Cyprus-Forum.com

[insan]

CORCORAN: Turkish troops swiftly enforced a petition. One hundred and forty thousand Greeks and sixty thousand Turks caught on the wrong side of this new ethnic divide, were forced to abandon their homes. Since then, United Nations peacekeepers have patrolled the so-called “Green Line” dividing the two sides.

The Greek South was transformed by tourism and rampant development, while the Turkish North languished. But now Northern Cyprus is booming, watched with growing anger by Greek Cypriots who claim this miracle is rising on their land.

RITA SEVERIS: [Pointing at picture] And this is the other side of the harbour, and again, this is our house. It’s now turned into a restaurant and whatever.

CORCORAN: Art historian Rita Severis is from one of the island’s prominent Greek families. Before the war, the Severis family home was on the Kyrenia waterfront and they had vast property holdings in the area.

RITA SEVERIS: It’s what Cyprus was like. It’s my childhood. It’s where we were brought up. It’s what we grew up with and where we grew up. This is my country.

CORCORAN: Greek Cypriots claim that 80% of Northern Cyprus was and still is, privately owned by Greeks, that the foreigners are buying stolen property.

RITA SEVERIS: I think that’s, you know a bunch of opportunists. They find a cheap piece of land, find a cheap villa by the sea... ah let’s take it! It’s disgraceful. It is really disgraceful.

CORCORAN: Turkish Cypriots also lost land in the Greek South. The Turkish Cypriot Government established a property exchange system but Greek Cypriots say it’s illegal. The British arrivals say they’re dealing with the facts on the ground today, not the tragedy of three decades ago.

Marion Stokes’ land was originally Greek. After the war she says Northern Turkish authorities gave it to a Turkish Cypriot refugee who later sold it to her.

MARION STOKES: Well the land is safe we hope, it’s ours. We have title to it, so... and I don’t think the Greeks are going to come and take it away from us.

CORCORAN: It’s a view probably bolstered by the UK Courts in a landmark case. Throwing out the prosecution of a British couple who’d built this house on disputed land.

MARION STOKES: Of course it’s gone to appeal now so it will never be over and here this beautiful house just sitting here.

CORCORAN: But while Marion and Richard’s current residence is safe, it’s rented. There are dangers south of the border. The Greek Cypriot Government has declared that any foreigner caught with documents relating to property in the Turkish North, could be gaoled for seven years.

MARION STOKES: To us that seems like it’s against human rights and as a part of Europe that they shouldn’t be allowed to do it, but they’ve done it.

RITA SEVERIS: What human rights? Now they are asking for their human rights? Can you imagine, they’ve come and they bought my land knowing that it’s illegal, stolen property and then they ask for the protection of the human right, what about my human rights?

CORCORAN: It’s all so far from the optimism of just a few years ago. For nearly three decades, the UN Green Zone was a no-mans land. Then in 2003, the Turkish Cypriots suddenly opened the gates.

Well about a year after these checkpoints reopened, the United Nations brokered a referendum on the issue of unification. Around two thirds of Turkish Cypriots voted yes, in favour of the motion. However three quarters of Greek Cypriots said no. The Greek Republic has since gone on to gain membership of the European Union while the Northern Turkish Republic retains its pariah status, recognised by no nation apart from Turkey.

Still, the checkpoints remain open. Turkish Cypriots – realising they can’t have political union now seek economic security – and thousands cross each day to jobs in the south, while Rita Severis heads north on one of her regular trips to gauge the pace of development. She journeys into the Turkish side of the divided capital, Nicosia, now largely populated by yet another community of outsiders.

RITA SEVERIS: This is really the heart of Nicosia but it’s not beating Cypriot – anything but. Most of the old town is inhabited by settlers, by basically Anatolians from Turkey that were brought in to increase the Turkish population of the northern part of Cyprus and the Turkish Cypriots have no affinity to them.

