Turkey has hidden murderers before. This is nothing new. It did so because they were acting on its orders. And it didn’t just shield them: it rewarded them, politically and financially. Rolled out the red carpet so they could build political careers in the occupied north.
The barbaric murders of Tasos Isaak and Solomos Solomou, in August 1996, thirty years ago now, don’t need painstaking investigation or witness testimony. They happened in full view of the world. On camera, live on television, captured in photograph after photograph that bear witness to the crime. The footage showed the savagery, and it showed the men who committed it. That’s precisely why 13 warrants were issued by the Republic of Cyprus, and 10 international ones on top. Not a single arrest. That tells you everything: these men have a powerful protector, or the Republic of Cyprus simply failed to do what was needed.
Ankara, plainly, has no intention of giving them up. Not out of loyalty. Out of calculation, to send the message that Turkey can commit crimes and walk away untouched. It never paid for the great crime of 1974 either, after all.
To keep its killers close, Turkey tied them down with appointments, so they could serve, politically too, the breakaway entity in the occupied north. It opened doors for them in business as well. Murderers, politicians, businessmen, all rolled into one.
That’s why they think they’re entitled to everything. Aggressive, yes, but cowards underneath. They won’t own the crime. None of them, they insist, was even in Deryneia that day. Every one of them was somewhere else, apparently. So how do they explain the evidence that identifies them? They say nothing. Because they’re afraid. And because Ankara told them to.
The so-called “minister of public works and transport,” Erhan Arikli, himself wanted under an international arrest warrant, reacted to the President’s announcement that there would be movement on the wanted men, and in doing so confirmed exactly what he is: a loudmouth with no backbone. In a social media post, he claimed the Greek Cypriot side was “digging it all up again.”
He didn’t stop at the President. He turned on Turkish Cypriots who dare object too, hurling abuse and threats their way, calling them “bastards.” And it’s no secret that settler Erhan Arikli, alongside his “political career,” has been quietly lining his pockets with stolen Greek Cypriot land. The evidence is there, laid out by the Movement of Ecologists, Citizens’ Cooperation, back in August 2024. His family business was named among 24 entities said to have seized Greek Cypriot property in the occupied north. Worth remembering, too: Arikli was arrested at an airport in Kyrgyzstan in 2012 under an international warrant, and released after Turkish intervention.
Bravado is usually just cowardice in disguise. These killers hide. They’re covered for. They walk free. They get rewarded. The Republic of Cyprus says it has set fresh action in motion to bring them in.
Issuing warrants clearly isn’t enough. They have to be enforced. The Republic of Cyprus cannot let these killers off the hook, not for a moment. It has to be on their heels every step of the way, ready to arrest and try them the second the chance comes.
The same must go for those who seized Greek Cypriot property in the occupied north. Time does not launder illegality. Restoring the rule of law is not an obstacle to a settlement: it’s the opposite. If a solution means restoring justice, then every act of illegality has to be undone, every crime punished. That’s the only way forward.
Behind the killers of Tasos and Solomos stands Turkey. The European Court of Human Rights confirmed as much in its 2008 rulings in Isaak v. Turkey and Solomou v. Turkey, finding Turkey responsible under Article 2 (right to life) for both killings. And us? We must not let the killers off the hook.
