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[halil]

FACTS ABD FIGURES.........................

DURING THE 1963–64 PERIOD, it is estimated that around 25,000 Turkish Cypriots (one-fourth of the entire Turkish Cypriot community at that time) and 700 Greek Cypriots (including 500 Armenians) were displaced.(1) Of these, approximately 1,300 Turkish Cypriots had returned to their homes by 1970;(2) the remainder were still displaced in the summer of 1974 when events led to the present de facto division of Cyprus. The resulting dislocation of people was massive. According to official Greek Cypriot sources, 142,000 Greek Cypriots (close to 30% of the entire Greek Cypriot community at that time) were displaced from the northern to the southern part of the island;(3) and, according to official Turkish Cypriot sources, 45,000 Turkish Cypriots (close to 40% of the entire Turkish Cypriot community at that time) relocated from the south to the north.(4)
When the Turkish military operation ended on 16 August 1974, many thousands of Greek Cypriots had already fled to the south, with only about 20,000 remaining in the north. By the summer of 1975, this number further diminished to around 10,000 (mainly in the Karpass area). The Greek Cypriot side claims that this was due to ‘the oppressing measures taken by the Turks in order to compel all the enclaved persons to leave’ the Turkish-controlled territories.(5) Despite the Vienna III Agreement in August 1975 (more on this later), the number of Greek Cypriots in the north continued to decline: about 2,500 Greek Cypriots moved to the south during the remaining part of 1975, 5,800 during 1976, and 900 during 1977. By November 1981, only 1,076 Greek Cypriots remained in the north(.6) The population subsequently was reduced to less than 500, many of whom were very old. This decline, according to the Greek Cypriot side, was again ‘the result of a sustained campaign of harassment, discrimination and oppression’ directed towards them by the administration in the north.(7)
It has been estimated that, prior to July 1974, the actual Turkish Cypriot population in the territory that subsequently came under Turkish control was 71,000; of these, 10,000 were persons who had originally lived in villages to the south of the new dividing line but had been displaced during the intercommunal strife of 1963–64.(8) As for the Turkish Cypriots who lived south of the new line in 1974, many tried (secretly and apparently often under difficult and dangerous conditions) in the year that followed to reach what they regarded as freedom and the safety of the north.(9) Also, in January 1975, some 9,000 Turkish Cypriots who had taken refuge at the British bases in Akrotiri when the Turkish military offensive began were transported (via Turkey) to the north. Thus, by June 1975 the number of Turkish Cypriots remaining in the south was only about 10,700. By September 1975 – following the Vienna III Agreement of 2 August 1975 – most had moved to the north, leaving only 130 Turkish Cypriots resident in the south.(10)
Thus, the total figure of displaced persons in Cyprus following the events of 1974, including both Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, was in the range of 210,000. This corresponds to 30% of the total population of the island at the time (636,000).(11)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 Patrick, pp. 74–79.
2 Ibid. 3 ROC Press and Information Office (PIO), The Cyprus Question, (Nicosia, 2003), p. 12. See also ROC PIO’s Republic of Cyprus: From 1960 to the Present Day, map based on the 1960 census data (Nicosia, 2005).
4 This is an estimate based on the information provided in an official report of the Turkish Cypriot administration dated 20 October 1974. See Ahmet An, Kıbrıs Nereye Gidiyor (Istanbul: Everest, 2002), p. 319.
5 Criton G. Tornaritis, Cyprus and Its Constitutional and Other Legal Problems (Nicosia, 1977), p. 86. (At the time of publication, the author was the Greek Cypriot Attorney-General.)
6 Pierre Oberling, The Road to Bellapais: The Turkish Cypriot Exodus to Northern Cyprus (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), p. 193.
7 Republic of Cyprus Press and Information Office, Turkish Colonisation: A Threat for Cyprus and Its People (Nicosia, 1995). Such explanations were dismissed by the Turkish Cypriot side as ‘anti-Turkish propaganda of the Greek Cypriot administration’. See, for example, ‘Greek Cypriots in Karpass Fully Satisfied with TFSC [Turkish Federated State of Cyprus]’, published on 5 May 1978 in News Bulletin and reproduced as an appendix in Human Rights in Cyprus, (Nicosia: Turkish Cypriot Human Rights Committee, May 1979). Here, it should be noted that, concerning the living conditions of the Greek Cypriots in the north, the European Court of Human Rights (EHCR) in a 2001 judgment found human rights violations in the areas of freedom of religion, freedom of expression, right to education, and right to private and family life, as well as infringements of property rights, including the Turkish Cypriot practices of not allowing the property of deceased Greek Cypriots who had been living in the north to be transferred to their heirs not resident there, and deeming the property of Greek Cypriots who left the north permanently as ‘abandoned’. See Cyprus v. Turkey, judgment of the ECHR, 10 May 2001. See also See also Frank Hoffmeister, ‘Cyprus v. Turkey (Case Note on European Court of Human Rights judgment of 10 May 2001)’, American Journal of International Law, 96, no. 2 (April 2002), pp. 445–452.
8 This estimation is based on the figures in the report referred to in note 7 above, as well as the data provided in ROC PIO’s Republic of Cyprus: From 1960 to the Present Day.
9 Murad Hüsnü Özad, Baf ve Mücadele Yılları [Paphos and the Struggle Years] (Lefkoşa: Akdeniz Haber Ajansı Yayınları, 2002), pp. 135–303. See also Oberling, pp. ix–xii, 191–192.
10 Oberling, pp. 191–193.
11 L. W. St John-Jones, The Population of Cyprus (London: Institute of Commonwealth Studies, 1983), pp. 34–62. See also George Karouzis, Proposals for a Solution to the Cyprus Problem (Nicosia: Cosmos Press, 1976), p. 13.
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[halil]

FACTS AND FIGURES....................

