Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar on Friday met his predecessor Mustafa Akinci in what is the pair’s first public meeting since a bitterly fought Turkish Cypriot leadership election in 2020.

The visit was marked by a one-line statement from Tatar’s office, which stated that Tatar “expressed his gratitude to Akinci for his hospitality”, while Akinci issued a similarly short statement, saying, “I thanked him for his kind visit and wished him ease in his work”.

It is customary for Turkish Cypriot leadership election candidates to visit previous holders of the office, with Tatar also having met Dervish Eroglu and Mehmet Ali Talat in recent days, and his election opponent this time around Tufan Erhurman having also held recent meetings with Akinci, Eroglu, and Talat.

However, the meeting between Tatar and Akinci is notable on account of the animosity which existed and continues to exist between the two men.

Akinci alleged both during and after that year’s campaign that the Turkish government fought the election on the side of Tatar, alleging that the Turkish embassy in Nicosia was used as an “election headquarters”.

In an interview with television channel TV2020 at the time, Akinci alleged that MPs from Turkey’s ruling parties the MHP and AK Party had “visited villages and said, ‘do not vote for Akinci’”, and compared the embassy’s conduct during the election campaign to a coup d’état.

Turkish ambassador Ali Murat Basceri had responded in kind at the time, saying Akinci’s accusations had “no basis in reality” and said Akinci was “creating antagonism with Turkey as an election strategy”.

Akinci had made the accusations after Basceri had invited six ‘MPs’ from Tatar’s political party the UBP to a dinner at the headquarters of the Turkish Cypriot security forces command.

Hasan Tacoy, then ‘economy minister’ and one of the attendees, had quipped after the meal that “we talked about all kinds of elections”.

Later in that year’s campaign Akinci also claimed that representatives of the Turkish government had “threatened” him in an attempt to have him withdraw from the race.

At the same time, Turkish Cypriot newspaper Ozgur Gazete alleged that a team of 20 people from Turkey’s ruling AK Party’s marketing division were holding daily meetings with Tatar and his campaign team at the Lord’s Palace hotel in Kyrenia for over a month before the election took place.

That contingent reportedly included then Turkish vice president Fuat Oktay’s press advisor Ali Genc.

Alongside the article, Ozgur Gazete shared several photographs which showed Tacoy exiting the hotel accompanied by Genc and a team of others at 2.30am on October 2, 2020, and Tatar arriving at the hotel with a dossier at 5.30pm the following day, with the election being held on October 11 and October 18.

Tatar, ‘prime minister’ at the time, had his office release a statement accusing the newspaper’s employees of being “spies and agents” and of working with foreign intelligence organisations.

He was ordered by a court in 2023 to pay 20,000TL (€1,036 at the time) in damages to the newspaper for his remarks.

More recently, Akinci charged last year that Tatar’s support for a two-state solution to the Cyprus problem “serves one purpose”, with that purpose being to turn the north “into a province of Turkey”.

Tatar responded in kind, saying that “contrary to Akinci’s claims, we and Turkey are fighting for the TRNC to be perceived as a sovereign state”, and that “what Akinci should really react to” is that “the Greek Cypriot administration and those who want to help it … are forcing us to give up our sovereignty and to come under the umbrella of the so-called Republic of Cyprus”.