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The Republic of Cyprus has announced that it will revoke the passports of senior officials from Northern Cyprus.
The decision concerns the north's move to reopen parts of Varosha, a town that has been closed to settlement by a UNSC resolution after Turkey's military intervention on the island in 1974.
The southern government will revoke or refuse to renew the passports of the northern officials who are involved in the reopening, government spokesperson Marios Pelekanos said after a cabinet meeting yesterday (August 23), according to a report by Cyprus Mail.
CLICK - Reopening of 'the ghost town': Why was Varosha closed to settlement?
While he did not specify the names of those who will be sanctioned, Kıbrıs Postası, a newspaper based in Northern Cyprus, reported that 14 senior officials, including President Ersin Tatar, were on the list.
Ten cabinet members and four members of a committee for Varosha's reopening will also be sanctioned, according to the newspaper.
"They are the same individuals who, through particularly hostile actions towards the Republic of Cyprus, promote the implementation of Turkey's plans to change the regime of the closed-off area of Varosha," said Pelekanos.
Tatar denounced the decision and said it had no legal basis. The Republic of Cyprus is the joint state of the two peoples of Cyprus and their rights should be respected, he said.
People on the beach of Varosha after its partial reopening in October 2020.
As Northern Cyprus is only recognized by Turkey, its citizens need a passport of either Cyprus or Turkey to be able to travel abroad. According to reports in Cyprus media, about 160,000 people, or half of the Northern Cypriots, are also citizens of the Republic of Cyprus.
In October 2020, Northern Cyprus reopened the shoreline and a street in Varosha to the public in a move supported by Turkey.
During a visit to Northern Cyprus last month, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced a new step in the reopening of the town, saying that three and a half percent of properties in Varosha will be returned to their owners. He suggested that citizens of Northern Cyprus or Turkey may buy properties from their Greek owners.
Ten members of the cabinet of Northern Cyprus and four members of a committee for Varosha's reopening will be sanctioned, Cyprus Mail said, citing reports in the media.
The status of VaroshaVarosha, or Maraş in Turkish, is a coastal town in Cyprus' Famagusta. Following Turkey's "Second Cyprus Peace Operation" in the 1974 war that eventually divided the island, the town was closed to settlement as it was on the "green line" between the "Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus" and the "Republic of Cyprus." Passed by the UNSC in 1983, Resolution 550 stated, "... Deeply concerned about recent threats for settlement of Varosha by people other than its inhabitants, reaffirming its continuing support for the United Nations Peace-keeping Force in Cyprus..." Formerly a major tourist attraction with its beaches and hotels, Varosha has turned into a "ghost town" since then. However, the issue came to the fore once again before the 2015 presidential elections when President Mustafa Akıncı said, "Instead of living side by side with a corpse, Maraş should become a lively place where people live, earn an income, contractors from both sides do business, their young people find jobs." On June 18, 2019, the Council of Ministers of Northern Cyprus announced the decision that it would reopen Varosha and assign a team of experts to do scientific inventory studies. On October 6, 2020, then Northern Cyprus presidential candidate Ersin Tatar announced the reopening of Varosha during a joint press conference with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Cyprus. |
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