North ‘MP’ Tosunoglu resigns

Turkish Cypriot ‘MP’ Hasan Tosunoglu on Monday resigned from the north’s ‘parliament’.

His resignation comes after a request was filed for his ‘parliamentary’ immunity against prosecution to be lifted in the wake of allegations regarding the forging of documents to win a tender for the construction of the north’s new central bank building.

His son Ugur Tosunoglu has already been arrested in connection with the incident, with the tender for the building’s construction estimated to be worth exactly 785,034,463TL (around €21 million) by the north’s tender commission.

Hasan Tosunoglu has maintained his and his son’s innocence, saying his son’s lawyer has “emphasised in court that the allegations were unfounded”, before adding, “they will not be able to bring us down, we will emerge from this attack with honour”.

However, he was reportedly less reserved when invited to explain the situation on television. Journalist Ertugrul Senova said he had invited Tosunoglu onto his television show on Kanal Sim, but that after a short conversation about the subject at hand, Tosunoglu had lost his temper.

“He got a little bit angry, and then, unfortunately, he began to swear in a way that could not be taken lightly. He was swearing about me, about my family, and then he started swearing about my mother. He was making it rain swear words,” Senova said.

Tosunoglu’s resignation will be submitted to ‘parliament’ for a vote, with it not being a foregone conclusion that all resignations are accepted.

Former ‘prime minister’ Huseyin Ozgurgun’s resignation was not accepted in 2019 after 16 million TL (around €2m at the time) which he had not formally declared was found in his bank account, with Ozgurgun having instead left the island to live in Istanbul since.

However, the two most recent resignations from ‘parliament’, those of former chief negotiator for the Cyprus problem Kudret Ozersay, who resigned in 2022 to take opposition to the current administration to the streets, and of Ersin Tatar, who resigned in 2020 to become Turkish Cypriot leader, were accepted.

If Tosunoglu’s resignation is accepted, it is possible but not certain that a by-election will be called. Ozersay’s resignation triggered a by-election which was held a year later in June 2023 and won by opposition party the CTP’s Sami Ozuslu, while Tatar’s seat remained vacant until the 2022 ‘parliamentary’ elections.

The next ‘parliamentary’ elections will take place no later than February 2027, though no ‘parliament’ in the north has run its full term since 1998.

Tosunoglu’s resignation, if accepted, will not in and of itself change the ‘parliamentary’ arithmetic with regard to the ruling coalition’s majority, given that he had already left ruling coalition party the DP in November.

At present, 28 of the remaining 49 ‘MPs’ belong to the ruling coalition, with 24 belonging to the UBP, and two apiece belonging to the DP and the YDP.

Of the 22 in opposition, 19 belong to the CTP, and the remaining three are all independent.