‘Govt will try to purchase abandoned CTA office’
THE government will attempt to buy an abandoned office block in Lefkoşa that was once the headquarters of the defunct Cyprus Turkish Airlines (CTA) in a bid to prevent it being sold below market rate, Finance Minister Serdar Denktaş said on Tuesday.
He made the comments after a second auction for the site, to help pay off outstanding debts following the collapse of CTA in 2010, failed to attract any bidders. Arriving at the end of the auction’s allotted time, Mr Denktaş announced that he was “trying to establish what CTA owed” and would then seek a court order that would allow the state to “assume all the debts and become the owner of the building”.
He said there was “no need” to lower the asking price any further and added that he hoped to announce the result of his efforts “in a week or two”.
Mr Denktaş said that he had asked for more time from Olgun Yetişmiş, the recently appointed Official Property Officer and Registration Department director, who was in charge of Tuesday’s auction.
Mr Denktaş appeared at the auction to hear the end of a speech by Hava-Sen airline workers’ trade union leader Buran Atakan, who criticised the minister for failing to attend a previous auction on April 30.
“In his statement on April 30, Mr Denktaş had said he was going to be here next time [on Tuesday]. We are saddened that he did not meet our expectation,” Mr Atakan said before Mr Denktaş’s lastminute arrival.
CTA lawyer Feyzi Hansel reminded those present that the airline had been “liquidated” in 2010 following a ruling by Lefkoşa District Court and that “lots had been done in this process” and that “now it was the turn of the building to be sold off”.
CTA was set up on December 4, 1974, with ownership split between North Cyprus and Turkey. In 2005, the TRNC government acquired all of the shares in the airline, which employed around 640 people in North Cyprus, Turkey and in the UK at the time of its collapse.