Cyprus-Forum.com

[cannedmoose]

Interesting figures, most interesting ones to me personally (for selfish reasons alone) are those regarding fully enjoying the fruits of EU membership... an expected result from the TC side but I was quite surprised it ranked so highly amongst those GC's polled. Interesting indeed.

Yes, because of the Cyprus Problem GCs have a confrontational relation with Europe and they dont like that. Also, GCs hope that after a solution Cyprus will become regionally significant as a "cross-roads of civilizations", again giving it a stronger voice within Europe.

Thanks for the explanation Alex

[Alexandros Lordos]

OK, I promised to Erol yesterday that I would upload some charts in which TC and Settler attitudes are compared. Here goes:

[magikthrill]

oh wow

i love the one about cyprus being turkish land lol.

also on a sidenote

71x + 46.2(1-x) = 64

--> x= 71% of those who voted in Annan were ethnically Cypriot in the north.

assuming your results are a good representation of the population.

interesting...

[Alexandros Lordos]

MicAtCyp,

much of your criticism of the "Property Board" approach is based on the particular example of the Annan Plan Property Board, rather than to the concept of a Property Board per se. For instance, you focus your criticism on the provisions of the Annan Plan whereby it would take years before any actual transactions can take place. This needn't be the case in a revised version of the Property Board. You shouldn't be seeing the Annan Plan in my proposals, just because I use the same word ("Property Board") doesn't mean I attach the same meaning.

But let's see the alternative you are proposing:

A GC named A has a house and say 10 donums of agricultural land. The house is used by a TC B and the agricultural land by a TC called C. What are the options:

Mr A wants to sell. B wants to buy. B does not want to buy. B wants to exchange. B wants to rent for a few years. B wants to rent for ever. B is not financially able either to buy or even rent. B already paid for the value to another TC and consider it already bought.

Now if the property is also improved the matter ends to additional options, and if Mr A does not want to sell, or exchange or rent we end up to about one hundred options.

The glory of letting the initiative of the individuals function is that all those options finally end up to either an agreement between the 2 or disagreement.In my opinion the agreement has more chances.

OK, you think an agreement has more chances, but I am much less optimistic: In most cases the original owner will want his property back for own use while the current occupant will want to remain in it, insisting that "he has already paid for it with his own property in the south". These attitudes (i.e. GCs believing that they have a right and an obligation to get back their properties, TCs believing that they have a right to remain where they are) are so deeply ingrained, that I can guarantee to you that in about 60% of the cases the situation will remain irrevocably deadlocked (perhaps the other 40% will think more "pragmatically", but don't expect any more).

In essense, what your proposal will lead to is to a transfer of the Property aspect of the Cyprus Problem to the post-solution period. In most cases, we will have GCs taking TCs to court, asking that they be evicted from the property they are using, on the grounds that they, the GCs, are the owners of the legal title deed. At this stage you propose:

... a set of rules that will strike out the majority of those disagreements when those are simply illogical..For example what will happen when B is willing to pay a reasonable price but A does not accept because he simply wants to return to that very house..Or B does not want to pay or exchange anything but still want to use the property. Or B is so poor that can do nothing....

And you think that a court of law will actually adjudicate according to such a "set of rules"? And even if it does, what chance does such a "set of rules" stand against an appeal to the ECHR? Zero. The ECHR cannot rule that a legal owner will have to transfer ownership of his property to another private individual, just because a "set of rules" says so. There is absolutely no basis in International Law for such a course of action.

The only legal way to deprive someone of his property, even against his will, is if the State decides that it is in the public interest to do so, and the State pays compensation to the legal owner in order to gain control of the property. The normal interpretation of this caveat to ownership rights, is that the state can take your property if it plans to build a hospital or a road or an airport. What they tried to do in the Annan Plan was to extend the definition of "public interest" by saying that "a Comprehensive Settlement of the Cyprus Problem approved in simultaneous referenda is in the public interest" - and therefore any obligatory property tranfers, to the state, are also in the public interest. Admittedly, the argument is not unassailable, it might be challenged in the ECHR with uncertain results, but the "set of rules" that you propose is a definite non-starter, there is absolutely no basis in law on which it can stand...

[Alexandros Lordos]

oh wow

i love the one about cyprus being turkish land lol.

Yes, it's funny how different people see things differently ...

also on a sidenote

71x + 46.2(1-x) = 64

--> x= 71% of those who voted in Annan were ethnically Cypriot in the north.

assuming your results are a good representation of the population.

interesting...

Wow, I am impressed with your algebra!

All my polls so far place the Turkish-origin voters at no more than 30% of the voting population in the north - two Turkish Cypriots for every settler, not the other way round ...

[magikthrill]

All my polls so far place the Turkish-origin voters at no more than 30% of the voting population in the north - two Turkish Cypriots for every settler, not the other way round ...

and the math confirms this!

[cannedmoose]

A really interesting set of results. Some that made me sit back and say 'wow' - the 64% of 'settlers' that expressed a positive inclination towards the two communities going their separate ways; and the large numbers of both TC and 'settlers' who expressed some agreement with the sentiment that Cyprus is a Turkish island - surely a product of a long-standing education policy.

The one that surprised me the most was the juxtaposition between the 46% of TCs that expressed a preference for the communities remaining separate, yet almost half expressing a desire to be 'Cypriots first'. I find it hard to balance the two.

Look forward to more of these.

[MicAtCyp]

Alex,
The set of rules that I talked about were to be included in the agreement and pass through a referendum. If a property committee will be accepted as legally valid because it passed a referendum so will those rules (they become law).

