No Turkish Cypriot MEP after the June 2024 European Parliament election

In the European Parliament election of 9 June 2024, no Turkish Cypriot was elected to any of the Republic of Cyprus's six seats. Niyazi Kızılyürek, elected on the AKEL list in May 2019 as the first Turkish Cypriot MEP since accession, served a full term from 2 July 2019 to 16 July 2024 and was not re-elected; AKEL's share was insufficient for a second seat, and the sixth seat went to the independent candidate Fidias Panayiotou.³²

Turnout figures for Turkish Cypriot voters have been published by Erol Kaymak, a Turkish Cypriot political scientist writing for the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP Comment No. 28, July 2024): 82,925 registered and 5,804 votes cast (7.0%) in 2019, and 103,281 registered and 5,676 votes cast (5.5%) in 2024. Kaymak sources these figures to Kathimerini Cyprus of 17 June 2024, not to an official return; primary confirmation from the Cyprus Electoral Service is required before any of these figures can be treated as established, and Cyprus Rights records them here as Kaymak's published figures only.¹

The Ministry of the Interior's separate figure of 834 Turkish Cypriots registered for the 2024 election refers to a narrower cohort: those registered on the basis of residence in the government-controlled areas. The Republic of Cyprus's stated position is that no separate quota of seats can be created for one community within a single national constituency and that the low participation figure is a matter of abstention rather than exclusion; Turkish Cypriot political actors and analysts argue that a single island-wide list under a Greek-Cypriot-majority electorate makes a Turkish Cypriot MEP mathematically contingent on Greek Cypriot party lists rather than on Turkish Cypriot votes. No EU institution has found a violation of EU law.⁴¹