Turkish Cypriot Election Victory Sparks Hope for Peace Talks

NICOSIA (Reuters) -A landslide victory for a moderate candidate in a Turkish Cypriot presidential election offers a glimmer of hope in breaking an eight-year impasse in peace talks on the ethnically split island, diplomats and analysts said.

Centre-left Tufan Erhurman won a commanding 62.7% of Turkish Cypriot votes in Sunday's election, final results on Monday showed, after campaigning on a platform of promising to re-invigorate stalled peace negotiations with Greek Cypriots.

"The mood music among everyone I have spoken to is hopeful, optimistic and pleasantly surprised," one western diplomat said.

Defeated incumbent Ersin Tatar, whose two-state solution demand was widely opposed by Greek Cypriots, trailed with 35% of the vote.

Greek Cypriot leader Nikos Christodoulides congratulated Erhurman, saying he hoped to meet soon.

"The key question is whether Christodoulides can respond positively to this huge shift," said analyst Fiona Mullen at Cypriot-based consultancy Sapienta Economics.

Cyprus was split in a Turkish invasion in 1974 after a brief Greek-inspired coup, and relations between ethnic Greek and Turkish Cypriots have been strained since peace talks collapsed in 2017.

In recent years, Turkish Cypriots have opened a war-abandoned Greek Cypriot resort town to tourists, while Greek Cypriots have intensified legal action against developers building on properties belonging to displaced Greek Cypriots in the north — measures that have dented the enclave's construction sector.

Outgoing leader Tatar had lobbied strongly for international recognition of the breakaway Turkish Cypriot state, but was unable to lift its isolation.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, who had supported Tatar's two-state policy, said the election result showed the democratic maturity of Turkish Cypriots.

But at least one of his allies, the far-right Devlet Bahceli of the Nationalist Movement Party, said the result was unacceptable and called for north Cyprus to cede to Turkey.

The size of Erhurman's victory suggested "people were fed up", Mullen said.

"My hunch is that voters saw that the more antagonistic Tatar approach was getting them nowhere," she said.

(Writing by Michele Kambas; Editing by Daren Butler and Alex Richardson)