As a result of the Turkish military invasion and the continuing occupation: • Over 36.2% of the sovereign territory of the Republic of Cyprus continues to be under illegal military occupation by Turkey. • remain refugees in their own country, deprived to this day of the right to return to their homes and properties because of the occupying authorities. • By the end of 1975, the overwhelming majority of Turkish Cypriots who lived in areas controlled by the government of the Republic of Cyprus had been forced to abandon their homes and relocate to the occupied territory of the Republic of Cyprus as a result of Turkey’s coercive policy. • 746 people, both civilians and soldiers, remain missing, while the Turkish side refuses to cooperate fully in ascertaining their fate. • 20,000 Greek Cypriots and Maronites had chosen not to abandon their homes despite the Turkish occupation. Most of those who remained, mainly on the Karpas peninsula, have been gradually forced out of the area. • Today, the number of Greek Cypriots and Maronites living in this area has fallen sharply to just 300 persons. This is the result of ongoing harassment, restrictions on movement, denial of access to adequate health care, lack of sufficient educational facilities beyond basic education, as well as the limitations on the right to use their property and the right to freely practise their religion. It is a deliberate policy of ethnic cleansing designed to force the enclaved Greek Cypriots and Maronites to abandon their homes. • Since 1974, Turkey has been applying a systematic policy of settling the occupied part of Cyprus by the mass transfer of over 160 000 Turkish citizens from Turkey, with the aim of changing the demographic character and altering the population balance on the island. As a result, Turkish Cypriots are vastly outnumbered by troops and settlers from Turkey such that they are now a minority in the occupied territory. • In full accordance with Turkey’s declared goal of partition and national segregation on the island, on 15 November 1983, the occupying regime unilaterally declared the so-called “Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus”, an act that was condemned by the international community as legally invalid. In Resolutions 541 (1983) and 550 (1984), the United Nations Security Council deplored this declaration as legally invalid, called for its withdrawal, and urged all states to not recognise the purported entity created by secessionist actions and to not facilitate or in any way assist it. It should be noted that in the case of Loizidou v. Turkey, the European not recognise any state in Cyprus other than the Republic of Cyprus, that the so-called “TRNC” is not a state under international law, and that Turkey, due to the control it exercises over the occupied areas with the presence of more than 30.000 soldiers, is responsible for human rights violations. • The usurpation of Greek Cypriot properties continues through the illegal construction on Greek Cypriot land and the illegal sale of property owned by Greek Cypriots, who were forcibly expelled from their homes. • The combination of driving the Greek Cypriot inhabitants out of the region, the destruction of the cultural heritage, and the illegal change of geographical place-names in the occupied part of Cyprus, aims at the elimination of every single, centuries-old Greek and Christian eleregion. It also aims to change the balance of power and the social fabric in the occupied part of Cyprus, to ensure that the Turkish Cypriot leadership conforms to the policies of the Turkish government.
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