Pro-reunification candidate Tufan Erhurman was on Sunday elected as Turkish Cypriot leader, unseating pro-two-state solution incumbent Ersin Tatar and winning a record number of votes in an unprecedented landslide victory.

Erhurman, a 55-year-old law professor who has served in the Turkish Cypriot legislature since 2013, is the leader of centre-left party the CTP – a position from which he will be required to resign in the coming days thanks to the Turkish Cypriots’ strict rules regarding political party affiliation for their leaders.

He will formally take up the role of Turkish Cypriot leader later this week, having won a massive 62.8 per cent of the vote to Tatar’s 35.8 per cent, and is expected to bring to an end a five-year period in which the Turkish Cypriot side refused to engage in negotiations to solve the Cyprus problem based on the previously agreed-upon federal model.

Erhurman’s election comes at a time of heightened activity on the Cyprus problem, and as such, a busy few weeks await him when he formally takes office.

He promised during the campaign that his first visit upon taking office would be to Ankara to meet Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and other high-level Turkish officials – an important move on light of the fact that many in the highest echelons of Turkish politics have spent the last few weeks actively campaigning against him.

On the island, he is expected to meet new United Nations high representative Khassim Diagne, and later envoy Maria Angela Holguin, ahead of a third enlarged meeting on the Cyprus problem of the year, which is expected to take place in New York towards the end of the month.

That meeting, just as the previous two meetings attended by Tatar, will be attended by representatives of Cyprus’ two sides, its three guarantor powers, Greece, Turkey, and the United Kingdom, and the UN.

More to follow…