CORCORAN: Rita has an appointment at the Great Inn of Nicosia. Despite the divide, some firm friendships remain. Rita and Turkish Cypriot archaeologist Muge Sevketoglu, have been friends for a decade. Dr Sevketoglu is fighting to save the North’s heritage sites from the bulldozers.

DR MUGE SEVKETOGLU: Suddenly there is money coming in and nobody knows how to deal with it. They’re not thinking of tomorrow. This is a typical, I’m afraid typical mentality, Cypriot mentality. Money and today – tomorrow? We’ll think about it when we get there.

CORCORAN: Both women campaigned for a yes vote on the issue of reunification but both now believe that the dream of a united Cyprus is lost, the divisions being rapidly cemented in place by the North’s building boom.

DR MUGE SEVEKTOGLU: So what you had is a lot of Turkish Cypriots selling their land to take the money at least because that’s something that they can definitely have, because the land, which is Greek property has no future, and try to invest it in Turkey or in London by buying a property there.

CORCORAN: Rita Severis drives on to Kyrenia, absorbed in the thoughts of the past. On a hill overlooking the port, she surveys family land that was still forest when the border reopened in 2003 – now 420 villas cover the landscape.

Do you think they know that they’ve bought properties on your land?

RITA SEVERIS: Of course they know but they take the opportunity, cheap land, cheap house – they’re building on other people’s misery that’s what’s happening. Do you realise that?

CORCORAN: In a nearby village, real estate Keith Everett insists that the Northern Cyprus Government, the TRNC, has fixed everything.

KEITH EVERETT: The TRNC Government are now guaranteeing all title deeds. In the event of a settlement, I don’t think anybody will actually be thrown out of their property. The very worse case scenario is there might be a small amount of compensation to pay.

CORCORAN: Rita Severis’ outrage at development of the North is compounded down on the Kyrenia waterfront.

RITA SEVERIS: Oh my God what have they done here? It’s so ugly. This is part of our house, this here.

CORCORAN: This is your place, yes?

RITA SEVERIS: All this... this... this house, all these three houses. The owner is not here. She’s an art historian that’s how I know her.

CORCORAN: Oh right. Let’s go and have a look.

RITA SEVERIS: Amber?

AMBER ONAR: Oh hi!

RITA SEVERIS: How are you? I didn’t believe that you were going to be here.

AMBER ONAR: We are always surprised aren’t we? [kiss each other]

RITA SEVERIS: What did you do there?

AMBER ONAR: This is just for the summer and we’re going to …

RITA SEVERIS: You’re going to get rid of the…

AMBER ONAR: Because we can’t get rid of the furniture from there in the winter time.

RITA SEVERIS: So it will …

AMBER ONAR: It moves up, yeah.

RITA SEVERIS: It’ll go, you mean?

AMBER ONAR: Of course, of course…

RITA SEVERIS: Because it’s ugly. I don’t like it.

CORCORAN: Amber Onar’s Turkish Cypriot family has owned this restaurant for thirty years. She says they received it in exchange for all their family property - lost on the Greek side.

AMBER ONAR: We don’t like it of course because we have property in the South as well and it’s not nice to not be able to go there, not to claim it, but it’s not up to us... so it doesn’t... it doesn’t seem to be up to us.

RITA SEVERIS: No, I wish it was. I wish it was.

CORCORAN: While Amber worries about the pace of development, she argues that the North is equally entitled to benefits long enjoyed by the South. Amber has some news for Rita. One floor of the old Severis home has just been sold to foreigners.

AMBER ONAR: This has like three owners right now.

CORCORAN: Oh right.

AMBER ONAR: There is an English couple here.

RITA SEVERIS: English?

AMBER ONAR: Yes they bought it from the Turkish General.

RITA SEVERIS: The general? The Turkish General’s gone?

AMBER ONAR: They sold it yeah.

RITA SEVERIS: Shit!

AMBER ONAR: They sold it to a British couple.

CORCORAN: It’s a polite, if slightly forced encounter so typical of Cyprus - two friends with two separate incompatible versions of history.

