Former Turkish Cypriot leaders congratulate Erhurman on victory

Former Turkish Cypriot leaders Mehmet Ali Talat and Mustafa Akinci on Monday congratulated Turkish Cypriot leader-elect Tufan Erhurman on his landslide victory in Sunday’s election.

“Conflict, alienation, polarisation, and false propaganda lost. Peace, brotherhood, and dialogue won. One truth has become clearer: Turkish Cypriots have the capacity to express their will based on their own knowledge and assessments, not those of others,” Talat wrote in a post on social media.

He congratulated Erhurman and said, “I wish him success”.

Talat and Erhurman both belong to centre-left and pro-reunification party the CTP, with Talat until Sunday evening having been the party’s only member to have served as Turkish Cypriot leader. He was in post between 2005 and 2010.

Akinci, meanwhile, who served between 2015 and 2020, said on social media that “I believe waking up this morning with Tufan Erhurman as president has brought relief to the vast majority of people”.

“The current situation continuing for another five years could have pushed us to a point beyond repair,” he said in reference to Erhurman’s soon-to-be predecessor Ersin Tatar, who beat him in the 2020 election, before also making reference to Turkish nationalist party MHP leader Devlet Bahceli’s demands for the north to join Turkey after the results became clear.

Bahceli’s remarks, Akinci said, “are sufficient to understand the situation”.

“Tatar, who is about to hand over power, need not be too upset. He will now hand over a position he did not earn by right to someone who did earn it. In 2020, he held a position which was narrowly won by an alliance of [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan, the AKP, and the MHP,” he said, with ‘AKP’ the term used for Turkey’s ruling AK Party by its deriders.

He said Tatar had won the 2020 election “primarily through the threats and pressure of [Turkey’s] National intelligence organisation (Mit), the military, and civilian bureaucracy, along with the influence of [Turkish Cypriot businessman Halil] Falyali’s millions in dirty money”.

“This time, behind the scenes, things were not the same as five years ago. Those in front of the scenes were not enough to salvage the situation, either … The AKP’s declining power in Turkey, Erhurman’s incomparable knowledge and skills compared to Tatar’s, and the opposition uniting around Erhurman against Tatar and the government undoubtedly played a significant roe in this success,” he said.

He then offered Erhurman his congratulations, and also offered his congratulations to the CTP, and “all the individuals who worked to achieve this result”.

“I hope the outcome will be beneficial for the Turkish Cypriot community, our island, and our region. As a final note for today, I would like to emphasise this: winning elections is not easy, it is difficult, but the even more challenging part begins now. I wish you success,” he said.