Cyprus at the European Court of Human Rights – A Critical Appraisal of the Court’s Jurisprudence on the Rights to Property and Home in the Context of Displacement

The authors grapple with questions raised by the Court’s reversal in its approach to the violations of the rights to home and property of Cypriot displaced persons resulting from the Turkish occupation of northern Cyprus. In the 4th interstate application of Cyprus v. Turkey, the Court found Turkey in violation of the rights to home and property of hundreds of thousands of Greek Cypriot internally displaced persons resulting from the invasion and occupation of northern Cyprus. Such findings were also firmly established in a handful of individual applications, most prominent amongst which is the landmark case Loizidou v. Turkey. However, a couple of decades following these judgments the findings of violations were jettisoned by the inadmissibility decision in Demopoulos and others v. Turkey.