The land on which government ministries in the North are built “officially became Turkish property” last September because of a compensation payment of 2.6 million pounds sterling as a result of a decision taken by the Immovable Property Commission (IPC) on 6th March 2014.
Murat Metin Hakki, advocate in the above-mentioned case, told ‘Kibris Gazetesi’ that payments by the IPC have slowed down to a trickle and warned that the IPC might cease to function depending on the result of an appeal being examined in the high court. This could pave the way for the Greek Cypriots to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), once again.
Hakki argued that payment of compensations has deliberately been slowed down by Turkey and the reason for this is a law which Turkey wants to be passed in the TRNC.
Noting that Turkey is putting pressure on the TRNC government to pass the law, Hakki said that “with this law it is provided for 30%-40% of the compensations to be paid by the current user of the property”. He claimed that the government is hesitating to bring the issue onto the agenda and this is why Turkey has slowed down the payment of the compensations, which now creates problems.
Hakki said that the compensation for the above-mentioned immovable property was paid to the Greek Cypriot owners in September 2015, but he does not know through which resources. He noted that the ministries are built on 28 plots of land which belonged to two Greek Cypriot brothers.
The paper writes that there is a big drop in the number of cases filed with the IPC. The total number of applications made since 2006 is 6,232. In the first eleven months of 2015, only 153 applications were filed.
Kibris Postasi
