NICOSIA: A landslide victory for a moderate candidate in a Turkish Cypriot presidential election offers a glimmer of hope in breaking an eight-year impasse in peace talks on the ethnically split island, diplomats and analysts said.
Center-left Tufan Erhurman won a commanding 62.7 percent of Turkish Cypriot votes in Sunday’s election, final results on Monday showed, after campaigning on a platform of promising to re-invigorate stalled peace negotiations with Greek Cypriots.
“The mood music among everyone I have spoken to is hopeful, optimistic and pleasantly surprised,” one western diplomat said.
Defeated incumbent Ersin Tatar, whose two-state solution demand was widely opposed by Greek Cypriots, trailed with 35 percent of the vote.
Greek Cypriot leader Nikos Christodoulides congratulated Erhurman, saying he hoped to meet soon.
“The key question is whether Christodoulides can respond positively to this huge shift,” said analyst Fiona Mullen at Cypriot-based consultancy Sapienta Economics.
Cyprus was split in a Turkish invasion in 1974 after a brief Greek-inspired coup, and relations between ethnic Greek and Turkish Cypriots have been strained since peace talks collapsed in 2017.
In recent years, Turkish Cypriots have opened a war-abandoned Greek Cypriot resort town to tourists, while Greek Cypriots have intensified legal action against developers building on properties belonging to displaced Greek Cypriots in the north — measures that have dented the enclave’s construction sector.
Outgoing leader Tatar had lobbied strongly for international recognition of the breakaway Turkish Cypriot state, but was unable to lift its isolation.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, who had supported Tatar’s two-state policy, said the election result showed the democratic maturity of Turkish Cypriots.
But at least one of his allies, the far-right Devlet Bahceli of the Nationalist Movement Party, said the result was unacceptable and called for north Cyprus to cede to Turkiye.
The size of Erhurman’s victory suggested “people were fed up,” Mullen said.
“My hunch is that voters saw that the more antagonistic Tatar approach was getting them nowhere,” she said.
Landslide victory of Turk Cypriot moderate offers fresh hope for talks
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Landslide victory of Turk Cypriot moderate offers fresh hope for talks
- Center-left Tufan Erhurman won a commanding 62.7 percent of Turkish Cypriot votes in Sunday’s election, final results on Monday showed, after campaigning on a platform of promising to re-invigorate stalled peace negotiations with Greek Cypriots
Charlie Kirk murder suspect appears in US court
LOS ANGELES: The man accused of killing right-wing political activist Charlie Kirk appeared in person in a US court for the first time on Thursday.
Tyler Robinson looked on calmly as lawyers discussed procedural issues surrounding what is expected to be one of the most keenly watched trials in modern America.
The clean-shaven 22-year-old wore a light shirt and a tie in the Utah court. The judge ruled at an earlier hearing that he did not have to appear in court in prison garb.
Kirk was shot dead on a Utah college campus in September, sparking a wave of grief among conservatives, and threats of a clampdown on the “radical left” from President Donald Trump.
Following a massive manhunt, Robinson was arrested the day after the September 10 killing when his family persuaded him to hand himself in because they had recognized him in photographs issued by investigators.
He faces the death penalty if convicted of aggravated murder.
Authorities say Robinson shot Kirk from a rooftop across the campus of Utah Valley University because of the influential activist’s views.
They have cited text message exchanges between Robinson and his roommate, whom they described as “a biological male who was transitioning genders.”
In one part of the exchange, the roommate, who was not named, asked Robinson why he had killed Kirk.
“I had enough of his hatred,” Robinson is alleged to have written. “Some hate can’t be negotiated out.”
Kirk, a father of two, used his audiences on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube to build support for conservative talking points, including strong criticism of the transgender rights movement.
In the wake of the murder, a number of people lost their jobs after criticism from conservatives over what they posted online or said publicly about Kirk.
Comedian Jimmy Kimmel was briefly suspended from his show on the ABC network following government pressure after he said Trump’s MAGA movement was trying to make political capital from the killing.
