Northern Cyprus presidential election, 2015
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| Turnout | 64.12% | |||||||||||||||
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Map showing the winners in the first round by the districts of Northern Cyprus. Red denotes districts won by Eroğlu, while blue denotes districts won by Akıncı.
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Presidential elections were held in Northern Cyprus in April 2015. In the first round, held on 19 April 2015, the incumbent president independent candidate Derviş Eroğlu and independent candidate Mustafa Akıncı progressed to the second round. The second round took place on 26 April 2015 and was won by Akıncı.
The results of the election were considered to be a major upset of power by the mainstream Turkish Cypriot media. The other major candidates of the election, who failed to progress to the second round were Sibel Siber, the candidate of the Republican Turkish Party, which headed the government at the time of the election, and Kudret Özersay, an independent candidate with no political history. Siber's failure to progress to the second round led to shock and controversy in her party and Prime Minister Özkan Yorgancıoğlu announced that he would be stepping down in the upcoming party congress. Özersay's share of the votes was seen as a major surprise success. Eroğlu announced his withdrawal from political life following the election.
The President is elected using the two-round system: as no candidate received a majority in the first round, a run-off was held seven days later. The role of the president is not symbolic: the President has a role in the executive branch of the government and represents Northern Cyprus in international politics, especially regarding the Cyprus dispute and the peace talks.
Akıncı, who ran as an independent, is a member of the pro-Union Communal Democracy Party. He is described as a "leftist moderate" who would "push harder for a peace deal". In terms of the specific negotiations, he stated that he would oppose "submissiveness" on the Turkish Cypriot side in the Turkish-Turkish Cypriot relations and said that the relationship should be "fraternal" and that the Turkish Cypriots should be able to "stand up on their own feet". Akıncı promised a vision about the ghost town of Varosha favoring a settlement to the issue by saying, "Instead of living side by side a corpse let Varosha become a lively city where people live, contractors from both communities do business together and young people can find jobs".
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Wikipedia