Cyprus-Forum.com

[MicAtCyp]

Will the GC administration take responsibility for the tc homes that they have knocked down, will they give compensation so we can build new homes on our lands that they destroyed?

Of course Brother. If your house was OK and they just knocked it down to built a road or a public building you are entitled of compensation for both the land AND the house. However if your house was built with mud bricks and it fell down by itself, or was about to fall down on people passing by, all you will get back is a nice clean building plot.
If an individual knocked down your house and he built his own (without licence from the Guardian) he will pay everything out of his pocket.That's certain.

Now I have some questions for you:
1)After 1974 people were living in tents.Suppose a TC house was in good condition and empty. Do you think they would prefer to knock it down and continue to live in a tent rather than getting in there?*Notice that almost 10 years passed by untill all refugees got a small refugee appartment.
2)From the 50s up until today people are abandoning their villages (especially the remote ones) and go living in towns.As a result he have today tens of GC villages with population ZERO. Nobody lives there only snakes. My question is,would you expect any different fate for your remote villages that you left behind?
3)This question is rather personal.You said 2 big restaurants are now on your families land.That's in Limassol right? Well is one of the 2 called "Famagusta"? If yes I will tell you something that I am sure will make you happy.

PS.* even today the refugee houses are so small and so humid, that I guarantee you if there was a TC house that could be used they would prefer that one. I visited one such refugee house the other day, and I tell you I was looking at my watch for the time to leave from there, or I would get an asthma crisis.(No I am not Ill, I just couldn’t breath)

[brother]

Majority of settlers are uneducated poor people who had little to nothing in monetary terms, hence the madness that followed and they were given free homes and lands.

So i agree with micatcyp that turkey should be the one that pays for their re-housing and not the cypriots, as i believe that if free homes and lands were not on offer they would not have come in droves but trickled in and when they found themselves sleeping under the stars and very little prospect they would have gone back to turkey and their own villages imo.

My family lands are in iskala, Larnaca in the turkish area of makenzie on the beach front right opposite the marina and we own all the plots all along and recent valuations priced in the serious amounts.

[turkcyp]

Majority of settlers are uneducated poor people who had little to nothing in monetary terms, hence the madness that followed and they were given free homes and lands.

I really wonder if you have been to Cyprus recently. And again even if you have,you can not tell if you are just visiting from UK as a tourist.

Majority of settlers (at least the way TC defines settlers) is not that poor. There is not that much wealth difference between them and TCs. May be their average is at 75-80% of avergage TC level.

What you see on the streets and call them settler are mostly legal and illegal workers that comes to Cyprus to make money and are majorly poor. And all of them will be forced to leave anyway.

The majority of settlers came to Cyprus in 70s, and many are well inetagrated to society, and holds jobs comparable to TCs and again majority are not working as you kight have guesed on construction sites.

So i agree with micatcyp that turkey should be the one that pays for their re-housing and not the cypriots, as i believe that if free homes and lands were not on offer they would not have come in droves but trickled in and when they found themselves sleeping under the stars and very little prospect they would have gone back to turkey and their own villages imo.

I still do not understand the logic behind Turkey shoudl pay for their housing. Nobody should pay for their housing. Turkey may set uo mechanism to help them get through the hard transition period but wht should Turkey forced to pay their housing.

Everybody that immigrated to Cyprus get a subsidy from goverment to immigrate in the form of land and property. Now the subsidy is taken back then why should they demand other subsidies to replace the old one. Nobody forced them to come to Cyprus in the first place. It was done on their will, and basically subsidized by the goverment. So they should not be complainig when their subsidies goes away.

They should be forced to pay for their houses and vacate them if they can not. As simple as that. Goverment can help them in form of low interest loans, help them in rental assistance which shoudl be payed back as well, ir other mechanisms like givineg their retirement social security benefits early to them, but that is about it.

As I have said earlier, there is no such thing as free lunch, and they should learn to pay for their lunches.

My family lands are in iskala, Larnaca in the turkish area of makenzie on the beach front right opposite the marina and we own all the plots all along and recent valuations priced in the serious amounts.

Good for you and your family. Hopefully you can get it back.

[boulio]

Everybody that immigrated to Cyprus get a subsidy from goverment to immigrate in the form of land and property

whos land and property exactly?

and by the way dosent the geneva convention prohibate the use of settlers?

because turkey finds it okay to bring settlers into cyprus but goes ballistic when the kurds do it in kirkuk?

double standards.

[turkcyp]

Everybody that immigrated to Cyprus get a subsidy from goverment to immigrate in the form of land and property

whos land and property exactly?

and by the way dosent the geneva convention prohibate the use of settlers?

because turkey finds it okay to bring settlers into cyprus but goes ballistic when the kurds do it in kirkuk?

double standards.

Dear Bulio,

Haven’t you learn enough to understand how international politics work. It is full of double standards.

