A return to politics and to Cyprus may be on the cards for Huseyin Ozgurgun, the former Turkish Cypriot ‘prime minister’ who fled the north to Istanbul in 2019 after 16 million TL (around €2m at the time) which he had not formally declared was found in his bank account.

In the five and a half intervening years, it has been widely believed that should Ozgurgun return to the north, he would be arrested upon his arrival. This had made the chances of a return seem remote, but rumours of a return have been doing the rounds in recent days.

The rumours abounded on Thursday night after Adil Ozgey, chairman of the Lefka branch of the north’s largest party the UBP, posted a photograph of Ozgurgun to his Facebook page with the caption “we have missed him”. Ozgurgun belonged to the UBP until leaving the island in 2019.

While social media was awash with rumours of an unlikely return, news website Haber Kibris reported that the rumour’s source was in fact an address given to the UBP’s party congress by current party leader and ‘prime minister’ Unal Ustel on Wednesday, in which he made explicit reference to Ozgurgun.

“Some names are covered not by the police but by the chief public prosecutor’s office. I am aware of this. These are not insurmountable problems. The former prime minister of this country cannot return to this country. The fact that Huseyin Ozgurgun will be arrested as soon as he returns is not an insurmountable problem,” Ustel reportedly said.

He is quoted as adding that the north’s chief public prosecutor’s office “can overcome this”, and that “I will continue to do my best to ensure that the former prime minister returns to the country”.

“My wish is for him to return to the country.”

Ozgurgun on Friday responded to the news by giving two opposing responses to two different news outlets over whether he is thinking about making a return.

He told Haber Kibris that “if my party fell into a difficult spot, I would come back in a heartbeat”.

However, he did say that given the “existing success and order within the party”, a return now “could cause complications”.

As such, he said all UBP members should “make a joint decision” on whether or not he should return.

Shortly afterwards, he told newspaper Yeniduzen that returning to the island “seems like a distance possibility”.

“Still, it is a pleasure to be on the agenda, but seven years have passed since the day I said I was leaving. I guess there is a group which loves me, they miss me, but it surprised me to be on the agenda so suddenly,” he said.

Despite this, he said, “my daughter goes to school here, my wife has projects”.

“When I say ‘return’, of course I would return to Cyprus. It is the land in which I was born and raised … I also have a house there. I can come and stay if necessary, but I have no plans to return in terms of politics at the moment,” he said.

Born in 1965, Huseyin Ozgurgun entered frontline politics when he was elected to the north’s ‘parliament’ in 1998, before serving as ‘foreign minister’ between 2009 and 2013 under ‘prime ministers’ Dervish Eroglu and Irsen Kucuk.

He made his name as a politician with a slick image and a sharp tongue, with a high-profile marriage to actress Inci Pars only serving to raise his profile in public discourse. It was he and not

When Kucuk resigned as UBP leader following a poor result for the party at the 2013 ‘parliamentary’ election, Ozgurgun, 25 years his junior, was chosen as his successor.

He successfully formed a coalition with the DP and independent ‘MPs’ in 2016 to become ‘prime minister’ but lost the job after the 2018 ‘parliamentary’ elections when, despite a much-improved electoral performance, four other parties formed a coalition without him.

In the autumn of 2018 he faced a party leadership challenge at the UBP’s party conference and finished in second place behind Ersin Tatar in the first round of the subsequent internal party election.

He then resigned ahead of the planned second round showdown election with Tatar the following week, allowing Tatar to become UBP leader.

When the chief public prosecutor’s office sent a file to ‘parliament’ over the finding of the undeclared money, ‘parliament’ voted to lift his immunity as an ‘MP’ by 41 votes to two in October 2019. The next month, he left the island to go to Turkey.