Turkey had invaded Cyprus on 20 July 1974, fearing that the rights of the island’s Turkish minority were threatened by the recent EOKA coup advocating union with Greece. Once the fighting ceased, the island remained divided, and the Turkish Federated State of Cyprus was founded on 13 February 1975 in the northeastern area under Turkish control.

This Turkish Cypriot political poster was collected in 1975 by the geologist Edward Spooner, who was surveying a copper mine at Limni on the northwestern coast. He found it on the wall of a café when visiting an evacuated village. The poster, ‘Everyone vote for Denktash,’ mobilizes support for the Turkish Cypriot politician Rauf Rasit Denktash (1924-2012), who governed the republic as president from 1976 to 2005. The poster likely relates to the 1975 election, in which Denktash was voted first speaker of the republic’s Assembly, representing the National Union Party which he had founded.