Turkey says that TC has self determination rights but Kurds do not. GCs says that Kurds have the right of self determination but TCs do not. On the other hand whatever Turkey did on north Cyprus by giving incentives and subsidies for settlers to move to Cyprus to have political aims but can not accept when Kurds are doing the same thing to in Kirkuk for political aims. Greece asks for Greek minority rights in Turkey but defies Turkish minority rights in Greece, and Turkey asks for Turkish minority rights in Greece but defies them to Kurds, and Greeks in Istanbul. USA claims that he wants to give democ5racy to middle east but they support all undemocratic regimes if the suit to thei agenda. etc. etc. (millions of examples really)

And this kind of double standards keeps on going on and on between all the countries and wanna be countries. This web of hypocrisies keeps on going forever, but depending on where you look at events they seem different to different people. And no government, state and society is less guilty then the other.

The only thing that can break this cycle is the notion of “self-criticism” the day people stop looking to enemies and blaming them only for their misfortunes and start making some soul searching of “where was my mistake in this?” is the day we will break this cycle. But unfortunately this should be done by everybody at the same time otherwise it will not get anywhere but will only result in exploitation of one society self guilt by others, which in turn will cause even bigger resentment among everybody.

The day we all say at the same time “Aha. This is where I have made a mistake. My enemy has a point there” is the day we will move forward.

Take care of yourself,

[boulio]

i get your point of double standards however you didn't answer the first question who's land and property?

and concerning greece with the greeks in turkey it goes to the letter of the law,its the christian minorites in turkey or non-muslim.even the eu pushes that line,they never say greek or armenian or assyrian.thats the difference with the turks they demand to be recognized as turks,and they werent thrown out of greece with pogroms as the greek and armenians were of turkey.

[turkcyp]

i get your point of double standards however you didn't answer the first question who's land and property?

and concerning greece with the greeks in turkey it goes to the letter of the law,its the christian minorites in turkey or non-muslim.even the eu pushes that line,they never say greek or armenian or assyrian.thats the difference with the turks they demand to be recognized as turks,and they werent thrown out of greece with pogroms as the greek and armenians were of turkey.

Unfortunately you seriously missed my point....

If you did understand my point, you would not immediately get into defensive mode, cause I was not attacking you, Greece, or GCs in any way in my post.

But anyway, hopefully you will understand my point one day. Till that day there is no point of discussing any issue with you because of lack of empathy.

Have a great life,

p.s. Issue of land was not singled out, it was merely one of many double standards I was trying to refer.

[boulio]

But anyway, hopefully you will understand my point one day. Till that day there is no point of discussing any issue with you because of lack of empathy.

thats fine by me chief,and again you still did not answer the question and it is you by labelling me that i have a lack of empathy the one who is in defencive mode.

and in your response about having a great life,you should get one first

have a nice day.

[antonis]

I think the first thing to do is to get a good estimate of how many the settlers are - when did they come to Cyprus, where they live etc. This can be done by an EU/UN committee or something.

As for the property issue, there's this argument that the government didn't follow the right policy, with regards to occupying TC properties or not in the long run. Many TC villages in the south are now completely unhabitated, 'cause people either lived there for a few years and then moved to small refugee appartments that the gvmt built for them in the cities after about 10 years, or they didn't even live in those houses at all. Note that the GC refugees greatly outnumbered the available TC houses, so it would make more sense to occupy every single TC house and build extra ones for the rest of the refugees. We didn't do this.

In your case, first Turkey had about a year to exercise the well known "buluntu" activites, then from 1975 it started filling unoccupied houses with people from Turkey. In 1997 Denktash even suggested opening Varosha for settlement. And as Hannay informs us in his book, "Turkish Cypriots stated flatly that all property claims must be settled by compensation and refused to contemplate any right of return, however tightly circumscribed. They placed great weight on the precedent of the population transfer between Greece and Turkey in 1923-24 which had been conducted on this basis and were unwilling to recognize that both the political climate and international jurisprudence had moved on since then and that legitimizing ethnic cleansing by force was not an approach likely to commend itself to the international community, let along the Greek Cypriots".

[turkcyp]

It absoultely would be much more clarifying of course to make an international census (since you do not trust TC census figures)

But we can do some mathematical reasoning on the latest census figures from north (believing these census figures is your prerogative of course).

1960, TC population = 103
1973, TC population = 116

This makes annual population growth rate of 0.9185% population growth rate among TCs. What can cause these popualtion growth rate to change.

a) population birth rate and death rate changes: There is no reason to assume that these rates had chaged dramatically among TCs.
b) Immigration: There is also no reason to assume that this rate had changed to the worse (outward immigration) for TCs. If anything outsiade immigration reversed itself after 1974 where the constant threat of GC had ceised to exist. But this outside immigration somewhat gained momentum after 90’s becuase of economical hardships are started to be felt much deeper. Before economic embargos were not that much of an issue because TCs were ablet o sell anything to UK, their biggest market after Turkey. So it is safe to assume that this immigration did not change as well.

Using these figures then we can conclude that the 116k TC society in 1973 can be estimated to grow to 144.46 k in 1997. In 1997 the census in north give a population figure of 203k, which puts the estimated settler population figure to 58-59k in 1997.

Here you can try to poke wholes into the assumptions, and come up with different numbers, but you have to make somehow realistic assumptions, to be taken seriously.