A Famagusta practice built for international clients

Öztenay Law Firm was established in Famagusta in 2009 by Çağın Öztenay. It is a small practice by design, built around the kind of work that rewards continuity: property transactions, corporate structuring, disputes that end up in court, and the personal matters that follow families across borders.

How we work

Most of our instructions arrive at the point where a decision has already been half made — a property has been chosen, a deposit has been discussed, a company has been promised to a partner. The useful contribution a lawyer makes at that moment is not encouragement. It is finding out what is actually registered against the land, what the contract actually obliges the other side to do, and what happens if they do not do it.

So we start with searches and documents, not opinions. What we find goes to the client in writing, with the risks stated in plain language and separated from the things that merely feel risky. Where the answer is that the transaction is sound, we say so and get it done efficiently. Where it is not, we say that too, including when it means a client walks away from something they wanted.

Acting for clients who are not here

A large share of the firm's work is for people who live outside Northern Cyprus. They are committing significant sums in a jurisdiction whose language, courts and land registration system they have no reason to know, frequently on the recommendation of someone who is paid when the sale completes.

Working for those clients well means a few specific things. Advice in English and in writing. Independence from the seller's side of the transaction — we do not take introducer commissions from developers or agents whose sales we are checking. Costs agreed before work starts. And a willingness to explain the same point twice, because a client who does not understand their own transaction is not protected by it.

Northern Cyprus is a separate legal system

The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus has its own legislature, its own courts and its own Land Registry. Its private law derives largely from the English common law tradition inherited through colonial-era statutes, with substantial TRNC legislation layered on top. It is not the law of the Republic of Cyprus, it is not EU law, and it is not Turkish law.

This matters more than it sounds. A buyer who researches "Cyprus property law" online will find material that is accurate — and irrelevant to a plot in Famagusta. A lawyer admitted in the south cannot appear before TRNC courts. Advice obtained in London about a contract governed by TRNC law is worth precisely as much as the advisor's knowledge of TRNC law. Our legal guides exist largely to close that gap.

Regulation and professional standards

The firm's lawyers are advocates admitted in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus and members of the Northern Cyprus Bar Association, and practise subject to its rules on professional conduct, confidentiality and client money. Client information is treated as confidential without exception, and we run conflict checks before accepting any instruction.