Govt says Turkey uses IPC to avoid obligations

The government on Sunday said Turkey is using the Immovable Property Commission (IPC) to avoid its obligations to claimants who were displaced in 1974 and won cases in international courts.

The government cited the Xenides-Arestis group of cases, on which the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) ruled on various dates between 2007 and 2012 in favour of Greek Cypriot pre-1974 property owners who had demanded compensation for their losses.

With this in mind, they said they had written a memorandum to the Council of Europe (CoE)’s Committee of Ministers, asking that the total outstanding compensation for the group be calculated together with interest.

They pointed out in this regard that “this had already amounted to more than €57 million by August 2022.”

Additionally, they responded to a reported memorandum sent by the Turkish government to the CoE on the matter, saying Turkey’s refusal thus far to pay the amount demanded through the ECtHR “is just the latest in a long line of attempts avoid its obligations.”

The Cypriot government said Turkey was doing this “pending the prospect of recovery in proceedings through the IPC”, but that this was an attempt to “conflate Turkey’s unconditional obligation to pay just satisfaction ordered by the court with IPC-related issues.”

This, they said, “has been repeatedly and rightly rejected by the Committee of Ministers as unacceptable”.

They said that for this reason they had sought the opinion of Icelandic-Italian judge Robert Spano, who previously served as ECtHR president.

According to the government, Spano “echoed” their position, which is that “the time has come to resolve the issue of interpretation of the court’s decisions”.

For this reason, they said, the Committee of Ministers “could and should do this by asking the court, in accordance with the provision of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) designed for this very purpose, to resolve the disputed interpretative question which holds the key to the remaining execution of this historic international decision.”

The government said that supervision of the execution of the ECtHR’s decisions on property in Cyprus has “for too many years been fatally hampered by a difference of opinion regarding the court’s 2001 decision”, in which Cyprus had taken Turkey to the ECtHR over various rights violations after 1974.

They quoted part of the opinion offered by Spano, who said, “I caution against the view that it may now be considered justified to close the execution of this part of the proceedings on the basis that the 2014 decision can be understood to mean that Turkey does not need to take further steps to comply with the 2001 judgment in relation to ongoing violations create new victims for the same mistake, against which the court had warned.”

The 2014 ruling saw Turkey ordered to pay €90m in compensation, €30m of which was to relatives of the Greek Cypriot missing from 1974, and €30m was to Greek Cypriots who continued to live in the north afterwards.

The government said Spano had also warned of “the possible ramifications of the interpretation of the Demopoulos case by the Committee of Ministers, in its wider international context in light of current developments.”

The Demopoulos case, ruled that the IPC constituted an “effective remedy”, rejecting complaints of applicants that there were no such effective remedies for Greek Cypriot internally displaced persons on the island.

However, according to the government, Spano had said that if Turkey is allowed to rely on the IPC in lieu of cases going through the ECtHR, a damaging precedent could be set.

“If the proposition is accepted, that an occupying power may take steps to effectively fulfil its duty of restitution under the convention, under the retroactive principle of domestic law, and thus escape from complying with its obligations simply by paying compensation,” he said.

He added, “for example, invading forces after an act of aggression would have every incentive to transfer, alienate, and exploit occupied territories and completely eliminate the obligation to return property without internationally liability if all that was required was the creation of an internal mechanism which retrospectively and unilaterally determines compensation amounts.”

For this reason, the government said, “the availability of certain remedies under the IPC cannot remove what the court held to be Turkey’s responsibility – to stop its ongoing interventions into Greek Cypriot properties in the occupied areas of the island.”

Established in 2005, the IPC handles claims for compensation, restitution of Greek Cypriot-owned property in the north and land exchanges, filed by Greek Cypriots who fled the north after 1974 and their descendants.

According to its latest figures, released on Friday, a total of 7,715 applications have been lodged with the IPC, of which 1,840 have been concluded.

The IPC has awarded exactly £467,060,546 (€552,952,980) in compensation and has also ruled for exchange and compensation in three cases, for restitution in five cases, and for restitution and compensation in eight cases.

Additionally, it has delivered a decision for restitution after the Cyprus problem in one case, and in another ruled for partial restitution.

Most recently, one of the members of the Xenides-Arestis group, Ruby Rock Hotels Ltd, which had initially taken their case to the ECtHR, reached an amicable settlement through the IPC amounting to £10.5 million (€12.4m).

Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar had said on Thursday that the decision Tatar said the decision made by one of the parties to go through the IPC “demonstrates that the IPC is an effective remedy for Greek Cypriot property claims”.

Tatar had earlier this year accused the Republic of “trying to prevent its citizens from applying to this mechanism”, saying it “does not give the necessary legal documents to those whom they cannot convince to not apply, to allow their cases to proceed.”