Serdar Denktash, the son of late Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash, on Tuesday said he is in the process of creating a new political party.

Speaking to television channel Kanal T, he said his party will propose a “third way” solution to the Cyprus problem, which is “something other than a two-state solution and a federation”.

He added that he hopes his party will be a “strong alternative” to the north’s two dominant political forces, the nationalist UBP and the federal solution supporting CTP.

Additionally, he said, his new party will “include names which have just stepped into politics” and “completely fresh faces”. He added that his party’s founders will “decide on the party’s name” in due course.

He had confirmed to the Cyprus Mail in 2023 that he would stand in this October’s Turkish Cypriot leadership elections, having been the candidate for ruling coalition party the DP in 2020.

He was first elected to the north’s ‘parliament’ in 1990 and was a founding member of the DP when it split from the UBP in 1992.

Between 1996 and 2019, he served as the party’s leader, taking various ‘ministerial’ roles in that time, but subsequently left the party when it entered into a ruling coalition with the UBP in December 2020.

“If my party, which I led for years, cannot protect its own honour, my duty is to protect my own honour,” he said, before deciding not to stand in the north’s ‘parliamentary’ elections in 2022.

His father is the only Turkish Cypriot leader since 1974 to win more than one term in office, with Mehmet Ali Talat, Dervish Eroglu, and Mustafa Akinci all since having served a single term in office before being voted out.

In election polling thus far, Serdar Denktash is polling at around five per cent, with all polls pointing to a two-horse race between incumbent Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar and CTP leader Tufan Erhurman.