The north’s ruling coalition partners “have not met in 20 days”, ‘deputy prime minister’ and DP leader Fikri Ataoglu said on Tuesday, as coalition partner YDP mulls a potential withdrawal.

Speaking to television channel Kanal T, Ataoglu said he had spoken to YDP leader and ‘transport minister’ Erhan Arikli on Monday, and that Arikli had expressed “complaints about citizenship and employment”.

Arikli had also put those concerns into the public demain on Monday, telling the north’s public broadcaster BRT that while he as the leader of a coalition partner party does not have the right to naturalise people as ‘TRNC citizens’, local branch office chairman of UBP, the coalition’s largest party, do.

He added that his party’s leadership “has difficulty explaining even our own actions to our base”, and that “my base is holding me accountable”.

Conversations over YDP’s future in the coalition came about after the party’s advisory board on Saturday night voted to tell its leadership to withdraw from the ‘government’, with a final decision on the matter set to be made by its party congress on January 25.

Arikli has argued against the idea of his party leaving the coalition, pointing out that the current ‘government’ is one of the longest lasting in the north’s history and saying that “this stability should be preserved”.

He was also keen to point out a number of policy successes he has achieved in his time as ‘transport minister, including the completion of the new terminal at Ercan (Tymbou) airport and the introduction of 4G mobile internet, both in 2023.

Additionally, he looked ahead to the Turkish Cypriot leadership elections which are set to take place in October.

“The 2025 presidential elections are very important. We must carefully evaluate the pros and cons of making a decision to withdraw from the government at such a time for our party and for the country,” he said.

Arikli ran to be Turkish Cypriot leader at the last election in 2020, coming in fifth place in the first round.

In terms of domestic politics, he was keen to point out that YDP “is not indispensable to its coalition partners”, and said “the government can continue without YDP.

“The UBP can remain in power until 2027 with the support of two DP MPs and independent MPs,” he said, though the stability of such a coalition would be up for debate.

With Hasan Tosunoglu having left DP in November, YDP withdrawing from the coalition would bring the coalition’s ‘parliamentary’ majority down to just two, rendering UBP reliant on DP, and opening the door for rebellious UBP ‘MPs’ to have much more bargaining power.

One such rebellious ‘MP’ may be Hasan Tacoy, who challenged ‘prime minister’ Unal Ustel for the leadership of the UBP in September and claimed that there were “major irregularities” on voting day.

His voting block of five UBP ‘MPs’ could effectively place themselves in the driving seat of the ‘government’ were YDP to leave the coalition, while Zorlu Tore, ousted as ‘parliament speaker’ in October, may also be willing to throw a spanner in the works.