Under the present circumstances of what has been called the ‘unresolved division’(12) in Cyprus, the percentages of Turkish Cypriot- and Greek Cypriot-controlled areas are around 36% and 62% of the territory of the 1960 Republic of Cyprus, respectively. The remaining area (excluding the British Sovereign Base Areas [SBAs]) is the so-called Buffer Zone controlled by UNFICYP.
As regards Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot property ownership in these areas, there is no set of established figures that both sides accept. Turkish Cypriot researchers generally have disputed Greek Cypriot estimates of property ownership on grounds of the unreliability of the Greek Cypriot-controlled land registry records (since 1963).(13) In addition, these researchers claim that there were usurpations of the Evkaf properties as well as miri lands(14) in the past (especially prior to the establishment of the Republic of Cyprus in 1960).
Patrick provided some land ownership figures for 1960 based on statistics supplied (in the post-1964 period) by the Statistics and Research Department of the Cyprus Government’s Ministry of Finance (by then run solely by Greek Cypriots) and by the Planning Department of the Provisional Turkish Cypriot Administration (1964–74).(15) These figures show Greek Cypriot ownership ranging from 61% to 81% and Turkish Cypriot ownership from 18% to 38% of the island’s total privately owned land (an illustration of the big difference that has typically existed between the two sides’ data on this matter).

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12 An expression used in the Report of the Secretary-General on His Mission of Good Offices in Cyprus, UN document S/2003/398, 1 April 2003, para. 107; available at http://www.un.org/ Docs/sc/sgrep03.html (accessed 8 June 2006).
13 See, for example, Haşim Altan, Kıbrıs’ta Türk Malları: Gaspedilen ve Yitirilen Türk Tapu ve Arazi Hakları [Turkish Properties in Cyprus: Usurped and Lost Turkish Titles and Land Rights] (Istanbul: Kastaş Yayınları, 2001).
14 The Evkaf is the organization of vakıfs (traditional Muslim establishments) of Cyprus that began following the Ottoman conquest of the island in 1571. A vakıf is founded through properties appropriated for or donated to religious, charitable and public uses, and administered in accordance with a special law called the Ahkam-ül Evkaf. According to this law, ownership of the Evkaf properties is non-transferable. In 1960, the Evkaf was recognized as a Turkish Cypriot institution and the Ahkam-ül Evkaf was reaffirmed in the constitution of the Republic of Cyprus. See Behrooz Morvaridi, ‘Social Structure and Change’, in The Political Social and Economic Development of Northern Cyprus, ed. Clement H. Dodd, pp. 264–266 (Cambridgeshire: Eothen Press, 1993); M. B. Seager, Reports on the Evkaf Properties, Cyprus (British Colonial Office, 1883); and Cyprus: A Country Study, ed. Eric Solsten (Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress, 1991) (available at http://www.country-data.com/cgi-bin/query/r-3512.html; accessed 20 January 2006). Miri land (arazi-i mirié; literally, ‘treasury or exchequer land’) refers to agricultural land, which under the Ottoman land code belonged to the state (equivalently, the sultan). This type of land could be transmitted from father to son, but it could not be sold, mortgaged or donated by its possessor (hereditary tenant who cultivated the land and whose right to the land was usufructuary). The Ottoman land code remained in force until 1946, when the British colonial administration enacted a new land law, the Immovable Property Tenure, Registration, and Valuation Law. The 1946 British law ended the miri land tradition, stipulating that all state land properly acquired by individuals became their private property. See Halil İnalcık, An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire – Volume One: 1300–1600 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); and Solsten.
15 Patrick, p. 14.

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[halil]

other side of the coin will continue................

[halil]

UN SECRETARY GENERAL’S SPECIAL ADVISOR FOR CYPRUS ALEXANDER DOWNER EVALUATES CYPRUS ISSUE TO POLITIS

The United Nations Secretary General’s Special Advisor for Cyprus Alexander Downer gave an interview to a Greek Cypriot newspaper claiming that he would know the future of the Cyprus negotiations by Friday. He told the paper that after the leader concluded all day discussion on the 8th and 10th of September it will become clear weather or not a solution will be found to the Cyprus problem.
Mr. Downer said the leader of the Greek Cypriot administration Dimitris Christofias handed in a comprehensive package which proposed a ten year period to end all restrictions on the right to property across the island.
Some other points mentions in the package have to do with property, territory and Turkish origin citizens in the TRNC.
Christofias said the solution of the property issue, territory issues and Turkish origin TRNC citizens are all intertwined in a solution being found to the Cyprus problem.
‘Christofias also proposed that 50,000 Turkish origin TRNC citizens may stay on the island’ said Downer.