Many diplomats are celebrating the October 19, 2025, defeat of Ersin Tatar, the incumbent president of the self-styled Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, the proxy state Turkey established in the portion of Cyprus it occupied more than a half-century ago. Cypriots on both sides of the dividing line see Tufan Erhürman, who apparently has beat Tatar by 10 percentage points in the vote, as more moderate and willing to engage.
Even Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides has offered an olive branch to Erhürman, saying he looks forward to meeting the new northern leader “as soon as possible … to continue contributing to the effort to resume substantive negotiations for the resolution of the Cyprus problem, from the point where they were interrupted at Crans-Montana.”
Christodoulides is right to offer to resume talks, but the international community should go further to ensure they succeed. As Tatar steps down from his presidency, he believes he can enjoy a peaceful and lucrative retirement, much like his predecessors, the late Rauf Denktaş, and the still living Mehmet Ali Talat, Derviş Eroğlu, and Mustafa Akıncı have.
It is essential United Nations bureaucrats and European and American officials recognize that new strategies are necessary to achieve success.
With the exception of Turkey, the international community recognizes the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus as illegitimate, a Turkish attempt at creating a patina of respectability to cover an illicit military occupation. Yet, despite this, European and American officials treat the northern officials with respect. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s State Department, like Antony Blinken’s before it, even granted Tatar a U.S. visa on a Turkish passport rather than standing up for Cypriot sovereignty and requiring all Cypriots, whatever their pretense of statehood, get their visas on Cypriot passports.
A better strategy might be to now issue arrest warrants for Tatar and his ministers. Make them understand they are pariahs and signal to Erhürman that, if he fails to negotiate productively and instead prioritizes Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s interests over those of both Turkish and Greek Cypriots, his own retirement will be in isolation, unable to travel anywhere off Cyprus or perhaps Turkey.
After more than a half-century of failed diplomacy and Turkish foot-dragging, it is essential United Nations bureaucrats and European and American officials recognize that new strategies are necessary to achieve success. They should allow Christodoulides to play good cop. This is a natural role for him, since he is the legitimate president of all Cypriots. Indeed, while Turkish apologists say Turkey protects Cypriot Muslims, most Turkish Cypriots seek unity and normalcy and suffer under the Turkish Army’s occupation. Simply put, while Ankara says they protected Cypriot Muslims from “genocide,” it is the Turkish regime that now perpetrates cultural genocide against Cypriot Muslims.
By treating Tatar as a pariah—no different than Saddam Hussein, Omar al-Bashir, or Bashar al-Assad—the international community can signal to Erhürman that he can make a fresh start. That Erdoğan himself has retroactively charged previous Turkish leaders with crimes also creates a precedent. Just over a decade ago, for example, he imprisoned former Turkish President Kenan Evren and Air Force chief Tahsin Sahinkaya to life in prison for their roles in the 1980 coup. Erdoğan cannot have it both ways: If Evren’s regime was illegitimate because the military delivered him to power, then Tatar’s was as well. Following the 1980 coup, the late Turgut Özal guided Turkey back to democracy, however flawed it might have been.
The message the international community should give Erhürman is that he can negotiate with Christodoulides the parameters of transition, but should he seek to preserve an illegitimate regime and pretend that he is truly its president, he will be treated as a pariah to be hunted down, imprisoned, or exiled. For this message to have credibility, however, it is necessary to put Tatar where he belongs: in Nicosia Central Prison.
