December date set for Turkish Cypriot legislative elections

The Turkish Cypriots will hold legislative elections on December 6, with a bill setting out the timetable for the elections passing through the legislature on Monday night. As such, legislative and local elections will take place simultaneously, with it having earlier this year been decided that the Turkish Cypriot local elections will take place on that day. The two elections coinciding will also mean that after December 6, the next time Turkish Cypriots will be scheduled to go to the polls will be four years from now, on October 20, 2030, when the next Turkish Cypriot leadership election is set to take place. Many Turkish Cypriots will also be eligible to vote at the European Parliament elections on June 10, 2029, though fewer than 6,000 Turkish Cypriots cast a vote at the most recent European Parliament elections in 2024. Related Articles • Turkish Cypriot legislature defies Erhurman, changes voting system again • CTP set for landslide victory at Turkish Cypriot election, poll says • Ustel promises new airline as Turkish Cypriot election campaign heats up • ‘Come on, then!’ – Ustel challenges north opposition to two elections in one day • Talat warns Ustel that delaying north’s election will damage own party December’s legislative elections will come four years and ten months after the previous legislative elections, making the current legislative term the longest the Turkish Cypriots have had since the legislature elected in 1998 lasted a full five years. The term will also end with Unal Ustel being the second-longest-serving ‘prime minister’ in Turkish Cypriot political history, having taken office in May 2022, three and a half months after the most recent elections were held. Only Dervish Eroglu, who served for a total of almost 17 years in office across three separate spells, has been ‘prime minister’ for longer than Ustel. Eroglu left office for the final time at the age of 72 years old in 2010. Ustel will turn 72 in January. Election will provide Ustel’s first public test Unal Ustel at a campaign event Despite his relatively long stint as ‘prime minister’, December will provide Ustel’s first electoral test in the role, with Faiz Sucuoglu having fought the last election as both ‘prime minister’ and leader of the current largest party in the legislature, the conservative UBP. Sucuoglu had only ascended to the office in November 2021, calling the January 2022 election shortly thereafter, and winning 24 of the legislature’s 50 seats on election day, before forming a coalition administration with the conservative DP and the right-wing YDP. However, he was faced with political deadlock when he attempted to dismiss his ‘finance minister’ Sunat Atun, with Turkish Cypriot leader of the day Ersin Tatar having refused to sign off on Atun’s sacking. At this point, Sucuoglu’s solution was to have his whole ruling coalition resign and form a new administration without Atun, but this move backfired, and the new coalition lost multiple confidence votes before it could form, with the DP and the YDP issuing a list of conditions on that confidence vote to which he said he could not acquiesce. Subsequently, Ustel held meetings with then Turkish ambassador Metin Feyzioglu and with Tatar, before being asked by Tatar to form an administration of his own and being named ‘prime minister’ shortly thereafter. Polling divided over whether CTP will win majority of seats Ahead of this forthcoming election, polling is unanimous in forecasting that the centre-left CTP will win the most votes and the most seats, but pollsters are divided over the question of whether the party will be able to secure an outright majority of seats in the legislature. A CTP victory would put party leader Sila Usar Incirli in pole position to become only the second female Turkish Cypriot ‘prime minister’ and the first female Turkish Cypriot party leader to win an election, though this would not be certain should the party fall short of a majority of seats. Only twice in Turkish Cypriot political history – in 1990 and in 2009 – has a party had an outright majority of seats in the legislature, and on both occasions, it was Dervish Eroglu’s UBP which had the majority. The highest number of seats in the legislature won by the CTP was the 24 seats it won in 2005, when the party was led by Mehmet Ali Talat. Sila Usar Incirli Should the party require coalition partners, the centre-left TDP – the party of Turkish Cypriot Nicosia mayor Mehmet Harmanci and former Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci, which is currently led by Zeki Celer – may be in play, with some polls suggesting that the party may return to the legislature after it lost all its seats in 2022. The CTP and the TDP formed a coalition between 2018 and 2019 – the last time