In the end, it was no contest.
The hotly-anticipated Turkish Cypriot presidential election, the face-off between a two-state solution and a federal solution to the Cyprus problem, the quasi-referendum between Turkey and Europe, the quasi-existential question of the Turkish Cypriots’ political and cultural orientation ended up being an electoral wipeout.
Tufan Erhürman, the pro-European social democrat who campaigned on the promise to return the Turkish-Cypriots to United Nations-sponsored negotiations to solve the Cyprus problem on the basis of a federal solution, broke records at the 19 October election.
His final total of 87,137 votes smashed the previous record of the most votes for any Turkish-Cypriot president in a single election by almost 20,000, and the proportion of votes he carried — 62.8 percent — is the highest seen since the election of 1990.
Back then, the unrecognised Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus’ founding president Rauf Denktaş was the undisputed ruler of the roost and father of the nation.
That Erhürman is now in such electoral company speaks to the unassailable mandate he has been given by the Turkish Cypriots.
The post-Denktaş era, however, has been characterised largely by a somewhat different zeitgeist. While he personified Turkish-Cypriot politics in the 1980s, and the political conversation in the 1990s centred around two nationalist figures (in himself and Derviş Eroğlu), the 2000s and beyond have seen the Turkish-Cypriots yearn to be accepted into the world’s shining city on a hill: Europe.
Much of the world remembers the 2004 Kofi Annan plan referendum for its rejection by the Greek-Cypriot community, who chose to march into the European Union a week later as a monocommunal government on a divided island.
However, the plan was in equal measure accepted by the Turkish Cypriots, who voted to reunify the island and join the EU alongside their Greek Cypriot compatriots.
The run-up to that referendum was marked by Turkish-Cypriots demonstrating in their thousands under the banner ‘Yes, be Annem’ [‘yes, mum’ in Turkish] — as young Turkish Cypriots strived, successfully, to convince their elders to leave the island’s violent past in the past and embrace a united, European future.
It was that wave of pro-European optimism which dethroned Denktaş, who promised not to run in the 2005 presidential election.
That election was another cry of pro-European sentiment on the part of the Turkish-Cypriots, who elected as their second president Mehmet Ali Talat.
Talat and Erhürman are both sons of the pro-European, social democratic party the CTP, and 20 years ago, his election was taken by many as the Turkish Cypriots throwing off the shackles of Denktaşian nationalism and embracing a European future.
While history does not repeat, it does rhyme, and those old enough to remember the early 2000s have pointed out to me the similarities between now and then.
On 18 October, thousands of Turkish-Cypriots had marched down Nicosia’s arterial Dereboyu Avenue in a pre-election show of support for Tufan Erhürman, and on the night of 19 October, thousands more gathered in the capital’s Kızılbaş Park to salute the man they had voted in record numbers to elect president.
The campaign, and the election weekend in particular, felt quintessentially like a triumph of a popular movement, and with Erhürman having campaigned on the promise that “every corner of this island will be Europe”, no room has been left for questioning what the Turkish-Cypriot people want.
Of course, for history to rhyme, there has to have been a nationalist leader in power again between 2005 and 2025, and the 2020 election did see Turkish nationalist Ersin Tatar elected, and he did spend his five-year term demanding nothing less than a two-state solution to the Cyprus problem.
The 2020 election can now be considered a warning from history for those outside the Turkish-Cypriot community who ostensibly wish to see the island reunified.
It saw nationalism triumph over pro-European sentiment and saw the Turkish-Cypriots truly turn away from formal negotiations to solve the Cyprus problem through United Nations-sponsored means and the premise of reunification for the first time, given that even Denktaş had negotiated in good faith on such terms during his three decades as the Turkish-Cypriots’ chief political figure.
The lesson to be learned from that experience must be that while the Turkish-Cypriots want to join the European family, that will cannot be taken for granted for ever.
If the Greek Cypriots and Europe at large truly wish for Cyprus in its entirety to be inside the European tent, it must act on that wish and reciprocate the Turkish-Cypriots’ will, and make earnest progress to realise a European future for all of Cyprus and for all Cypriots.
Tatar was unseated in an electoral shellacking the likes of which have never been seen before on these shores.
A failure on Europe’s part to act on the Turkish Cypriots’ will may mean that the next Ersin Tatar will not be so easy to remove, and the next Turkish-Cypriot withdrawal from the premise of reunification, withdrawal from Europe, may be permanent.
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Tom Cleaver is chief reporter at the Cyprus Mail, who has specialised in covering the Turkish Cypriot community.
Tom Cleaver is chief reporter at the Cyprus Mail, who has specialised in covering the Turkish Cypriot community.