Occupied Lefkosia municipality to receive TL 90 million aid package from Turkish Ziraat Bankası
Turkish daily Today’s Zaman newspaper (27.11.12) reports that state-owned Ziraat Bankası is slated to provide a TL 90 million aid package to the cash-strapped occupied “Lefkosia municipality” in the occupied area of Cyprus, an agreement meant to solve a year-long payments dispute with “Lefkosia municipal workers”.
The dispute comes amid rising debts and a year-long strike by “city workers” that largely halted “public services” and led the local press to complain that the occupied part of Lefkosia is turned into a “trash city.” The agreement was reached over the weekend after a meeting between Ziraat Bankası General Manager Hüseyin Aydın and the self-styled finance minister of the breakaway regime Ersin Tatar in Ankara.
The TL 90 million loan is an adjustment to a previous agreement between the bank and the occupied “Lefkosia municipality” for a TL 50 million loan. The original number would “only pay the city’s outstanding debts,” Tatar said before the weekend meeting. “The loan we’re going to receive is our last chance,” he was quoted as saying by one Turkish daily. Tatar also told members of the press on Sunday that he hoped the new package — to be closely audited by Ziraat — would help the breakaway regime resume “municipal services” and pay salaries that have been in arrears for the last year.