RITA SEVERIS: The fact that this has all been built, doesn’t give you a chance - to do what?... since it’s all…

AMBER ONAR: Do you think I like to…

RITA SEVERIS: No, I’m not saying you…

AMBER ONAR: Of course not…

CORCORAN: There is one point on which both sides agree, the property boom will make Cyprus’ division permanent. The sea changers bear some responsibility even if they prefer to ignore the tortuous history of their island in the sun and for an older generation of Cypriots, there will always be the pain of what was and perhaps will never be again.

RITA SEVERIS: Property means land. Land means country. It’s my country. It’s part of Cyprus. It is Cyprus so you know how can I give my land... my country up? If I’m not allowed to go and live in my own country, then what’s left for me?

http://www.abc.net.au/foreign/content/2007/s1972399.htm
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The properties board of TRNC paid 12 million pounds to Severis family for 42 donums of land in Kyrenia and 9.5 donums of land in Nicosia. Severis family renounced all their land claims in TRNC. Properties board agreed with another GC who have 1500 donums of land in Kalakanli village. In a few days time this GC will be paid 9.5 million pounds.

So far the properties board resolved 84 applications out of 432 applications by exchange, compensation or restitution since it's establishment in 2006.

Hope all Cypriots who have property claims apply to this property board and get their property rights as how they wish...

[Piratis]

Insan, how will you change the title deed ownership in the land registry of Republic of Cyprus, which is the one and only authority in Cyprus which has the power to say who owns what land in Cyprus? Will Severis go to the land registry and claim that her land is now sold to the "trnc"?

All land in Cyprus, private and public, is within Republic of Cyprus, the one and only state on this island. People can buy and sell their land only if they do so in the legal way. Otherwise no sale of property can be made.

This means that you kept that land illegally before, and you still keep it illegally. All you managed to do is avoid 1 (out of the 200.000) ECHR lawsuits. And you paid 12 million for this.

[Oracle]

People can buy and sell under the guidelines/authority of the RoC .... which ultimately owns all the land in perpetuity!

[insan]

U can keep running around the same circle and go nowhere like some others do but Severis family and 83 more GC families don't run around the same circle anymore regarding their properties...

[YFred]

U can keep running around the same circle and go nowhere like some others do but Severis family and 83 more GC families don't run around the same circle anymore regarding their properties...

At least they have had some closure with their property. Mind you they had to wait all this time hoping that roc would sort it out. What a joke.

[Get Real!]

CORCORAN: Turkish troops swiftly enforced a petition. One hundred and forty thousand Greeks and sixty thousand Turks caught on the wrong side of this new ethnic divide, were forced to abandon their homes.

This junk link starts with inaccuracies from the very first line!

185,000 vs 45,000

Also, they're not "Greeks" but Greek Cypriots! Two different things.

[Get Real!]

Hope all Cypriots who have property claims apply to this property board and get their property rights as how they wish...

You mean you hope all Greek Cypriots will accept peanuts for their properties from Turkey so that Turkish Cypriot thieves can enjoy it instead?

You can wish all you want…

[Sotos]

U can keep running around the same circle and go nowhere like some others do but Severis family and 83 more GC families don't run around the same circle anymore regarding their properties...

Piratis is right. Those families got the money but did you get the real title deeds for those properties? Or you paid all that money and still all you have are the same fake title deeds that worth nothing? Did you pay all that money to get nothing?

[insan]

CORCORAN: Turkish troops swiftly enforced a petition. One hundred and forty thousand Greeks and sixty thousand Turks caught on the wrong side of this new ethnic divide, were forced to abandon their homes.

This junk link starts with inaccuracies from the very first line!

185,000 vs 45,000

Also, they're not "Greeks" but Greek Cypriots! Two different things.

Did u count the number of refugees in 1974 or it was said to u so? Naive GR believes all the lies that said by the ring leaders of Cyprus tragedy! What a contradiction with his so-called Cypriot philosophy!

[bill cobbett]

Would like to see a breakdown of the alleged 84 "resolved" cases.

How many ........
Restitution?
Exchange?
Compensation?