Landslide win for pro-EU Turkish Cypriot candidate raises hopes for peace | Cyprus

Turkish Cypriots gave pro-European leftist leader Tufan Erhürman a major victory in the presidential poll, which is likely to add new strength to the deadlocked peace process in Cyprus.

Erhürman, 55, who campaigned to revive stalled UN-brokered talks to reunify the island, defeated incumbent nationalist Ersin Tatar by more than 30 percent; It was a landslide victory that surprised even his most ardent supporters.

Tatar, whose five-year term was dominated by the slogan of “two-state solution” to the Cyprus problem, received 35.8 percent of the votes, while his opponent received 62.8 percent. Unlike the moderate Erhürman, the far-right nationalist was openly supported by Ankara.

News of the result was greeted with jubilant scenes in the Turkish-occupied north. Analysts described the election victory as a potential game changer on an island that has been ethnically divided between Greeks in the south and Turks in the north for more than 50 years of international recognition.

“His win gives hope for peace in Cyprus,” former MP Niyazi Kızılyürek said on Sunday. “Supporters say they expect real change in daily life, starting with confidence-building measures, and everyone expects he will want to restart negotiations based on UN resolutions very soon.”

He told the Guardian that the result would be a “test” for Greek Cypriots. “Everything is easy when the other side does not want to talk, as was the case with the Tatars. Now they will have to respond to a charismatic Turkish Cypriot leader who wants to sit down and negotiate.”

UN-brokered talks to reunify Cyprus have been at a standstill since they broke down spectacularly in the Swiss mountain town of Crans-Montana eight years ago; this was the longest break ever in the peace process.

Polls showed a neck-and-neck race between the election’s two main candidates.

The scale of Erhürman’s victory showed that strictly secular Turkish Cypriots were fed up with the isolationist policies that had brought the region increasingly into line with the Islamist leadership of the ruling AKP party in Ankara, and also wanted a shift towards Europe. The community has long complained about the erosion of its identity under the influence of Türkiye, the only country that recognizes the breakaway republic.

“Those who support Erhürman see themselves not as Turkish Cypriots, but as an autonomous ethno-political community, and they want it to remain that way,” said Kızılyürek, adding that the children of Turkish settlers born in the north are particularly horrified by what they perceive as Türkiye’s “anti-democratic turn” in recent years.

“They largely voted for Erhürman because they wanted their future to be in the European Union,” he said.

Cyprus has been divided since 1974, when a coup aimed at unification with Greece – engineered by the military junta then in power in Athens – prompted Türkiye to invade and seize the northern third of the island. Since then, some 45,000 Turkish troops have been deployed to the north of the mainland.

In 1983, the region unilaterally declared independence, but the failure to reach a solution resulted in decades of international isolation.

Although Cyprus, the EU’s easternmost state, joined the bloc in 2004, the benefits of membership only apply in the south and will not extend to the entire island until reunification.

Law professor Erhürman has long promised to find a federal solution, supported by the international community, in which Greek and Turkish Cypriots could live in a bi-communal, bi-zonal federation.

When he heard the outcome of Sunday’s vote, he immediately issued a message of unity and told his fellow citizens that he would embrace them regardless of their party affiliation.

Sami Özuslu, a member of parliament from Erhürman’s main opposition Republican Turkish party, said reunification talks would be at the top of the agenda.

“We don’t have another five years to waste,” he said, standing in the UN-patrolled buffer zone that divides the island’s capital, Nicosia. “Mr. Tatar was the worst president the Turkish Cypriots have ever had. He never once sat at the negotiating table and look where that got us. We need hope and only Mr. Erhürman can offer that.”