Cyprus historic cooperative movements; a solution mechanism for land ownership conflicts in Paphos today

This paper investigates the re-appropriation of the term “territory”, a colonised term that indicated power and domination over an area, through the historical cooperative movements of Cyprus. The focus on the Paphos district as the case study was due to the large-scale Turkish Cypriot land ownership, which is the highest percentage on the island, the geomorphological terrain and fertile soil, which was mainly used for agricultural practices. The 1974 Turkish invasion and displacement of the Cypriots, resulting in the division of the island and the abandonment of their lands, I consider it to be interesting regarding the Paphos district, where a great number of Turkish Cypriot land can be found. Land ownership conflicts are directly connected to today’s reality, as land is one of the most valuable sources of power and production. Examining contestations and power dynamics in Paphos will provide valuable insights into the transitional design required for reimagining the ethnic “territory” as common and shared. “Territory” appears to have various meanings philosophically, culturally and in design, while the “commoning practices” connect with the Cyprus cooperative efforts, thus the common land ownership scope. The interrelations the inhabitants, the State, and the transformative nature of the “territory” and the realisation that the “territory” is so much more have with the Paphian land are investigated through 1858, 1946, 1963 and 1974, key historical moments that changed the trajectory of land ownership due to land privatisation and fragmentation. 1858, the Ottoman land code was established, and property was divided into private, state, community, ecclesiastic and inherited; in 1946, the legislation of immovable property was incorporated into the Cypriot legal framework, certain land categories were abolished, and private property was protected; in 1963, due to the inter-communal strife Turkish Cypriots representatives withdrew from the parliament; in 1974, the Turkish invasion occurred and the division of Cypriots was inevitable. The importance of the past is great thus, a thorough investigation of the collective-cooperative approaches that would shift the ownership in Paphos, an idea based on land privatisation, bicommunal collisions, population shifts and power conflicts. The collective movements are seen from 1883, the first effort of the establishment of the first agricultural bank, till 2004, when the Anan plan was proposed in a way as the means for the establishment of cooperative efforts. These approaches aimed for me, the re-conceptualisation of the idea of land ownership through common land. I hypothesise that the Community Land Trust (CLT) is the ideal solution mechanism that can be adopted by Cyprus’s legislation system as a collective effort for land use. The decision on the CLT mechanism is due to the similarities that I identify between the waqf category ideology, an Ottoman land category, and the framework of the Cypriot cooperative movements of spatial, agricultural, and cooperative banks. In which ways could Cypriot history contribute to the understanding and mitigation of land ownership conflicts in Paphos for the vision of common ground?