Description of Electoral System

(courtesy of IFES election guide)

Turkish Cypriots elect a president and a legislature. The president is elected for a five year term by the people. The House of Representatives (Temsilciler Meclisi) has 50 members, elected for a five year term by mitigated proportional representation.

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Elections in Cyprus (North)

(courtesy of wikipedia)

Presidential elections take place every 5 years. In the elections in order to secure outright victory a candidate has to have at least 50% of the votes. Otherwise the candidates that receive the two highest votes will go to second round voting one week later and the winner becomes the president.

The parliament is elected for a five year term by mitigated proportional representation. A party must cross the election threshold (5% of the total vote) to get any seats in parliament. The parliament is composed of 50 MPs, chosen from 5 electoral districts, Nicosia, Famagusta, Kyrenia, Guzelyurt and Iskele.

In the parliamentary elections, voters vote for individual candidates. There are two ways of voting.

• One can either vote for a party, which in effect means is voting for every MP candidate from that party in that elections district once. The voter can further prioritize the MPs in this kind of voting.
• Or alternatively one may not choose a party but would vote for different MP candidates from different parties. In this kind of mixed voting, a person can not choose more than the number of MPs from that district.

However the presidency, the parliament and any other authority in Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus is unrecognized because they are authorities of an unrecognized state. International community recognize Northern Cyprus as land of Republic of Cyprus, since it was captured by the Turkish invasion in 1974.