The north’s ‘transport minister’ Erhan Arikli on Tuesday night called for ‘parliamentary’ elections to be held “as soon as possible”.

Speaking to Genc TV, he built on earlier comments made by himself and other ‘ministers’ regarding the year ahead, saying “there are problems coming in 2025 and urgent and strict policies are needed”.

He then added, “let’s have elections as soon as possible. We will talk about this in the coming days. What we could not do is more than what we did. We will evaluate this within the government.”

He was then keen to differentiate himself and his party the YDP from the UBP, the north’s three-party ruling coalition’s largest party.

“They say a government partner should not complain, but I am not just an ordinary UBP MP or minister. I am a partner in this government. My party will be held accountable when we have elections. I will continue to criticise what I see as wrong,” he said.

He added, “no one should take offence, I will also discuss this in cabinet. There is a habit from the past whereby people say, ‘the coalition is a whole, no one can speak out’. What has that got to do with anything?”

That criticism came in the form of a list of “many deficiencies” in the current ‘government’ as described by Arikli.

“Information technology laws, election laws, public service reforms … there are 70 or 80 pieces of legislation we could not put forward. We need to sit down and talk again when the budget is passed. The people will ask to hold us to account in an election,” he said.

Arikli’s comments build on statements he made last week, when he said there would be a “great benefit” for the ruling coalition’s three parties to hold elections as soon as possible because “2025 will be a very difficult year for all of us, especially for the government”.

Those comments came just a day after the ruling coalition’s ‘parliamentary’ majority fell to just six, after ‘MP’ Hasan Tosunoglu left the ruling coalition’s other party, the DP.

Tosunoglu was one of three ‘MPs’ from the DP elected at the ‘parliamentary’ elections in January 2022 and remained on the backbenches throughout the almost three years since then, but spoke of a disillusionment with his party’s direction.

He said his party has become “silent, apolitical, and without an attitude”, with the party’s political platform in recent years having grown ever closer to that of the UBP.

Arikli is also not the only ‘minister’ who has spoken of tough times ahead for Turkish Cypriots, with ‘economy minister’ Olgun Amcaoglu having said last month that 2025 will be “much more difficult” economically than previous years.