Left Tipped to Win Snap Turkish Cypriot Vote

Turkish Cypriots voted Sunday in a snap parliamentary election expected to be won by the left after the collapse of the conservative administration of the breakaway north of divided Cyprus.

Voter turnout was a lowly 42 percent in Nicosia and 52 percent in Famagusta on the coast two hours before polling stations closed at 1500 GMT, the electoral commission said, with the first results due at around 1700 GMT.

Around 70 percent of the electorate voted at the last election in 2009.

Opinion polls predicted the leftwing Republican Turkish Party (CTP) would comfortably beat the nationalist National Unity Party (UBP) amid public anger over its austerity policies when in power.

The UBP government lost a non-confidence vote on June 5 when eight of its own MPs defected over a privatization program it said was necessary to honor a 2010 deal with Turkey.

Ankara is a key aid donor and the only government that recognizes the breakaway Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.

It was unclear whether the CTP would win an outright majority in the 50-seat parliament under the north's proportional representation system or would need to find a coalition partner among the three smaller parties which also contested the election.

The new government will have to cohabit with nationalist president Dervis Eroglu, whose five-year term runs until 2015.

Analysts said a CTP-led government could prompt an easing of Eroglu's tough stance towards talks with the Greek Cypriots in the south on ending the Mediterranean island's nearly four-decade-old division.

The Turkish Cypriot leader called on Sunday for an urgent dialogue between the rival political parties.

"It is absolutely vital that there be dialogue between the parties," Eroglu told reporters. "I think these elections are an opportunity to begin such a dialogue straight after the vote."

Eroglu met Greek Cypriot leader Nicos Anastasiades, president of the island's internationally recognized Republic of Cyprus government, for a U.N.-hosted get-together in early June but substantive talks have been on hold for a year.

The CTP was a strong supporter of a U.N.-brokered 2004 reunification plan that was backed by Turkish Cypriots but rejected by Greek Cypriots in simultaneous referendums.

The outcome resulted in Cyprus joining the European Union that year still a divided island and the Turkish Cypriots being denied the full benefits of EU membership.

As a result, the breakaway north has remained heavily dependent on Turkish aid and the program of public sector wage and recruitment freezes and tax hikes that Ankara has demanded in return dominated the campaign to the exclusion of the stuttering reunification talks.

"Today is the key day for a solution to the problems of the Turkish Cypriot people so that they can assert their own political will and establish an economy that enables them to stand on their own feet," CTP leader Ozkan Yorgancioglu told reporters as he voted.

Anastasiades has ruled out any resumption of the talks before October as his government pushes through swingeing austerity measures of its own that were demanded by international creditors in return for a 10-billion-euro ($13-billion) debt bailout.

Cyprus has been divided into Greek- and Turkish-Cypriot sectors since 1974 when Turkish troops invaded its northern third in response to a short-lived coup in Nicosia aimed at uniting the island with Greece.