Cyprus Britons told: we want our homes back

WHEN Yiannis and Olga Georgiou finally returned this week to the house they were forced to flee 29 years ago they were dismayed to find an English woman living in it.

It was little consolation that the house in the picturesque village of Lapithos was in perfect condition. “She had taken good care of it because she thought it belongs to her, but it doesn’t,” said Mr Georgiou, 59, who has the original title deeds.

Mrs Georgiou, moist-eyed, added: “The British Government doesn’t recognise the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus so why do Britons buy our houses and land?”

About 162,000 Greek Cypriots were displaced when Turkish troops invaded northern Cyprus in 1974 after a short-lived Greek-inspired coup in Nicosia. Huge numbers have flocked back since last week’s surprise decision by the Turkish Cypriot authorities to allow limited access across the “green line” for the first time in three decades. There have been scenes of reconciliation between the long-estranged communities. But the euphoria has not been shared by hundreds of Britons who leased or bought forcibly abandoned Greek Cypriot properties as holiday or retirement homes at bargain prices.

Many have a stridently partisan view of the island’s complex history. “I don’t think the Greek Cypriots have a right to come back here,” a British woman in Lapithos said. “They started the trouble and they lost the war.”

With hopes of a Cyprus settlement growing, many such Britons may well have cause to feel deeply uncomfortable. Greek Cypriots, armed with the deeds to their properties, will line up to reclaim them.

“With the current situation, you’re taking a risk buying here,” Tony Stephens, 55, conceded. He has a 49-year lease from the internationally unrecognised Turkish Cypriot state on a house he renovated in Karmi, once a “totally Greek Cypriot” village. “We are concerned that we might be abandoned, that what we put in could be lost. Some people have invested a lot of money.”

Greek Cypriots have no time for such arguments. “Taking over someone else’s property in this way could be seen as dealing in stolen goods,” Achilleas Demetriades, a British-trained human rights lawyer said. “These people have been warned not to buy such properties and the low prices should have made them suspicious. Judgment day is approaching and they’re beginning to tremble.” There is also scant sympathy from diplomats. “If you put £50,000 on a horse and lose you don’t expect to get your money back,” a senior European envoy said.

Margi Carter, a 56-year-old retired hypnotherapist who lives in the house that Mr Georgiou built, said: “I don’t feel guilty at all.”

She bought it “freehold” from a Turkish Cypriot when she came to northern Cyprus on a honeymoon with her late husband, Simon, in 1995, she said. She invested £92,000 in the four-bedroom house with a sea view. As British-run estate agencies in northern Cyprus boast, similar properties in the internationally recognised south would cost at least twice as much. “If it came to it, I’d consider compensation because it would be incorrect not to, but I’d hate to have to move,” Mrs Carter said. “It’s got great sentimental value — it’s the only thing Simon and I had together.”

The Georgious claim a far deeper emotional attachment. Mr Georgiou, a former fireman who lost his right arm to a Turkish shell in 1974, built the house on land that his wife inherited from her mother.

They had lived in it for just three months when Turkey invaded. The youngest of their three children was less than a fortnight old. The family fled with few belongings, expecting to return within days. The couple have since lived in spartan refugee housing.

Mrs Carter’s encounter with the Georgious was awkward but courteous on both sides.

Not all such meetings have been as polite. Local television has shown Britons in Karmi refusing to open their doors to returning refugees. Many Greek Cypriots have contrasted the often frosty receptions from Britons to the warm welcomes given by Turkish Cypriots.

One British woman in Karmi grumbled that the Greek Cypriots who were suddenly arriving “don’t have much respect for other people’s property”. They entered properties without always knocking and picked flowers without asking, she complained. Kathy Nye, 72, a widow, said a lot of people had been upset by the “aggressive behaviour” of Greek Cypriots impatient to see their old homes. She has put a chain on the gate of her house.

“This is my property,” Joe Harrington, 59, said as he sipped a sundowner on the patio of a four-bedroom seaview house in Lapithos that he bought “freehold” two years ago. “We put in about £70,000,” he added.

What if the Greek Cypriot owner asked him to return the house? “I’d tell him to bugger off,” Mr Harrington beamed.

The house was built by Savvas Gambroudiou, 71, a retired carpenter who has lived in a two-bedroom refugee house near Limassol for nearly 30 years. When The Times passed on what Mr Harrington had said, Mr Gambroudiou’s son, Costas, 36, replied: “Tell him there’s nothing personal but, of course, if there’s a solution (to the Cyprus problem), he’s going to have to return the house. My father has the only legal title deeds and he wants it back.”

Stick to one rip-off at a time, you guys!

What got done in Cyprus is obviously wrong. But all is not lost. Greeks, Britons, and Turks are involved, who happen to all be playing rather nicely together, right now. The Turks want into the EU, so they can do a "buy back" for the Turks who "bought" this property stolen from the Greeks. The British can reimburse those Brits who wrongly "bought" the property, and indemnify those Greeks who either want it back, or will take the money instead. Hey, Greeks, Turks, Brits ... business can be done. Deals can be made. Especially if there is some government money on the table. This one looks "easy" to work out. However, Israel and the "Palestinians" is a whole 'nother story, but face it: it does involve the Turks. The Ottomans rather blithely "sold" vast tracts of their then province to the early Zionists, who happily "bought" them, to start their experiment. Neither party to the transactions handled tenant (or owner) removal at the time. Since there were only a couple of hundred thousand living there, it certainly would have been the time to handle it.
Maybe as part of joining the EU, the Turks could take a look at some real estate law overhauls!