either were a part of a ruling administration – alongside the DP and former Turkish Cypriot chief negotiator Kudret Ozersay’s HP, with Tufan Erhurman, now Turkish Cypriot leader, having been the ‘prime minister’ of that four-party administration. If the CTP fails to win a majority of seats, it is possible that Ustel and the UBP could form a coalition with a minor party and achieve a majority that way, though polling suggests that its current junior partner, the DP, led by ‘deputy prime minister’ Fikri Ataoglu, will lose all its seats in December. The UBP could possibly turn to the YDP, a party with which it has spent all but four months of the last seven years in coalition, but relations between the two parties have considerably soured in recent months, with the YDP leaving the coalition last month after party leader Erhan Arikli was dismissed from his position as ‘transport minister’. Polling is split over whether the YDP will retain any of its seats in the legislature in December, while it appears unlikely that the HP will win any seats at all this time around. Two members leave legislature, four leave parties since 2022 election At the 2022 election, the UBP won 24 seats, the CTP won 18 seats, the DP and the HP won three seats apiece, and the YDP won two seats. The initial ruling coalition, therefore, comprising the UBP, the DP, and the YDP, had an effective majority of eight. Since then, the HP has lost all its seats after the party decided to withdraw from the legislature in May 2022, with Ozersay resigning his seat and Jale Refik Rogers and Aysegul Baybars leaving the party to sit as independents, before officially being named as CTP members last week. The seat vacated by Ozersay was then won by the CTP’s Sami Ozuslu in a by-election in June 2023, bringing the CTP’s total to 19, before Hasan Tosunoglu left the DP in November 2024, leaving the party with two seats, but continuing to support the coalition. Eleven months later, Tufan Erhurman left the legislature to be sworn in as Turkish Cypriot leader, once again reducing the CTP’s total to 18. His seat has remained vacant ever since. Tufan Erhurman gave up his seat in the legislature after being elected Turkish Cpriot leader last October. Then, in May this year, Izlem Gurcag Altugra left the UBP and joined the HP, bringing the UBP’s total down to 23. Altugra, Baybars, and Rogers all officially sit as independents, given that members of the legislature are not allowed to join existing political parties while retaining their seats, though they now caucus with their respective parties. As such, this legislative term will close, as it is currently forecast to do so, with an effective tally of the UBP having 23 seats, the CTP having 20 seats, the DP and the YDP having two seats apiece, the HP having one seat, and one independent who caucuses with the coalition, which has an effective majority of two. Election goes ahead with altered voting system December’s election will also go ahead with an altered voting system, with “mixed voting” having been abolished last week. Voters will now only be able to vote for candidates from one party, rather than having the option of choosing individual candidates from multiple parties, as they had done at all previous elections. The two choices which are now available to voters are the “stamp” option, wherein voters use a stamp to indicate their party of preference and do not vote for individual candidates, or the “stamp and preference”. The latter allows voters to choose a number of candidates corresponding to at least half the number of seats allocated to each electoral district and at most, a number of candidates corresponding to the number of seats allocated to each electoral district belonging to their party of choice, as indicated with a stamp. The Turkish Cypriot electoral map is split into six electoral districts, centred in Famagusta, Kyrenia, Lefka, Morphou, Nicosia, Trikomo, but since the 2018 election, voters have been able to vote for candidates in all districts, meaning that a voter in Nicosia can also vote for a candidate standing in Lefka or Trikomo should they wish to do so. A stamp used at Turkish Cypriot elections Voters who choose the “stamp and preference” method are not required to vote for candidates from all six districts, but are required to vote for a number of candidates corresponding to at least half the number of seats allocated to each electoral district and at most, a number of candidates corresponding to the number of seats allocated to each electoral district. This means that in Nicosia, mixed voters were required to choose between eight and six candidates, while in Famagusta, they had to choose between six and 13, in Kyrenia, between five and 11, in Trikomo, between two and five, in Morphou, between one and three, and in Lefka, between one and two.