Two elections, one day and a political landscape full of unknowns

WITH less than two months to go before the people of the TRNC head to the polls on December 6, the political atmosphere is becoming increasingly heated, not least because voters will be asked to make several important choices on the same day, with the general election and local elections being held together.

The Republican Turkish Party, CTP, which represents the main centre-left force in Turkish Cypriot politics, appears to be leading the polls, although nobody seems entirely certain about the size of that lead.

Some believe the gap between CTP and the governing National Unity Party, UBP, is wide enough for the main opposition party to dream of winning a majority in the 50-seat parliament and governing without coalition partners, while others argue that, even at its weakest, UBP is unlikely to fall much below 20 seats, especially if smaller parties also cross the threshold and claim one or two seats each.

And, of course, CTP and UBP are not the only parties hoping to give a victory speech from a balcony on the night of December 6.

On the left there is the Communal Democracy Party, TDP, led by Zeki Çeler, a former MP who also came close in the last Girne mayoral race, while the Democratic Party, DP, led by Fikri Ataoğlu, will argue that its time in government has produced visible results.

Ataoğlu, who has served as Tourism Minister, can point to projects such as the restoration of Girne’s historic harbour and the rebuilding of the State Theatre, which had remained unusable for decades after the original building was destroyed by fire.

Then there is the Rebirth Party, YDP, whose support has traditionally drawn heavily from voters of Turkish mainland origin and which has suffered a major political blow since its leader Erhan Arıklı was removed from his post as transport minister following the Filo Jet ferry disaster.

Arıklı’s dismissal was followed by YDP’s withdrawal from the governing coalition, adding another layer of uncertainty to an already unpredictable election.

The People’s Party, HP, led by former foreign minister and former chief negotiator Kudret Özersay, is another party hoping to return to parliament.

Özersay himself resigned his parliamentary seat in 2022 as part of his party’s protest against what it described at the time as undemocratic political practices, and HP will be hoping that its anti-establishment message can once again find an audience.

All of this matters because even one or two seats won by these parties could completely change the parliamentary arithmetic and determine whether CTP or UBP can govern, needs one coalition partner, or perhaps needs more than one.

The main political argument, however, is still revolving around two very different narratives.

The opposition’s case is that UBP has become synonymous with corruption, favouritism and nepotism and has little ideology left beyond looking after its own political network.

The difficulty for CTP, however, is that in a country as small as ours, nepotism can sometimes prove more electorally effective than ideology, because you do not need to satisfy millions of people to build a winning electoral coalition; you may only need to keep a relatively small number of families, communities and local networks happy.

That is why the argument can work both as an accusation and, strangely enough, as an attraction, because there will always be voters who hear that criticism and think not about the unfairness of the system, but about whether they themselves might benefit from it.

UBP, for its part, is selling a very different story and arguing that whatever people may think about the party, it has been able to deliver projects that make everyday life easier.

New hospitals, schools, roads and other infrastructure projects have all become part of that argument, even though much of the financing has come from Ankara, with UBP insisting that persuading the Turkish government to release that money and invest in the TRNC is in itself a political skill for which voters should give it credit.

There is another, more subtle message behind that argument as well, which is that Ankara would find it much easier to work with UBP than with CTP and that, even if the financial taps would not be turned off completely under a CTP government, the flow of money might not be quite as strong.

Whether voters believe that or regard it as political blackmail will be one of the interesting questions of this election.

Holding the general and local elections on the same day is also expected to push turnout higher than usual, because mayoral candidates, municipal council candidates, parliamentary candidates, mukhtars and their deputies will all have their own reasons to get supporters to the polling stations, creating a much wider mobilisation than we normally see in a single election.

That may make the result much harder to predict, because higher turnout can disrupt patterns that political parties have become accustomed to reading over the years.

The second major unknown is the change in the electoral system, because the old system of cross-party voting has been removed.

Until now, voters who did not want to support a single party could select individual parliamentary candidates from different parties and effectively create their own list, regardless of party affiliation.

That option has now disappeared, and voters will have to choose a political party first before selecting candidates from within that party’s list.

Traditionally, around 12 per cent of voters have used cross-party voting, and forcing such a large bloc of the electorate to make a party choice could alter the entire balance of the election in ways that are very difficult to model in advance.

So, with less than two months remaining, the political parties are effectively running two campaigns at once: one national campaign aimed at winning enough parliamentary seats to form the next government, and another local campaign aimed at capturing as many of the 18 mayoralties and municipal councils as possible.

That makes December 6 much more than an ordinary election day, because the result will not simply decide who governs and who controls the municipalities; it will also tell us whether voters are ready to gamble on new faces, new alliances and a different style of politics, or whether, when the moment comes to put the stamp on the ballot paper, they will fall back on that oldest political instinct of all: better the devil you know.