The breakaway territory of northern Cyprus has voted overwhelmingly to replace its outgoing leader, who had the backing of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, election officials said Sunday.
Almost 63 percent of voters in the territory, whose claim to statehood is recognized only by Turkey, backed former prime minister Tufan Erhürman as next president at the expense of Turkey’s pick, Ersin Tatar, who polled 35 percent.
Cyprus has been divided since 1974, when a Turkish invasion following a coup in Nicosia backed by Greece’s then-military junta eventually led to the creation of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus in 1983.
The internationally recognized Republic of Cyprus, a member of the European Union, controls the island’s majority Greek Cypriot south.
While Tatar has toed the Turkish line of two separate states on Cyprus, Erhürman has indicated he favors a federal state that would include both sides of the island.
Erhürman said there were no losers in the election and that “the Turkish Cypriot people have won together.”
“I will exercise my responsibilities, notably in terms of foreign policy, in consultation with the Republic of Turkey,” he said, trying to soothe concerns from Ankara that he may try to break away.
Erdoğan congratulated Erhürman in a post on social media, adding that Turkey would “continue to defend the rights and sovereign interests” of the breakaway territory.
The last major round of peace talks to negotiate a settlement to the island’s divided status collapsed in Switzerland in 2017.
The leaders of both sides met in July at the UN headquarters in New York for talks that were hailed as “constructive” by UN chief Antonio Guterres.
© Agence France-Presse