Court rejects Turkish Cypriot Paphos airport owner’s compensation claim

An application for a total of €41 million worth of compensation from the Republic of Cyprus filed by the displaced Turkish Cypriot owners of land on which both Paphos airport and the Andreas Papandreou airbase was built has been rejected by the court of appeal, the legal service said on Friday. The applicants had initially filed a lawsuit at the Paphos district court in 2022, before filing a suit at the court of appeal after the district court had rejected their initial application. Alongside the compensation, the applicants wished to have the right to use of the land transferred from the guardian of Turkish Cypriot properties to them, so as to allow them to sell it to the airport’s administrator. Compensation had been requested for an “illegal intervention” in the land’s usage on the part of the Republic of Cyprus and for the violation of the applicant’s human rights, among other things. The court of appeal rejected the applicants’ claim on three counts, first of all saying that it rejected their assertions that they were “expelled” from the property in 1974. “We do not accept this claim, [as] in 1974, as is well known, there was a regulation where movement was not mandatory for everyone, but by the choice of each citizen, and as such, some Turkish Cypriots live in the free areas after 1974, without having been expelled or forced by the Republic of Cyprus to abandon their property,” it said. Regarding the applicants’ claim that the Republic of Cyprus illegally intervened in the property, the court stated that “while there was an intervention in the occupation [of the property], the exceptional situation declared by the Republic of Cyprus continues to remain in force”, having been declared in 1974. “Therefore, the intervention is lawful, based on the authority of the guardian [of Turkish Cypriot property] by the provisions of the legislation. All the appellants are Cypriot citizens, Turkish Cypriots, who do not have their legal residence in areas controlled by the Republic. Consequently, their property … was correctly and legally placed under guardianship,” it said. Additionally, the court ruled that given that one of the heirs to the property had not been mentioned in the case, the guardian “had an obligation to ensure that if it approved” the transfer of the land’s use, “the right of an heir to the property would not be violated”, given that the applicants then intended to sell it. As well as ruling against the applicants, the court ordered that they pay legal costs to the Republic of Cyprus. The Republic of Cyprus’ regime regarding the issuing of compensation for and restitution of Turkish Cypriot property is not codified in the way that it is in the Turkish Cypriot community, where the Immovable Property Commission was created in 2005, though Turkish Cypriot applicants have been awarded compensation in the past. By contrast, the IPC handles claims for compensation, restitution of Greek Cypriot-owned property in the occupied north and land exchanges filed by Greek Cypriot refugees and their descendants, and was in its own right recognised as an effective domestic remedy by the European Court of Human Rights. According to its latest figures, released on June 22, a total of 8,670 applications have been lodged with the IPC, of which 3,288 have been concluded. The IPC has awarded exactly STG£662,933,062 (€767,043,385) in compensation and has also ruled for exchange and compensation in two cases, for restitution in seven 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.