Denktash denies importing mainland voters for December elections

TURKISH Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash yesterday denied claims that he was granting citizenship to mainland Turks in an attempt to win a crucial December 14 election that will seal Cyprus’s fate.

Opponents of Denktash in the occupied north have accused him of importing mainland Turks who share his distaste for the UN-brokered peace plan which aims to end the decades-old division of Cyprus and allow it to enter the European Union next May reunited.
Anti-Denktash parties have vowed to resume negotiations on the plan if they win the December 14 general election.

“As president I am making a complaint to the High Election Board (about these allegations). There must be no doubt cast over the elections,” Denktash said yesterday in a statement issued from Istanbul, Turkey’s commercial capital.

He said he expected the board to refute the allegations, which he said the opposition had made because it feared electoral defeat.

Turkey’s Sabah newspaper printed a photograph yesterday of what it said was a queue of mainland Turks outside an immigration office in the north waiting to apply for Turkish Cypriot ‘citizenship’ before an October 15 deadline.

The Turkish Cypriot authorities say a person must live for at least five years in the enclave before being eligible for ‘citizenship’.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.