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PostPosted: Mon Feb 21, 2005 10:35 pm
by turkcyp
pantelis wrote:turkcyp,

Does Eroglu mainly represent the settler-voters?

If not, who?


Settlers does not vote as one block in any election. The closest they come doing that was 4 (or 5 may be I don’t exactly remember) elections ago, when there was a main settler party. If my mind does not let me down, they could not even get into the parliament with big numbers.

Since then they vote for different parties, mainly of course for MAP, UBP and DPP in that order. Only in the last election they started voting substantially for pro solution parties, like CTP. CTP in the last election showed couple of them as MP candidate and they voted for it. Then later on he budged and left CTOP and hence minority government and new election. But the MP who left CTP tried to form another party to collect all settler votes in one address, and apparently he failed as he did not even get %2 of the vote.

So what changed in the last election that they start voting in the ranks of CTP. Well up to Annan Plan, they always thought that any solution would basically kick them out of Cyprus for good, so they rather supported status quo then solution. But with the appearance of Annan Plan they realized that majority of them would even have a chance of staying in Cyprus even after the solution, so their commitment to solution process is increased, and they started supporting pro solution parties mainly.

Especially the initial big wave 70’s comers. I mean these people moved back for good from Turkey 30 years ago. They had kids here, which had no other life other than Cyprus. They have acclimated to Cyprus society fairly better than the new comers, so when the first opportunity arise to support the peace process they immediately jumped the wagon.

But unlike what GC politicians think the number of settlers (the way we call settler, the TRNC citizens that get to vote, not the workers) in Cyprus is not that high, and when they do not vote as one big block they do not affect that much decision. I would say in this election they mainly have voted for %40, %35, %25 for UBP, DP, CTP in the same order.

Of course this is my take on them,