Ustel touts May for north’s judicial reform referendum

The north’s ‘prime minister’ Unal Ustel on Monday suggested that a referendum on a four-point judicial reform package could be held in the first week of May.

He made the suggestion to the Turkish Cypriot legislature, which will be required to vote with a two-thirds majority in favour of the plan for the referendum to go ahead.

As such, he will be reliant on votes from the opposition to have the bill for the referendum pass, given that his three-party ruling coalition consists of 29 of the north’s current 49 ‘MPs’.

A total of 18 of the 20 members of the opposition belong to the CTP, and the party’s deputy leader Erkut Sahali told the Cyprus Mail that given that the party had not been informed in advance of Ustel’s plans for a May referendum, it has not yet “evaluated” the matter or made a decision over whether it will support his plans.

The four-point plan for judicial reform was presented by supreme court chief justice Bertan Ozerdag and bar association chief Hasan Esendagli in December last year.

The first point would see the north’s supreme court expanded from its current configuration of eight judges to 11, with “specialised structures” within that 11-member body to be formed for the court’s various functions.

Those functions will include the civil, criminal, and family chambers, the supreme administrative court, and the court’s duties regarding elections and referenda and constitutional matters.

The second point entirely concerns administrative justice – the matter of the fairness and legality or otherwise of decisions made by public bodies – with Ozerdag and Esendagli pointing out that a backlog of around 800 case files in the field of administrative justice has accumulated at the supreme administrative court.

To combat this, they suggested the creation of district administrative courts in the north’s six administrative districts – Famagusta, Kyrenia, Lefka, Morphou, northern Nicosia, and Trikomo – to deal with what they described as “simpler administrative procedures”.

The existing supreme administrative court would then act as the appellate body for those wishing to appeal district administrative court decisions.

The plans state that the supreme court would only involve itself in “cases of a principle and precedent nature”, and that this state of affairs would mirror reforms carried out to the Republic of Cyprus’ judicial system in 2021 following European Union recommendations.

The fourth point states simply that the new courts of appeal and district administrative courts would have their roles codified in the ‘TRNC’s’ constitution and that this will “clarify the judicial hierarchy”.

The plans foresee that should the reforms be passed into law, a transition period between a year and two years would be required for them to fully take effect.

The Turkish Cypriots have held five referendums thus far in their history, with the first taking place in 1975 to ratify the constitution of the interim ‘Turkish federated state of Cyprus’, which was formed the year prior in the island’s north in the aftermath of Turkey’s invasion of the island.

That referendum passed with over 99 per cent support, and a decade later in 1985, the constitution of the ‘TRNC’ was ratified with 70 per cent of the vote in a similar referendum.

The next referendum did not take place until almost three decades later, with the Turkish Cypriots accepting the Annan plan to reunify Cyprus in 2004 by an almost two-thirds majority. However, over three quarters of Greek Cypriots voted against it, and as such, it was never implemented and the island remains divided.

Two further referendums have taken place since, with the Turkish Cypriot electorate twice rejecting planned amendments to the ‘TRNC’s’ constitution.

The first, in 2014, saw then Turkish Cypriot leader Dervish Eroglu propose 21 sweeping amendments, including mandatory wealth declarations for ‘MPs’, limitations on immunity for ‘MPs’, and new regulations regarding the function of the north’s courts. Almost two thirds of the electorate rejected the plan.

Six years later, the Turkish Cypriot electorate was invited to ratify plans to expand the north’s supreme court to 16 judges. That referendum took place on the same day as the 2020 Turkish Cypriot leadership election’s first round and failed by just 283 votes.