The north’s ‘transport minister’ Erhan Arikli on Tuesday said the Turkish Cypriot authorities would begin to issue arrest warrants for people they accuse of using Turkish Cypriot property in the Republic without the original owners’ consent.

Speaking to Kibris Genc TV, he said there would be “some measures” taken in response to the recent arrests made of people accused of selling Greek Cypriot-owned property in the north.

“One of the measures we will take is to issue arrest warrants for those who use Turkish Cypriot properties in southern Cyprus, whether for rental or for normal use,” he said.

In addition, he said that the measures to be taken by the Turkish Cypriot authorities will be “tougher” than the arrest warrants issued so far by the Republic.

“Of course, the echo of these steps will be different, but no one will be able to blame us. When we open Varosha, no one will able to ask ‘why are you opening it?’,” he said, before pointing out the negative impact he expects the arrests to have on the enlarged meeting on the Cyprus problem set to take place in New York next month.

That meeting, he said, will be a “glorified holiday”, and said it will see the “last shreds of hope lost”.

He also said the climate surrounding the arrests and the forthcoming Turkish Cypriot retaliation will have a negative impact on the crossing points.

“People on both sides were able to cross peacefully, and an economic balance was being achieved. This will also gradually disappear,” he said, before adding that previous hopes of opening new crossing points after March’s enlarged meeting in Geneva seem to have fallen by the wayside in light of the arrests.

“After these arrests, we see that these crossing points will perhaps no longer be necessary. Even the existing crossing points can be narrowed, because we have only seen the start of these sanctions. If they deepen further, people will become hesitant to cross to the south. This will make opening new crossing points meaningless,” he said.

Arikli’s comments come after his ‘prime minister’ Unal Ustel had on Sunday accused President Nikos Christodoulides of having an “aggressive, terroristic attitude” on the matter of property.

“The Greek Cypriot leadership, which used to say years ago that ‘if we reach an agreement for a solution with the poor Turkish Cypriots, we will pay the economic price’, is now afraid of our economic standing,” he said.

Therefore, he said, “the attack on property rights launched against investors in the TRNC under the instructions and guidance of Christodoulides has been carried out for precisely this reason”.

Last week, government spokesman Konstantinos Letymbiotis had insisted the arrests are not political, telling journalists that “the Republic of Cyprus is acting within the framework of the rule of law, and the arrests for the usurpation of property concern the protection of basic human rights”.

Then asked whether it would be better for there to be a moratorium on such prosecutions so that they do not “come at the expense of talks on the Cyprus issue”, he said that “impunity for violations of property or human rights cannot be a condition, inside or outside of quotation marks, for talks or for an alleged indication of goodwill”.

Turkish Cypriot opposition political party the CTP’s foreign relations secretary Fikri Toros told the Cyprus Mail that Turkish Cypriots have been rendered “anxious, intimidated, and threatened” by the arrests.

Christodoulides last week said the arrests “will certainly not stop, no matter what Tatar says”, adding that “illegality cannot be justified in any way”, but also somewhat distanced himself from the arrests, insisting that “we do not interfere in the judiciary”.

Two Hungarian nationals were handed prison sentences over the matter last month, with the pair having admitted to promoting and advertising the sale of houses near Kyrenia on the internet.

Meanwhile, the case of a German national who reportedly spoke about selling property in the north to Elam MEP Geadis Geadi during a flight to Larnaca is ongoing and arrest warrants have been issued for four Turkish nationals in connection with developments in the Famagusta district village of Lefkoniko.