Confusion in home sales - Reshat Akar.

After MIT's announcement that the sale of property to foreigners in northern Cyprus is under scrutiny, the topic has become a major issue in the North Cyprus parliament.

Foreign Affairs Minister Hakan Fidan said that since 2000 there have been around 200 applications to buyreal estate from Israeli citizens and he pointed out that they rank 12th among other foreigners.

Some newspapers then began to report allegations that land in northern Cyprus was being sold to Israeli citizens and that this posed a danger. The exact number is not known. Since real estate sales are conducted in three different ways, the North Cyprus government cannot answer these questions.

Minister of Interior'. 'Northern Cyprus' Dursun Oguz candidly admitted that he does not know the exact figure and responded to criticism regarding the sale of property to foreigners. According to Oguz, real estate sales to foreigners take place in three different ways:

• The first is that the government authorizes the purchase of no more than one acre of land or one residential unit for one person, and this sale is registered at the registry office. For this purpose, a security check is conducted on the buyer.
• Second, sales made on the basis of a contract between the buyer and the seller are registered at the registry office. In this case, no buyer security check is carried out.
• Third are sales contracts that are not''are registered at the registry office. It is alleged that the lands sold amount to more than one acre or one property, and no one knows exactly how much property was sold.

There is a desperate situation.

The issue is that unregistered property is "illegal" or should be penalized. Consequently, no one currently knows which country natives are buying real estate and how many of them.

According to statistics'. 'Ministry of Tourism, the number of Israeli citizens visiting North Cyprus this year is significantly lower than Iranian and Russian citizens. In the first 10 months of this year, 44,012 Russians, 35,764 Iranians, 21,221 Britons, 25,683 Germans and 14,416 Kazakhs arrived in NorthernCyprus.

In Kuznetsk in the north, 1,389 houses were sold to Israelis. The impressive number of Russian citizens who visited the island in the same period last year was 26,000, and this year it was more than 44,000. The split between Iranian visits last year and this year was 27,000 and over 35,000 respectively. The number of Israelis rose from 1,151 to 1,438.

What neighborhoods do people buyreal estate in? Such people prefer neighborhoods such as Ishkele,''exceed 20 billion euros.

Reşat Akar - journalist