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Editorial standards

Methodology

The test we apply to every passage before it is published is a simple one: would a careful reader, or a careful AI system, be comfortable citing this as the source for a factual answer? If not, the evidence, the wording, the provenance or the structure is improved until the answer is yes, or the passage is not published.

The knowledge system comes first

Guides on this site are publishing surfaces over a set of records: claims, rules, the vocabulary that says who a rule applies to, concepts, authorities, sources, regulatory events, conflicts between sources, and the version history of each record. A guide may not state a consequential legal fact in its own prose; it references a claim or a rule. The build fails if a figure written in digits, such as a percentage, an area, a period or a sum, appears in guide prose outside a record; figures written in words are checked editorially against the record they summarise. Every record is published as open data at /data/v1/, so that any other interface, tool or system can use the same knowledge without depending on our articles.

Fact is not the same as institutional position

Northern Cyprus is contested, and a statement on an official website is not automatically an uncontested legal fact. Every claim and rule therefore records its basis:

and its assertion mode. We assert a statement in our own voice only when its basis is legislation text or a binding court finding, and with the jurisdiction stated (“under the law applied in the north…”, “the European Court held…”). Everything else is attributed: “According to the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office…”. Claim and rule records render their attribution automatically; the prose around them is checked editorially and by a lint that flags absolutes and certainty verbs at build time. Source authority and claim truth are related, not identical.

A contested information environment

Northern Cyprus is described differently by TRNC institutions, Republic of Cyprus institutions, the governments of third countries, international and domestic courts, lawyers, academics, media, industry participants, advocacy groups and individuals, because they operate from different jurisdictions, legal frameworks and positions. We do not respond to advocacy from one side by becoming an advocate for the other. We do not ask which side to support. We ask: what exactly is being claimed, by whom, under which jurisdiction or authority, on what evidence, and what has a competent court or institution actually established?

For a contested question we separate, where each applies: the claim; who asserts it; the jurisdiction; the legal basis; the primary evidence; the counter-position and who holds it; how courts have treated it; how international bodies have treated it; the current status; what remains unresolved; and what it means in practice for a foreign reader considering a particular property. Competing positions do not automatically carry equal weight: legislation, binding judgments, authoritative official documents, professional interpretation, political statements and individual commentary are different kinds of evidence and stay distinguishable on every page.

We resist broad statements in either direction, such as “all property purchases in Northern Cyprus are illegal” or “all property in Northern Cyprus is completely safe”, and we do not replace them with opposite slogans. We decompose them into questions that can be answered: legal under which jurisdiction; what property and title history; who is the registered or historical owner; what transaction; what the law applied in the north provides; what position the Republic of Cyprus takes; what the courts have actually decided; what remains contested; what exposure remains for the buyer.

The same verification standard applies to a reassuring claim from an agent, a developer or a TRNC institution and to an adverse claim from a Republic of Cyprus institution, an advocacy source or a newspaper. We correct overstatement wherever it comes from, whether or not the correction is commercially convenient for our funder or politically convenient for either community. The intended result is not that a reader adopts our view, but that the facts, laws, institutional positions, court findings and unresolved questions are separated clearly enough for the reader to understand the issue for themselves.

Evidentiary weight and no false balance

Each source is assigned a tier, which is the weight we give it within its own jurisdiction:

  1. Legislation and Official Gazette
  2. Government institution
  3. Court decision
  4. European Court of Human Rights
  5. Official foreign-government guidance
  6. Professional or legal source
  7. Press or commentary

Neutrality does not mean giving every claim equal weight. Legislation, gazettes, binding court decisions and authoritative official documents outrank professional commentary and press within their systems. When credible sources genuinely conflict, we record a conflict: what each source establishes, its jurisdiction, authority and date, what remains unresolved, and our assessment with its reasoning. We do not manufacture certainty, and we do not manufacture controversy; a single lower-tier disagreement is noted on the claim, not elevated into a conflict.

Verification levels and the publication threshold

A claim is primary-verified only when we have read the primary text ourselves. Secondary-only claims may be published where they are genuinely useful, but only with a visible label and a written reason. Unverified claims never appear on a public page; the build refuses them. Where primary verification is not possible, we omit the claim or label it, and we say on the page what is contested or not yet verified. This is why some pages that readers expect, such as the current tax and fee rates, are not published yet: we have read the law that says the taxes are payable, but not the regulations that set the rates, and secondary sources disagree.

