The number of people registered to vote in the north is exactly 215,611 as of May, Turkish Cypriot supreme court chief justice Bertan Ozerdag said.

Speaking to the north’s public broadcaster BRT, he explained that between now and the Turkish Cypriot leadership election set to take place in October, this could increase by around a thousand voters through young people turning 18 and people acquiring citizenships and thus the right to vote.

“Maybe it will not be even that. Maybe it will be lower. I do not want to say a clear number now so I do not mislead you,” he said.

He pointed out that at the last Turkish Cypriot leadership election in 2020, a total of 198,957 people were registered to vote in the first round, with that number rising by 72 to 199,029 for the election’s second round a week after thanks to 72 Turkish Cypriots turning 18 years old.

“We are constantly updating the voter roll, and rapidly so. The interior ministry sends us the records of those who turn 18 and those who have newly acquired citizenship every three months, or more frequently in some periods,” he explained.

The current number of registered voters is a little over 5,000 larger than the most recent major election to take place in the north, a ‘parliamentary’ by-election which took place in June 2023. Then, there were exactly 210,121 registered voters.

It is also more than double the number of Turkish Cypriots who live in the north who were registered as voters at last year’s European parliament elections.

That figure stood at 103,269, with the discrepancy coming about because many citizens of the ‘TRNC’ are not citizens of the Republic of Cyprus on account of the Republic’s strict laws regarding the acquisition of citizenship of children of “mixed marriage”, wherein one of their parents is Turkish Cypriot and the other is not.

In addition, many ‘TRNC’ citizens were born on the island to non-Cypriot parents and are thus not recognised as citizens by the Republic of Cyprus, while a growing number of people have been naturalised as ‘TRNC’ citizens while having no ties to the Republic of Cyprus.

At last year’s European parliament elections, a total of 834 Turkish Cypriots who live in the Republic were registered to vote. They are not eligible to vote in the north, as the north’s own regulations stipulate that only people living in the north are able to vote.

The north’s ruling coalition has in the past expressed its intention to change this and enfranchise Turkish Cypriots living across the world.

Were Turkish Cypriots abroad to be afforded the vote in Turkish Cypriot elections, future election results could be decisively changed by the diaspora, such is its size, and the fact that Turkish Cypriots living abroad are typically more conservative and pro-Turkey than the average Turkish Cypriot living on the island.

The British parliament’s home affairs committee estimated in 2011 that there were 300,000 Turkish Cypriots living in the United Kingdom at the time, with Turkey’s scientific and technological research council (Tubitak) having estimated that 500,000 Turkish Cypriots live in Turkey and 120,000 live in Australia.