'The Property Issue in the Cyprus Conflict' Greek Cypriot Focus Groups

1. 'The Property Issue in the Cyprus Conflict'Greek Cypriot Focus Groups

2. Fatigue about the past • Cynicism about the peace process • Division between refugees and non-refugees

3. Return to property • 'In the face of their politeness, you get shocked. I went expecting war, you know, expecting that there would be problems, and they were so welcoming. At that point you start thinking, “ok, my family are refugees, but so is this [Turkish Cypriot] family”. So there are two sides of the coin' – Larnaca, first generation, child when left. • 'It was a strange experience. I felt like I was in Turkey. I felt sick because everything was so broken down.' - Larnaca, second generation • 'We remembered a mountain, and when we went back, we found a hill.' - Larnaca, first generation

4. 'Did going back affect your vision of the future?' • The more times people go over, the less emotional they are about the act of 'returning', but the more frustrated they get with the lack of solution. • The opening of the checkpoints was the most important event that altered people's perspective of the likelihood and desirability of return. It made people feel less likely to return. • Though the majority of refugees have returned to their houses, not all have: • 'I haven't yet been back. I cannot. My house is in barbed wire. I think I'll have a heart attack if I go back to see it. They don't let you go into that area. I prefer to keep it as I remember it, and I don't want to go. I can't go and return in two hours.' - Lemesos, first generation

5. 'The insane nature of the negotiations, the arrogance of the negotiators, four decades of talking about nothing makes me so angry. I go over there [north] and I see how life has gone on, and I get so angry at the Greek Cypriots – they have this attitude that it's everything or nothing, and I really think we're going to get nothing in the end. We don't know the word compromise. I also get frustrated with the Turkish Cypriots, because there are some things they can do to give the Greek Cypriots confidence' – Nicosia, second generation refugee • 'I don't cross as much as I used to. I feel no attachment to the place. In the first years that the checkpoints opened, I went three times, four times a week, but now...I feel there is no reason for me to go' - Nicosia, second generation refugee • 'My perspective is more positive. I know what is on the other side, I know the people, I know what to expect. The opening of the checkpoints made me more comfortable with the idea of unification.' - Larnaca, second generation refugee

6. 'The person living in my house was a refugee. He told me that one of his children was born in the same hospital in Lemesos that my daughter was born. That man has a family, he has children who were raised in that house. I lived four years in my house. They have lived thirty years in that house. They were raised there, they married there, they have families there and grandchildren. Situations have changed. I don't feel that they are the enemy. They also had to leave, they also lived nightmares. Their children are not to blame, just like our children are not to blame. Their roots are there now, and the point is where do you take those people? Why? They have rights too.' - Lemesos, first generation

7. ‘One day, the second or third time I came back, I wanted to cut oranges from one of my trees, so I stopped on the side of the road to cut them. I had my hands full of oranges, and at that time a Turkish Cypriot Landrover pulled over next to me. You know, at that point one gets really defensive. He smiled at me, I smiled at him and went towards him. I said to him “this is mine”, and he replied “yes, cut them.” And I replied “you’re giving me permission to cut from my own trees?” One gets aggressive. I said to him “you’re not looking after the property property, it’s running down”. He replied that he was not a farmer by trade, that he was a musician. That they brought him over in 1974 to fight, and he decided to stay, so they gave him that land. I invited him over for lunch, and he said he couldn’t cross, we wouldn’t let him, because he wasn’t Turkish Cypriot, he was Turkish. But at that point you know, you get upset about this whole situation. I was impolite...’ - Lemesos, first generation

8. How did the war affect you? • ‘It affected my parents and others I know, their way of thinking. They didn’t progress over here because they were stuck in their heads over there. They didn’t buy land here because they thought “why? We have so much land over there”. They didn’t try to progress in their careers because they viewed them as temporary. It holds you back. And it eats you. Refugees feel bitterness not only at the Turks but especially at the non-Greek Cypriot refugees, because they had the freedom to continue to build their lives, sell their property, not suffer, not start from the beginning again, and because the refugees felt they had no understanding from the non-refugees.' - Larnaca, second generation

