TURKISH Cypriot ‘prime minister’ Mehmet Ali Talat renewed calls on Sunday for an early election after party leaders fail to establish a three-way coalition in the north.
“At the moment, it seems the most rational option would be an early general election and to form a new government according to the result,” Talat said at Istanbul airport before completing his journey to Cyprus after talks with EU and European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) officials in Brussels and Strasbourg.
However, an unnamed high-ranking official from Mustafa Akinci’s Peace and Democracy Movement (BDH) accused Talat of “threatening an early election in order to pressure the BDH into backing a new coalition government without giving the party its fair share of power”.
“When you form a coalition, ministries are distributed according to the number of deputies the parties have in parliament,” the official told Turkish Cypriot daily Kibrisli over the weekend, adding: “How can we be expected to take part in a government in which we are not allowed to exercise power?”
The official hit out at Talat, saying: “If it is dishonourable for us to demand ministries, the CTP, which has the largest number of ministries, must be committing the biggest dishonour.”
The official also warned Talat that going to the polls would not yield a decisive victory for his party.
Akinci played down the remarks yesterday, telling the Cyprus Mail: “Ministries are just part of the issue. For us there are three important factors.”
“The first issue,” Akinci said, “is peace.”
“If the BDH engages itself in a coalition government, that government must be one that works towards a solution of the Cyprus problem.”
The other two fundamental issues for Akinci are “lifting the political and economic isolation of the Turkish Cypriots” and “introducing reforms that will turn north Cyprus into a civilian democracy”.
Akinci said the formation of a new ‘government’ had been “on hold” for nearly two months because, despite holding only 23 seats in the 50-seat ‘parliament’, “the government expected a spate of transfers that would eliminate the need for a new coalition or an election”.
“Now they have seen that this is not going to happen, so they have been forced to seek new coalition partners,” Akinci said.
He added that technical committees of the three likely coalition partners, Talat’s Republican Turkish Party (CTP), the BDH and Serdar Denktash’s Democratic Party (DP) were yet to hold formal discussions on forming a ‘government’, but that such discussions would begin very soon.
“Whether or not we can succeed in forming a government will become clear in the next few days.”
Asked whether, as rumoured, he would be seeking the ‘foreign ministry’ for himself, Akinci replied: “I don’t want to be as specific as that, but the BDH is keen to be in a position to be influential for the future of Cyprus.”
