The founder of North Cyprus Rauf Denktas died on Friday after a long ailment. He was 88 years old and was died of multiple failure organs at Near East University Hospital in Lefkosa. He was hospitalized since May. Denktas was born in Paphos on January 24 in 1924. He was London based trained lawyer.

 The Eastern Mediterranean politics professor Erol Kaymak said, “He was Mr. KKTC he was very much a man of is time … you could rely on him to stick to the ethno-nationalist line that he believed in.”

Denktas’s supremacy of Turkish Cypriot politics was revealed in his every victory of presidential election between 1983 and 2000.

Denktas left politics in 2005 after declaring that he would not seek re-election. But as a guide he was always inactive in the politics.

Denktas lost two of his sons, one during surgery and another in a car crash. His surviving son, Serdar, served as prime minister for few time. Denktas, who is survived by his wife Aydin, also had two daughters and 11 grandchildren.