The vindication of the Milli Gazete, which has been revealing the danger in Cyprus for months, has once again been revealed. The figures announced showed that the situation was worse than expected.
A statement made by Cafer Gürcafer, President of the Cyprus Turkish Building Contractors Association, fell on the agenda like a bomb.
In his statement also in the Cypriot press, Gürcafer stated that there are 94,000 contracts pending in the Land Registry Office, that the title deeds have been issued but the transfer process has not been made,
"In the event of their transfer, the money that will enter the state's coffers is around 20 billion TL," he said.
The statement made by Cafer Gürcafer, the President of the Cyprus Turkish Construction Contractors Association, during these days when the search for resources continues due to the economic crisis in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), attracted a lot of attention.
With the presentation of Gürcafer's proposal, the accuracy of the news that the Milli Gazete had been making for months about the silent occupation on the island of Cyprus was once again revealed.
THE TRANSFER OCCUR IN THREE WAYS
In a country that is in a serious economic crisis and is in search of resources, title deed transfers take place in three ways. According to the first method, the seller and the buyer make an appointment with the title deed office and the title deed is transferred on the day of the appointment. This transfer is processed into the system on the same day. In a second method, transfers are made through a notary public and the transfer is not registered with the state. Because in the TRNC, land transfer can still be made with special agreements made between the parties at the notary public. In this notary transfer, while the parties set the terms, the transferor party can have the phrase "sells and transfers to whomever he wishes" added to the contract.
The third and last method used in the transfer process in the TRNC is known as the "Declaration of Trust".
It is noted that while foreigners prefer this method in the transfer of goods, many properties are purchased with this method, and even disputes about these contracts are the subject of lawsuits in TRNC courts.
THE SYSTEM HAS VULNERABILITIES
Transfer methods carried out in the TRNC have a common feature. Accordingly, none of the contracts in the transfer process are recorded in the state's data bank. It is known that there is no effective e-government system in the TRNC, while these contracts are kept in the accountants of the relevant companies or in the safes of the companies.
For this reason, the contracts made at the notary and the “Declaration of Trust” are not recorded. For this reason, TRNC state officials claim that not much land is sold to foreigners by looking at the land registry records. However, the situation shows the opposite.
31,500 acres of land in the hands of foreigners
While it is not known exactly how many of the transfer agreements in the offspring belong to foreigners, the sources reached by the Milli Gazete provide remarkable information.
Accordingly, it is noted that it would be an optimistic attitude to say that only one third of the transfer agreements belong to foreigners. This thesis means that approximately 31,500 contracts are owned by foreigners.
Assuming that each contract is at least one acre in size, the fact that at least 31,500 acres of land is in the hands of foreigners emerges. This reveals the fact that 25 thousand acres of land, which our newspaper has been talking about for months, has been sold to foreigners.