European Court of Human Rights Rules in Favor of Woman Seeking to Regain Family Home in Kyrenia

By Janet McMahon

Titina Loizidou, a native of the town of Kyrenia in northern Cyprus, is but one of some 200,000 Greek Cypriots who lost their family homes as a result of Turkey’s 1974 invasion of Cyprus. She is the only one, however, who has succeeded in having the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) rule that Turkey is responsible for her continued dispossession and that Ankara must compensate her financially and allow her to resume control of her property in Kyrenia.

The court’s ruling was based on two major findings (both of which might serve as interesting precedents in other parts of the world). First, the court rejected the argument that, under the constitution of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, Loizidou was no longer the owner of her family property. The court instead found that, since the international community does not recognize the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (Turkey being the only country to do so), its constitution has no legal validity, and therefore Loizidou remains the legal owner of her property.

In its defense against her suit, the Turkish government in Ankara acknowledged that Loizidou had lost control of her property. But Ankara also argued that the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus was the legal government involved and that Turkey therefore was not responsible for Loizidou’s loss.

The ECHR rejected that argument as well, holding that “It is obvious from the large number of troops engaged in active duties in northern Cyprus that the [Turkish] army exercises effective overall control over that part of the island...[and that] the continuous denial of the applicant’s access to her property in northern Cyprus and the ensuing loss of all control over the property is a matter which falls within Turkey’s ‘jurisdiction.’”

Loizidou is determined that hers will not become “the only [ECHR] case up to now that has not been implemented—although there have been some delays,” she notes.Yet the Oct. 28, 1998 deadline has passed for Turkey to comply with the court’s ruling awarding Loizidou $570,000 in economic compensation and $38,000 “for the feelings of anguish, helplessness and frustration caused to the applicant by the loss of the use of her property.”

Turkey was ordered to reimburse Loizidou for her legal expenses as well. As of the October deadline, Turkey became subject to an interest penalty of 8 percent annually until it compensates Loizidou as ordered.

More significantly, in the opinion of Christos Rozakis, one of two ECHR vice presidents, “Turkey may have to face the prospect of sanctions or possible expulsion from the Council of Europe if it does not comply with the court decision.”

By now, however, delay is no stranger to Loizidou. A process she initially thought “would take three and a half years” in fact consumed nine years, from her initial application July 22, 1989 to the court’s final ruling on July 28, 1998.

Indeed, the event that prompted her decision to seek legal redress occurred even earlier: “I decided to take legal action against Turkey after I was seized by the Turkish army in Lymbia in March 1989 during the ‘Women Walk Home’ march,” Loizidou explained. “It had been organized to demonstrate, dynamically but peacefully, the refugees’ desire to return to their homes, and their demand for the reunification of our country.”

Loizidou had participated in previous such marches, which she described as “nonpolitical.” “It’s unnatural what is happening in Cyprus,” she said. “It’s like cutting your house in two—it’s like you’re in the reception area and you can’t go into the kitchen. A house can’t function without a kitchen and a bathroom.”

There are Kyrenians who vividly remember awakening at dawn on July 20, 1974 and seeing “two black specks”—the first wave of Turkish helicopters—against the rising sun. They fled in their cars, leaving homes, pets and possessions behind, never to see them again—unless theirs are some of the many houses visible but unreachable across the Green Line, a perhaps even more heartbreaking fate.

In 1974, Loizidou was living with her husband in Nicosia, pregnant with their first child. It had become impossible for the couple to live in Kyrenia, since the closure in 1963 of the main road from Kyrenia to Nicosia resulted in an uncertain and time-consuming commute to the capital, where her husband, Andreas, is a businessman. They were building a flat in Kyrenia on land Loizidou’s grandfather, Dr. Spyros Charalambides, had given her.

Instead, Louizidou said, “My grandfather became a refugee at 80.” Her father, also a doctor and Kyrenia’s vice mayor, refused to leave after the invasion, staying behind to care for the wounded, search for the missing and identify the dead. Along with some 1,000 fellow Greek Cypriots, he was “enclaved” for several months in Kyrenia’s 400-bed Dome Hotel. There was just one veranda, facing the sea, to which the “guests” could repair for fresh air and sunshine.

Loizidou’s father became the head of a committee overseeing the day-to-day running of the hotel “until they could go home.” After more than 10 months, however, her father was “asked to leave.” When queried about the exact nature of the request, Loizidou replied that he had been told to “either leave or be arrested.”

Years later, in 1988, when the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the United Nations Peacekeeping Forces around the world, Loizidou, along with her father and sister, attended a reception for the Cyprus contingent—the earliest and now longest one—at the Ledra Palace Hotel in Nicosia. Invited were both Greek and Turkish Cypriots, who had been “cut off completely from [one another] in one day,” in Loizidou’s words.

At the reception she met some Turkish Cypriots who had been living in Kryenia since 1974, one of whom told her, “My mother-in-law speaks about your grandfather.”

“I don’t think you can divide people’s memories,” Loizidou concluded. “There are still some links.”

An open, friendly and sophisticated woman, Titina Loizidou is one of Cyprus’ impressively well-educated and knowledgeable tourist guides. While president of the World Federation of Tourist Guide Associations, she visited Beijing and many other international tourist destinations. Yet, she says, the fact that she may not travel the short distance to her family home in Kyrenia “has deprived me of a very important element of my identity.”

Asked what her life might have been like had she not become an exile, Loizidou responded that, while in many ways her life would have taken its “natural course,” with the daily worries and joys of raising a family, her “family continuity would be normal and natural.” She would have restored the family home, and her grandfather “would have died naturally and been buried in Kyrenia.” A lover of nature and her country’s “sea, mountains and flowers,” she herself, Loizidou speculated, “would have been active in environmental issues in Kyrenia.”

Her two children, a 24-year-old son and 22-year-old daughter, both are pursuing post-graduate degrees in England—her son in engineering and EU studies, and her daughter in the conservation of archeological sites and historic buildings. Loizidou said that raising her children in an environment of occupation and separation, as they grew up near the Green Line that divides the Turkish and Greek sectors of Nicosia, “was my most difficult task,” as she tried to convey the message that their anger and opposition was “not against the Turkish Cypriots, but against the Turks.

“I’m very lucky that I had the chance to live with Turkish Cypriots in Kyrenia,” Loizidou pointed out. Such coexistence is “abstract for our kids, but real for me.”

Nevertheless, she added, her children “can be very critical of the older generation. They feel that both sides have made mistakes.” Her son and daughter are “very much for reunification,” she said, “and identify themselves as Cypriots.”

Loizidou described her human rights suit against Turkey as “a family decision. We share every aspect of the case,” she explained. For her the impetus, she said, “came from within me. It opens up for me another way to return to Kyrenia.”

Janet McMahon is the managing editor of the Washington Report.