Home Buyers Pressure Group
Thursday 13th August 2009
Interior Ministry: Hasan Islamoğlu. Settlement Undersecretary
Necibe Üstün, Legal Advisor
Ebru, Translator
HBPG Members: Mike Bezzant
Marian Stokes
Don Vango
This was the first official meeting between Undersecretary Hasan Islamoğlu and the Homebuyers Pressure Group, the previous two meetings with him being informal introduction meetings.
Hasan Islamoğlu commenced the meeting at 09:35 by welcoming us and presenting his business card.
At one of the previous introduction meetings Hasan informed us that he was not aware of any problems relating to buying property in North Cyprus and asked for a report on all our issues. A Turkish of the Property Investment in North Cyprus report was presented to him today, along with an Aga United Report in English (the Turkish version had previously been handed to Minister Ilkay Kamil’s assistant).
For over an hour an uncontrolled discussion ensued ranging from the Aga issues to mortgages to permission to purchase. Hasan made and received several telephone calls, some of them to attempt to find answers to our questions, i.e. names of the new Authorities and Department Managers. At one stage he called PTP Manager, Adnan Altin to the meeting to discuss progress with PTP’s. Adnan confirmed that they had approved over 700 applications within the past 22 days and would continue their efforts to clear the backlog of 3.500 applications as soon as possible.
A major discussion took place regarding the current project to complete the remaining14 houses on the Aga Hz Omer site in Çatalköy. The government personnel present considered that Tokatlioğlu Development should not have been granted the contract to complete without the government’s consent and without engaging a government certified engineer to oversee the work. It was also agreed that the official Hz Omer committee should have been involved as they are accepted by the government as the recognised representatives for all buyers on that site. No conclusions were reached.
One of the requests we made was for a law to be passed to force vendors to transfer title to buyers when they had received their permission to purchase. The response was that the government could not interfere in this matter as it is a contractual issue between seller and buyer and it would also be against vendors’ Human Rights.
We reluctantly agreed to give Hasan one month to study the overall problems / solutions report and one week to let us know if they agree in principle to the Aga United proposals.
The meeting concluded at 11:15.
Update 21 August 2009: Following a brief meeting with Hasan Islamoğlu he stated that, as the project was very complex, they would need a further month to investigate the report fully.
Read Property Investment in North Cyprus Report English Turkish