Now about the Property Committee either as per Anan plan or any other improved form the truth is that purchases and title deeds of "trnc" are not valid. So I don't see your point having a user saying his property is his, he is not giving it back.

Or perhaps I do see your point. With a Property committee we will be having the Committee shuting up and donating him the property either for free or for peanuts.
Sorry not acceptable.

[Alexandros Lordos]

Alex,
The set of rules that I talked about were to be included in the agreement and pass through a referendum. If a property committee will be accepted as legally valid because it passed a referendum so will those rules (they become law).

Can any State have a law which will define criteria according to which an individual will be forced to sell his property to another individual, even against his will? I don't think it can be done. The only type of "forced sale" of property is when the State takes it over "for the public good" - which, as I said before, is the (somewhat shaky) legal foundaion for having a Property Board.

So, if we are going to do this without getting the state involved, it cannot be according to "criteria for restitution". The only legal way would be to enshrine the right to property on the one hand, but also enshrine the right of current occupants to remain in the property by paying rent, for a fixed number of years or until their death. Also, a right of first refusal coud be granted, so that if the owner intends to sell the property the current occupant will have first choice to buy it.

Other than that, it would have to be left totally to the individuals to make their own private deals, in the full knwledge however that if no deal is made then the property will automatically revert to the owner after the right to stay by paying rent has expired.

Personally, I don't have a problem with such an approach, but it seems the GC public is split on the issue - 45% in favour, 45% against. Probably because they have fears over implementation, or simply because they don't like the idea of waiting all these years. As for the TCs, they may be willing to tolerate it, but only by a narrow margin. After all, most of their own properties in the south have very low rental value, so they would have difficulty raising the cash to pay their rent. Also, they fear that GCs won't be willing to sell, due to a plan to eventually re-hellenise the north by holding on to these properties. Their concern is not ungrounded.

Anyhow, what I want to say in a nutsell is that you can't have it both ways. Either you involve the State - and its authority - in order to enforce property sales and exchanges via the State "in accordance to the public good", or you leave it up to individuals, but fully respecting, in the end, the rights of legal deed holders. There cant be a middle ground of "set of rules to define who will have priority" - it just can't be made legal.

[Kifeas]

Can any State have a law which will define criteria according to which an individual will be forced to sell his property to another individual, even against his will? I don't think it can be done. The only type of "forced sale" of property is when the State takes it over "for the public good" - which, as I said before, is the (somewhat shaky) legal foundaion for having a Property Board.

So, if we are going to do this without getting the state involved, it cannot be according to "criteria for restitution". The only legal way would be to enshrine the right to property on the one hand, but also enshrine the right of current occupants to remain in the property by paying rent, for a fixed number of years or until their death. Also, a right of first refusal coud be granted, so that if the owner intends to sell the property the current occupant will have first choice to buy it.

Other than that, it would have to be left totally to the individuals to make their own private deals, in the full knwledge however that if no deal is made then the property will automatically revert to the owner after the right to stay by paying rent has expired.

Personally, I don't have a problem with such an approach, but it seems the GC public is split on the issue - 45% in favour, 45% against. Probably because they have fears over implementation, or simply because they don't like the idea of waiting all these years. As for the TCs, they may be willing to tolerate it, but only by a narrow margin. After all, most of their own properties in the south have very low rental value, so they would have difficulty raising the cash to pay their rent. Also, they fear that GCs won't be willing to sell, due to a plan to eventually re-hellenise the north by holding on to these properties. Their concern is not ungrounded.

Anyhow, what I want to say in a nutsell is that you can't have it both ways. Either you involve the State - and its authority - in order to enforce property sales and exchanges via the State "in accordance to the public good", or you leave it up to individuals, but fully respecting, in the end, the rights of legal deed holders. There cant be a middle ground of "set of rules to define who will have priority" - it just can't be made legal.

I have to agree with Alexandros that in order to solve such a complex and massive -in terms of volume of cases, problem, like the property one, there is a need for a property body, which will undertake the role of implementing and /or facilitating the agreed parameters of the property solution.

I am assuming that when you are referring to use of property on a rental basis, you are obviously talking about properties in which no investment or very little investment has been made by the current users. In the case of substantial investment done by current users, I do not see how this rental approach and subsequent future return of the property to the owner, can possibly work.

Anyhow, under any property solution circumstances, it seems that the biggest damage will be suffered by those GCs whose properties will remain within the boundaries of the TC federated state. This will be even more dramatic for those GCs whose properties are situated in the favourable Kyrenia and famagusta areas, due to the fact that those properties are by far the most valuable (expensive,) and due to the fact that they are the ones mostly developed by TCs. It is for this reason that I do not agree with polls addressing questions and measure the general public opinion on the solution of the property issue. It is totally unfair to those people that are directly affected and concerned by the way the property issue will be solved, to seek ways to address the problem based on what the overall public opinion may or may not accept. Especially in a case in which the percentage of affected property owners is a very small one, compared to the overall general public.

I could accept such an approach, should the net damage from the ‘whichever’ way this problem will be solved, would subsequently be equally distributed to the overall Cypriot population. This goes more for the GC side. Unfortunately Alexandros, this does not come out as a suggestion, from the way your questions have been addressed, nor the RoC or any other GC political authority have ever made or expressed any similar suggestions. To the contrary, while in A-plans 1-2 & 3, the risk and burden to compensate the property owners, was left on the federal government via guaranteed government bonds; due to persistent complains by the GC side for the enormously high cost of the solution that would have made the federal government to collapse, the UN changed this provision in A-plans 4 & 5 and loaded almost all the burden of the risk on the shoulders of the property owners themselves.