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Cyprus Political Parties
The Turkish Cypriot community had three major political
parties. A few smaller parties emerged in the 1980s, and a
1990
alliance among three opposition parties was short-lived.
The ruling party, the National Unity Party (Ulusal
Birlik
Partisi--UBP), was founded by Denktas in 1975. Its head in
1990 was
Dervis Eroglu, the prime minister. UBP was reported to
draw on
former members of the Turkish Resistance Organization
(Türk
Mukavemet Teskilâtu--TMT) and other conservative
nationalist
forces. The party was also a rallying point for forces
that sought
close ties to Turkey and identified themselves as Turks
more than
Cypriots. In the 1980s, the party governed alone or in
coalition,
but was riven with internal personality conflicts and
charges of
corruption. Its electoral performance was uneven, but the
party
implemented electoral law changes that favored its
plurality. Its
strength was augmented, it was commonly accepted, by
support from
settlers from the Turkish mainland. In the 1976 elections,
UBP won
thirty of the forty parliamentary seats; it dropped to
eighteen
seats in 1981 but won twenty-four seats in the enlarged
parliament
of 1985 and 34 in the 1990 elections. After March 1990
changes in
the electoral law favoring the strongest party, UBP won
nearly 70
percent of the seats with 55 percent of the vote.
As it had in the municipal elections of 1976, 1980, and
1986,
the UBP won a majority of the mayoral posts in the
elections of
June 1990. The party's victory was not as impressive as in
the
past, for the other parties boycotted the elections, and
the UBP
had only independent candidates for opponents. Despite the
absence
of organized opposition, UBP won only fourteen of the
twenty-six
mayoral contests, although it was victorious in the three
largest
municipalities, Nicosia (Lefkosa), Famagusta (Gazimagusa),
and
Kyrenia (Girne).
The second major party in the "TRNC" was the
Communal
Liberation Party (Toplumcu Kurtulus Partisi--TKP), founded
in 1976
by Alpay Durduran. The party has supported a federal
solution but
has criticized the government for the pace of
negotiations, the
failure to encourage more contact between the two
communities, and
the policy of encouraging settlers from Turkey. The
party's head,
Mustafa Akinci, served three terms as mayor of Nicosia,
and became
known for his bridge-building efforts with his Greek
Cypriot
counterpart, Lellos Demetriades. In one of the few
examples of
bicommunal cooperation, the two mayors worked with the UN
and other
international organizations on joint projects such as
restoration
of the medieval walls of the capital city and a common
sewage
system. The TKP was strengthened temporarily in 1990 when
Ismet
Kotak, former UBP deputy and newspaper publisher, left
theIsmall
defunct Progressive People's Party and joined the TKP. The
TKP
backed Ismail Bozkurt, an independent presidential
candidate, in
the 1990 parliamentary elections. The TKP won six seats in
the 1976
elections, thirteen in 1981, ten in the fifty-seat chamber
in 1985,
and five in the 1990 elections as part of an electoral
alliance,
the Democratic Struggle Party (Demokratik Mucadele
Partisi--DMP).
In mid-1990, the strength of the party was weakened when
the DMP
failed to oust the UBP. The TKP withdrew from the
alliance, and
most of its members boycotted the parliament to protest
what it
considered electoral improprieties by the ruling party and
by
Turkey.
The third of the main parties and the oldest party in
the
"TRNC," the Republican Turkish Party (Cumhuriyetçi Türk
Partisi--
CTP) was founded in 1970. Its leader Özker Özgür disavowed
alleged
communist leanings and described his party's ideology as
progressive socialist. Much of the CTP's support derived
from the
small labor movement on the island. The party won two
seats in the
1976 elections, six in 1981, twelve in 1985, and seven in
1990,
when it joined the TKP and the New Dawn Party (Yeni Dogus
Partisi--
YDP) in the DMP electoral alliance. After the elections
and the
collapse of the alliance, the CTP deputies joined their
TKP
colleagues in boycotting the parliament.
The YDP emerged with minor electoral strength in the
1985
elections. Founded in 1984 with considerable support from
the
Turkish Embassy, the YDP consolidated several smaller
parties that
attracted support from Turkish settlers on the island.
Many
settlers, however, continued to vote for the UBP. The
party's
leader for several years was retired Turkish colonel Aytaç
Besesler, who arrived on Cyprus in 1979. In the 1985
elections, the
YDP won four seats in the Legislative Assembly. In 1988,
Besesler
was replaced as party head by Orhan Üçok, reportedly a
supporter of
Turkish opposition leader Süleyman Demirel, and less
inclined to
provide automatic support for the ruling party and the
president.
The YDP briefly joined the electoral opposition alliance
DMP that
stood in the May 1990 elections, presumably because its
membership
felt the government was not moving quickly enough on some
issues of
concern to them, one of which was providing legal title to
their
property. When the DMP failed to defeat the UBP and
disbanded, the
two YDP candidates took their seats in the Assembly.
Data as of January 1991
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