We were in the former East Germany in 2000 and many jewish families are still trying to get their family ancestrial homes back. Takes time to prove it was theirs. No telling how long it will take to clear up that mess.

There is similar problem in Middle East. In 1948 my neighbors' grandparents were driven out of their homes. They are Christians of Jordanian descent. They were allowed to leave with a suitcase full of clothes that is all. Their big home that they built and paid for was turned into an Israeli Library. They can not get it back, nor any of their furniture or belongings. They didn't start the fight. They were peaceful, educated, professional, Christians living there innocently. Yes, there were Christian law abiding citizens who were displaced by the Israelis in 1948.

We displaced my Cherokee ancestors in USA. We can't give them Manhattan and the rest of the US back. We can't give California and Texas back to the Mexicans, and they WANT it back. La Raza is working on that.

Sometimes you have to let bygones be bygones or you end up with a mess, and constant war like in the Middle East!

I am not taking any side in the dispute over governance in Cyprus. I am simply saying that a government does not have the moral right to declare property its own to sell, without any legitimate (read: honestly contested) legal process.

The only property a government rightly inherits as a condition of its vanquishing another government is the property rightly owned by the other government. Citizen-owned property is off-limits.

I realize that this conflicts with communist/socialist political ideas, but those are immoral, anyhow. To the degree that land reform is seen as necessary in some third-world countries, that must be done through a legal process, with some kind of recompense made to the previous owners.

Like I said, if Israel in all cases honored existing legitimate property rights, settlements would not be an issue, because they would not exist, aside from property legitimately sold to settlers. I think more attention to property rights can lead more quickly to peace than autocratic usurpation of same.

Hey Buff, Apples 'n' Oranges.

Amerindinans held the land we frankly took, communally. Eventually, each tribe was given (or reduced to) a reservation. However, the way things worked out, it is now such a good deal, that people are inventing tribes and applying for reservations. (And gambling licenses.) I think no one could possibly point to our relations with the aboriginal inhabitants as a model of human interaction. However, two things have happened: 1): Our goverments eventually made them deals of varying degrees of acceptibility to them.. 2) The Indians, after getting to know us, wised up and took the deals.

The Amerindian case is also a bad analogy because had the white man never shown up on these shores, the various tribes would still be frequently moving each other out (and far worse) of each other's territories in their tribal wars, which were endless, and continued right up until their eventual pacification and movement on to reservations. Yeah, Buff, it's a part of their culture we definitely crushed.

Cyprus, on the other hand, formerly a British possession, is possessed of national laws and freehold rights to private property which are internationally recognized. While it was a legally constituted and internationally recognized independent country, the Turks backed up a movement to divide the island. But, Turkey also has laws and rights of private property. An international, three-way-legal-dispute is not an unusual case. So it will get settled.

The land case for the "Palestinians" is much more complicated than any Indian land case. The Ottoman empire was the legal, internationally recognized authority. Even under their laws, I am sure there were originally improper title transfers. However, the overwhelming majority of the people living there now were not "Palestinians" then, because there literally wasn't any such thing. Furthermore, when it became known that life was better in what became known as Israel (formerly as you'll recall, a British Mandate) because of the massive Zionist and British investments made there before independence, it became the target of massive Arab immigration. Literally millions of Arabs (like Yasser Arafat's family) moved to Israel from Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Arabia, Morocco,etc. "Property" rights today for these people are problematical.

The refugee camps where many of these Arabs fled in 1948 are indeed some of the most horrid places on Earth. But they were origially caused when the united Arabs promised the Muslims in what became Israel, a quick victory in 1948. Did the newly independent Israelis take advantage of the fact that these people were encouraged (mostly by the Arabs) to flee? You bet. Did those Arabs who stayed behind become Israeli citizens? You bet. They are represented in the Knesset, where they often wield far more political power than their numbers might suggest.

Since then, the descendants of these Arabs who fled, of many different heritages, practically none having anything to do with this region, could easily have been resettled in the Arab world, or even whence their families came. Hell, with the oil money the wealthy Arabs had even then, and the personal 10Billion+ fortune Yasser Arafat's clan has amassed, they could have bought each Arab family now living in a refugee camp, or anywhere else they are unhappy or oppressed, a ranch in the San Joaquin Valley!

Instead, the Arabs themselves keep the "Palestinians" in squalid camps, so they can use these miserable people as pawns in their dealings with the West and with each other. There are vast reaches within the Arab (not even to say Muslim) world where these unfortunate people could easily have been resettled long ago to build very decent societies. Instead, they are encouraged to use their rich relatives' Billions to breed suicide bombers, while they blame Israel and the West for their troubles.

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