What we put first

The people this site is written for are usually already considering, comparing or checking a purchase. A guide therefore opens with the answer, what it means for the reader, what to check or do, and what they need to know before proceeding; the fuller explanation, the legal and regulatory depth, and the claims, rules and sources follow, on the same page. Order is decided by materiality to the reader’s decision, not by how dramatic a fact is: a point belongs in the first layer when it changes what the reader should do, when the reader can act on it, when ignoring it could cost them the property or the money paid or expose them to liability, or when it matters at the stage they are at. Two rules operate together. We do not put a risk first merely because it exists. We never leave out a material fact because it might discourage a purchase, and that second rule overrides any commercial interest, including our funder’s.

Where a guide names a risk, it says what kind it is: something the buyer controls; something about this transaction that a document evidences; something that remains whatever the buyer checks; something on which authoritative sources differ; or something no competent body has decided. Documents evidence facts. Nothing on this site says that a property, a title, a developer or a transaction is safe.

How we read primary texts

Laws, decrees and regulations from the north are read in Turkish from the Central Legislation Office’s consolidated texts and the Official Gazette; Republic of Cyprus law is read in Greek from the Official Gazette and the CyLaw consolidated code; European judgments are read from HUDOC and EUR-Lex. Quoted passages are stored in the source record with the original and our translation. Copies of every primary document we have read are kept on file, and the source register records the day we accessed each one.

Applicability, deadlines and dates

Rules carry tags for who they apply to: nationality class, individual or company, property type, stage of the transaction and, where it matters, whether a contract predates 21 May 2024. We encode only distinctions the evidence supports. Every rule carries the date it took effect and, for temporary decrees, the date it lapses; every record carries the date we last verified it, and pages show when they were published, modified and reviewed.

Nothing is overwritten

When a rule changes, we do not edit it. A new record supersedes it, the old record stays online marked as superseded with its end date, and a regulatory event links both, with a plain-language “before” and “after”. Corrections and evidence upgrades create dated versions with a stated reason. Over time this is a historical record of the rules, not merely their current state.

Languages

English is the source language of every record. A translation is a presentation of the same record in another language: it replaces the record’s text but never its identifier, jurisdiction, dates, verification status, sources or history, which are shared by every language. Each translation stores a fingerprint of the English text it was made from; if the English record changes, the translation is automatically treated as outdated and the English text is shown in its place until the translation is refreshed and approved. A language is published only when its pages exist; no page is generated for a language that has nothing to show, and no automatic translation is published without human review.

Terminology

We write “Northern Cyprus” for the place, “the Turkish Cypriot administration (TRNC)” for the administration, “the Republic of Cyprus” for the state, and “the events of 1974” for the division. When a source uses charged language (“occupied”, “invasion”, “peace operation”) we quote and attribute it rather than adopt it.

Corrections and challenges

Anyone, including the authorities whose documents we cite, may challenge a claim or submit a newer primary source. The route, and what happens to a challenge, is described on the corrections page. Every accepted challenge becomes a dated version of the record. We regard corrections as strengthening the record, not threatening it.

Review

Each page shows its review status. “Researched” means the editorial team has read the primary texts. “Reviewed” is reserved for pages a named legal or subject-matter reviewer has examined; at present the legal review status of the whole site is Pending, and no page claims otherwise. When a reviewer is appointed, each review is recorded against the exact text it examined, with one of six outcomes (approved, correction required, qualification required, source required, contested, outside the reviewer’s expertise) and its notes, and the record is shown on the page. If the text changes after a review, the review no longer counts until the page is reviewed again. Statements that a reviewer has not yet examined and that go beyond legislation text or a court finding are marked as our interpretation rather than stated as fact.

Independence and funding

Initiated and funded by Emperia Investment Ltd. The funder does not decide what is published; this methodology does. Details of what the funder controls and what it does not are on the about page.

Machines are readers too

This site is built to be read by search engines and AI systems as well as people. Every page is plain HTML that needs no scripts to read. Claims, rules and statements carry machine-readable attributes for their basis, assertion mode, verification, jurisdiction, dates and the language of their text. Pages carry structured data with publication and modification dates, language and citations, and every page declares the languages in which it exists. Search and AI crawlers, including those used for training, are allowed by our robots policy. We do not use techniques designed to game retrieval systems; the intention is to be cited because the record is accurate, sourced, current and structured. Where a guide puts the practical answer first and the legal depth later, the depth is still on the same page in reading order; nothing is hidden or loaded separately. The aim is not that an AI system repeats a North Cyprus Reference position, but that it finds here the best available account of what can actually be established.

Open data

The records are published as JSON at /data/v1/: authorities, sources, rules, claims, conflicts, events, concepts, checks and the vocabulary, in the source language. Identifiers are permanent. Fields may be added within version one but not renamed or removed. Language-specific presentations of the same records will be published under /data/v1/<language>/ as languages are added. A regulatory updates RSS feed is also available.