Cyprus settlement must be legally valid

Cyprus settlement must be legally valid

Lawyers will view the latest face-to-face discussions between the president of Cyprus Glafkos Clerides and Rauf Denktash with some interest. Of particular interest will be how the question of property rights is dealt with.

Will the question of property ownership in the occupied areas be addressed head on or pushed to one side? Will the legal entitlement to that property by the Greek Cypriot refugees and property owners be acknowledged and respected, or will attempts be made to achieve a settlement at all costs, ignoring basic property rights in the process?

The legal position is in fact perfectly clear: property ownership has not been affected one iota since the ethnic cleansing in 1974 by the Turkish troops. All that has happened is that the owners of the property have been forcibly prevented from living in their property since 1974. The desperate attempts by the Denktash regime to legitimise the illegal actions of the Turkish troops by
issuing ‘title-deeds’ to their cronies and to illegal immigrants from Turkey have been unsurprisingly rubbished by the European Court of Human Rights in the Loizidou v Turkey case, and in many other instances.

No one except Turkey and Denktash believes that in law the Greek Cypriot refugees have forfeited any property rights. Given Turkey’s outrageous behaviour in ignoring the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights, it is perhaps not surprising that it continues to adopt ridiculous legal interpretations of this kind. But how will the Cyprus Government address this in the discussions? A few years ago the Government commissioned a legal opinion, signed off by ten very well respected international jurists, which confirmed that the legal rights of the refugees had not been usurped in law. Presumably that same Government will now find it impossible to ignore the fact that the refugees own the property and can do what they like with it, including to re-occupy it, post settlement. The Government’s negotiators must therefore ensure that any settlement enables any Greek Cypriots who wish to return to their property as owner-occupiers to do so freely and without pre-conditions and discrimination.

This may be inconsistent with a bi-zonal federation, but as Lobby has argued all along, if that is so then it is the nature of the settlement which must change, not the property rights of the Greek Cypriots, which are legally inviolable.

The key issue for the refugees is not whether they still have any rights (they clearly still do) but what they choose to do with them. One concern might be that some individuals might not have access to their legitimate pre-1974 title document. Fortunately, a British legacy in Cyprus is the Land Registry. Accordingly, refugees should be able to seek official confirmation of their property ownership pre-1974. Indeed it might be thought ironic that precisely those political interests that have tried to partition the island between Turks and Greeks might inadvertently have introduced an institution in the shape of the Land Registry, which will enable refugees to assert their rights. This in turn will prevent the loss of Greek Cypriot property ownership in the occupied areas, thus defeating the establishment of a Turkish dominated north of the island.

Lobby has already issued clear advice to refugees and property owners on what to do in the event of a settlement (page 1) and o ur understanding is that the vast majority will choose to return as owner-occupiers, or at the very least to forego compensation and to continue to own the property.

It is therefore imperative that any purported settlement in Cyprus addresses this head on, because any attempt to sweep these legal rights under the carpet is doomed to fail.