Voting time

Those were the difficult years, the primary school of my neighborhood had become barracks for the Turkish regiment which had to leave because of “increased security concerns” and “worries” that a clash with the Greek regiment could develop into a full fledged war between Turkey and Greece and was redeployed in my neighborhood, a few kilometers from the original site allocated for both forces that were sent to island in accordance with the founding treaties of the Cyprus Republic. As our school had become military barracks, the mosque of the neighborhood had become our school, excluding prayer hours.

This time, after decades, I was back in my old neighborhood mosque. This time it was converted into a polling station. In all past parliamentary and local elections held in the Turkish Cypriot political history, the new school building was a sufficiently big polling station for the neighborhood. This time, however, not only the mosque, but the municipal building, the additional municipal service building in the new quarter as well as the headquarters of the sports club were as well converted into polling stations.

As I was driving to the mosque yesterday morning, I remembered those years when all six classes of the primary school were having courses all together in the mosque building in the hearth of the neighborhood. I as well remembered the some sort of a dance-walk we were compelled to develop out of our concern to avoid the mud collected in the not so small holes in the road. Those were the times when the island was “united” but the Turkish Cypriot areas were grossly neglected by the “government” from which the Turkish founding partner was ousted by Greek Cypriot partners by force.

Polling station was very much like a big family gathering. Friends from primary school period, old and young relatives, former neighbors, friends who could not see each other for months, years were all there, some inside the mosque to vote, some engaged in heated political discussions under the old pergola in front of the coffee house opposite the mosque, some enjoying the shade provided by the huge “Verigo” grape tree covering the pergola, while some were playing cards. Demonstrating their democratic maturity, despite continued existence of the ideological divide between them, political antagonistic approaches were long over. There was no quarrel, no violence. It was as if the over-excited debates and tensions of the campaign period that divided families, separated friends never happened at all. Instead, people were discussing the problems the new government will have to tackle, irrespective who came first, second or whatever later in the evening when the vote count is completed.

How the talks with Greek Cypriots will be handled in the new period? Will there be a confrontation between the socialist and pro-settlement President Mehmet Ali Talat and a possible conservative National Unity Party, or UBP, dominated or a socialist-led three way coalition government? Could the election produce a strong-enough government to handle well without political opportunism and populist approaches the mounting economic situation? Would the new government accommodate well with Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, and would the AKP provide some urgent financial assistance which is desperately needed irrespective who comes to power?

Among the conservative elderly as well as one of every two young voters who somehow shifted from left and apparently voted for the conservatives yesterday, were all repeating the “It is time for unity” slogan of the UBP but in a rather different meaning than what the UBP was perhaps tried to tell the electorate during the campaign. They were all stressing that though they voted for the UBP perhaps it was in the best interest of northern Cyprus, settlement efforts and Turkey to have a right-left grand coalition between the UBP and the socialist Republican Turks’ Party, or CTP. Left-wing electorate appeared to be still skeptical of the success of such a government, citing ideological differences.

What would be the outcome of the election? Would the electorate produce a result forcing politicians abandon political differences and establish a grand coalition? There were still hours to learn that when this article was written.