Turkey would respect the will of the Turkish Cypriot people following this October’s Turkish Cypriot leadership election, opposition political party CTP secretary-general Erkut Sahali said on Wednesday.

Sahali’s CTP has endorsed its leader Tufan Erhurman to stand against incumbent Ersin Tatar, and he told Kibris Postasi TV that should Erhurman be elected, relations between Turkey and Turkish Cypriots “will progress with an understanding based on mutual benefit”.

On this matter, he pointed out that the CTP has within relatively recent memory “worked together” with the Turkish government, having been a part of numerous ruling coalitions, the most recent being a four-party ruling coalition which served between 2018 and 2019, and with the CTP’s Mehmet Ali Talat having served as Turkish Cypriot leader between 2005 and 2010.

In addition, he said that Erhurman is “not an unknown quantity in Ankara”, given that he led the four-party ruling coalition as ‘prime minister’.

Prior to that, Erhurman had worked for Turkey’s justice ministry between 1999 and 2004, working as part of a commission established to prepare a law which would create an “ombudsman institution” in Turkey.

Sahali also passed comment on the election campaign itself, saying that it is thus far “progressing pleasantly” for the CTP, and that campaign events’ attendance has “exceeded expectations”.

He predicted that the election would be completed in the first round and that Erhurman would win.

Just as with presidential elections in the Republic, Turkish Cypriot leadership elections require that a candidate receive more than 50 per cent of the vote for a winner to be declared.

If no candidate receives more than 50 per cent of the vote, another election is held exactly a week later, with only the two candidates who received the most votes in the first two rounds eligible to run.

The last time a Turkish Cypriot election did not require a second-round runoff was in 2010, when Dervish Eroglu won 50.4 per cent of the vote, unseating Talat.

The next Turkish Cypriot leadership election is set to take place on October 19.