9. Compensation or return? • Order of preference is almost always restitution, compensation, exchange • Concern expressed at the complexity of things like exchange. Also concerns expressed about how connections are important in Cyprus, and there is the risk that things won't be fairly done • Whether property will be under GC administration or TC administration is important factor in decision • Very few people say they would go back if their property is under TC administration

10. IPC • Many myths, many concerns • 'It's not fair, it's too controversial, it's not transparent'

11. What do you need to return? • To be under GC administration • 'I would not go and live in my house in the case of a solution if were surrounded by an army base, or in a Turkish Cypriot administered area. If they gave me 100% of property value, I would sell. I wouldn't move over. I would feel afraid.' - Larnaca, first generation • 'It is impossible for us to return. Our lives are here now. The problems that we will face will be different. How will I go and live alone in Varossi?' - Lemesos, first generation • Security – to feel safe • Local police force are GC • Withdrawal of Turkish army

12. Where is home for you? • 'I feel that I am a Varosiotis, but if you live in another city for 20 years, regardless of the reason you move there, war or no war, you don't get up and move back so easily. You have your circle, you have your schools, your children, your work, your life. I could go and live in Varossi, but it would be a huge process before that could happen.' - Larnaca, first generation • ‘How can we feel that our home is here when we live in Turkish houses?’ - Paphos, first generation • ‘My wife and I want to go back if we have the choice. But we understand that this would be a very complicated thing, and it would not be like the past. We know that. But that place is home for us.’ - Lemesos, first generation

13. Messages for GC negotiating team • Explanation of how property issue is going to be treated, and clear explanation of how compensation/return/exchange is likely to work, and what the options are. • 'If you put real estate agents to sort out the property issue instead of lawyers, we'd have the problem solved easily.' - Nicosia first generation • The information blackout is damaging. People feel like a group of elites are discussing the future of the island on their behalf, with no consultation. • People uniformly express extreme disappointment and cynicism with the negotiating process. They are sick of the conflict's existence. They don't want to engage any more in the process. • 'Why 37 years? Why so many years to solve this problem? Have they been necessary? It should have been solved in the first years. We lost our whole lives here, waiting, waiting, being told that we would go back soon.' - Lemesos, first generation • Constant reiteration that there needs to be more communication between the negotiating teams and the public.

14. Not enough discussion between the negotiating teams and the refugees – they don't always want to go via representatives of refugee organisations because those representatives don't necessarily represent refugee interests, but rather political lines. • 'We cannot by pass the political background of the representative, so what we want is never really heard.' - Larnaca, second generation • 'They need to get people's opinions; it's not a political or party issue. They need to consider the national interest objectively, everyone's perspective.' - Lemesos, first generation • 'Where are they getting their feedback from at the moment? From the party, from the organisations, and from the parliamentarians. The parliamentarians belong to the parties, the organisations belong to the parties. So ultimately they take the opinions and the perspectives of the party. There is no independence of opinion. We are not independent. We need to put political interests and the right/left division aside so that we can solve this problem [the Cyprus conflict].' - Larnaca, second generation • Much resentment expressed about high levels of non-refugees who voted against the Annan plan.

15. 'When we were 18 or 19, we were just opening our wings to fly, and we had a whole life ahead of us in a city that was so developed, so beautiful, where we had no idea that this was going to happen: it came, it threw our lives in the air and our lives were stolen because all of a sudden we inherited this weight, this enormous weight of 'is it going to be solved? Is it not going to be solved? What is going to happen? Are we going to go back? Are we going to live those lives again? I don't stop imaging that I'm going back to my house and I think “how will I go? Which road shall I take? Will I find the roads again, after all these years? How will my house be? And I see this dream over and over and over and I wake up, and to bring my mind back to the present much time passes and I feel this deep bitterness because I think how is it possible that they haven't found a solution in all of these years to the problem so that each person can go home, so that everyone, Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots, can feel like this is resolved. No compensation and no solution can give us this back. I want a solution. I am prepared to compromise and to share and to not have everything that we want in order to come to a resolution of this problem, but no one can give me back what I lost.' - Lemesos, first generation