‘LOBBY UK MPs FOR FLIGHTS RULE CHANGE’
OVER 50 BRITISH MPs ‘POSITIVE’ ABOUT CAMPAIGN TO END DISEMBARKATION OF PASSENGERS FROM ERCAN AIRPORT
OVER 50 British MPs have responded “positively” to a new campaign calling on passengers travelling between North Cyprus and the UK to be allowed to stay on the plane when transiting through Turkey.
The figure was revealed exclusively to Cyprus Today by UKbased Turkish Cypriot activist Sonya Karafistan, as part of a new lobbying effort that has the ultimate goal of establishing direct flights.
Ms Karafistan said that so far 250 letters “requesting the UK requirement for disembarkation and security screening in Turkey for flights between the UK and the TRNC” to be lifted have been sent to 125 MPs as part of the “Direct Flights to North Cyprus” (DFNC) campaign.
Prior to June 2017, people travelling between Ercan airport and the UK via Turkey were allowed to wait on the plane during the “touchdown” in Turkey before continuing their journey.
That practice was brought to an end, however, after British transport chiefs said that passengers must disembark so that they and their luggage can go through additional security checks in Turkey. At the time UK ministers cited a “genuine terrorist threat” as the reason for the change in policy.
Petitions to the UK Parliament and government calling for direct flights have been flatly rejected.
The recipients of the latest letters on the North Cyprus flights issue include Transport Secretary Grant Shapps, Health Secretary Matt Hancock, former Prime Minister Theresa May, Home Secretary Priti Patel, former Conservative party leader Iain Duncan Smith, and Europe Minister Wendy Morton.
The letters can be sent via the website www.dfncyprus.co.uk where supporters are asked to fill in their name, email, first line of their address and UK postcode, to produce an automatically generated letter that can then be emailed to their MP.
The letters call on MPs to help their constituents “on a matter which is causing enormous inconvenience and cost to tens of thousands of British Citizens, expats and travellers to Northern Cyprus each year”.
The letter adds that “aircraft leaving the UK are not permitted to fly directly and land” at Ercan airport and that “since 1984 this difficulty had been accommodated through the ‘touchdown’ of flights in Turkey” before the UK government’s 2017 decision.
“In practice, this has meant that travellers from the UK to the TRNC are required to leave the aircraft with all their personal belongings, pass through additional security, and reboard another aircraft, very often a great distance away from the point of disembarkation,” the letter states.
“Disembarkation gates used to be typically 200-300 metres from security screening checkpoints and transit gates (in Turkey).
“However, with the opening of the new international airport in Istanbul — this is now one of the largest airports in the world — and with the pandemic and mixing of passengers this is most undesirable.”
One politician who has responded positively to the campaign is Labour’s Kate Osamor, the MP for Edmonton in north London.
In a move that will likely infuriate UK-based Greek Cypriot lobby groups, Ms Osamor has been sending written replies to her constituents stating that “it’s clear that the measures imposed by the UK government on flights to the TRNC are excessive”.
“The costs of imposing such disruption on those travelling to TRNC is clear and particularly difficult for the significant Cypriot community in the UK,” she said in a letter seen by this newspaper.
“I do not believe that the UK Government is taking these costs into account and ensuring that they consider the welfare of those travelling to the
TRNC in imposing the current security arrangements . . .
“The UK must take a practical approach to this issue, putting the welfare of the communities impacted by the lack of direct flights first.
“This is not an issue that should be used as a political football. I support the commencement of direct flights to Northern Cyprus and will raise this issue in Parliament when possible.”
However, Ms Karafistan pointed out, other MPs have been “blocked” from receiving letters because of their support for the National Federation of Cypriots in the UK, a group “purporting to represent UK ‘Cypriots’ with no Turkish Cypriot representation” and which “actively campaigns against the lifting of crippling embargoes on Turkish Cypriots”.
Anyone trying to send a letter to a blacklisted MP via the DFNC website is met with a message saying that their letter “isn’t being sent to MPs who have actively campaigned against Turkish Cypriot rights”.
Those “excluded” include former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, Sir Roger Gale, Theresa Villiers, Mike Freer, Fabian Hamilton, Bambos Charalambous, Feryal Clark, and Catherine West.
Ms Karafistan said “four different very diplomatic, experienced people worked on” the text of the letter being sent to MPs.
She urged people in the TRNC to encourage their relatives in the UK to lobby their MPs via the website.
“What has become evident from MPs’ responses is that the TRNC government must formally request a re-inspection and all of the necessary security arrangements and improvements should be made well in advance of an inspection . . . without that part of the equation nothing can change,” she said.
“Some of my relatives, first generations, very old and some disabled, find it really hard to travel like this.”
Ms Karafistan pointed out that during the first wave of Covid-19 German nationals stranded in the TRNC were allowed to fly back to their country on repatriation flights with a “touchdown” in Turkey. When a similar solution was offered to the UK government last year, they refused, she said.
Ms Karafistan said that she is working for the DFNC cause because of the normalisation of “microagression and microracism towards Turkish Cypriots in the UK” that “we have to change in any way that we can.”
She added that she “fully expects” Greek Cypriot lobbyists to launch a counter-campaign.