and that no plans were afoot to do so.

“I can categorically tell you that the government has not bought the property and that there are no plans to return the property in this way,” a Turkish Cypriot official told the Cyprus Mail yesterday. “Such a move would be diametrically opposed to our policy,” the official stated.

Allegations of the purchase appeared yesterday in the outspoken Turkish Cypriot daily Afrika which claimed the purchase of Loizidou’s house had been completed at a cost of £250,000. The paper said news of the sale was being kept secret because it clashed with the administration’s policy of serving the public with a daily diet of good news.

“They only want to give the public good news, and not to let the people know what an awful situation we are in,” one of Afrika’s daily opinion columns read.

Afrika editor-in-chief Sener Levent told the Cyprus Mail he had obtained information of the sale from several sources and said he had no doubts over the authenticity of the reports.

Sources within the Turkish Cypriot administration insisted, however, that Levent had fabricated the story to influence political events taking place on the island.

“As you know, the press sometimes creates stories in an attempt to affect the outcome of certain matters and to bring certain things onto the agenda. But I can tell you this is categorically not true,” the source said.

Afrika’s column went on to claim that Turkish Cypriots were currently in a situation worse than anything they had faced during the Denktash era.

“The Greek Cypriot side has launched a formidable legal campaign, not just against the English and the French, but also against Cypriot Turks,” the paper said, adding that Turkish Cypriots should have been aware of the implications of becoming citizens of the Cyprus Republic.
“Of course, when people were taking out citizenship they never though about this. They just thought of the advantage of being able to travel internationally. No one thought of the responsibilities that go with citizenship”.

The paper went on to warn Turkish Cypriots that it would be they who would lose out if the Cyprus problem remained unresolved, and criticised the Talat leadership for continuing to rest on its argument that it was the Greek Cypriots who were against reunification.

“They have managed to drug everyone into believing the nonsense that the north would open up to the world. Now Ankara and Talat are trying to sidestep the Greek Cypriot legal attack by repeating that it was the Turkish side said ‘yes’ to the Annan plan. But how likely is this to work?”
 

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By Mary Antonescu - mary@cyprus4properties.com