Individual rights or communal rights

A process of intentional deception is underway. Everyone is indeed pretty aware that there is no Cyprus deal in the pipeline as long as Greek Cypriots maintain their "all mine and only mine" obsession, but there is still talk about a resolution in March, April, May or at the latest by the end of the year.

The discussion nowadays is that time is running out for a Cyprus deal before the summer. Even if a deal was to be completed soon, there would not be much time to explain it to the peoples of the two constituent states of the prospective federation. Furthermore, with the looming May parliamentary elections on the Greek Cypriot side, the process might be held hostage altogether by petty local political propaganda anyhow. Thus, gradually the international army of Cyprus peace brokers started pinning their hopes on a resolution later, in September or so.

The optimistic assessment shared by the Turkish Cypriot leadership - and partly by the political power holders in Ankara - is that the two sides have achieved some concrete headway in the governance and power sharing, economy and EU affairs chapters, while the thorny property issue remains a pain in the neck. Still, according to these optimistic assessors, the ground covered so far in the property heading was so substantive that there might be a deal "within a month or so." 

How could this "home attachment" of the current and previous property owners be resolved? How could the reinstitution of property rights and bi-zonality and bi-communality principles be respected in view of the fact that some 85 percent of the current "residential properties" of the north used to belong to Greek Cypriots? Or, if the compensation option was to be agreed upon, would donors provide the 18-25 billion euros...