Nicosia--Erham Tayfor lowers the black woollen shawl she knits outside her market stall and ponders the business she might have were her homeland not deemed illegal by almost every country on Earth.
"I hope we can change things," says the 62-year-old, who lives in the northern part of the walled city in the Cypriot capital Nicosia. "We want to be able to move freely and to trade without embargoes."
Tayfor is one of almost 300,000 citizens of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), a breakaway enclave occupying about a third of the Mediterranean island.
On Sunday they vote in a presidential election knowing that whoever wins will be hamstrung by a geopolitical snarl generations of leaders and successive UN chiefs have failed to untangle.
Incumbent Dervis Eroglu faces three main challengers in the election, which not surprisingly has been dominated by questions of the enclave's international status and its relationship with the Greek Cypriots to the south.
"There is a lack of recognition from the international community and a lack of integration of Turkish Cypriots" in the global economy, says Sibel Siber, a former prime minister tipped by polls to be Eroglu's main rival.
Following its independence from British rule in 1960, Cyprus was home to both ethnic Greek and Turkish communities.
In 1974, in response to an Athens-engineered coup seeking a union with Greece, Turkish troops invaded northern Cyprus, with the TRNC later unilaterally declaring an independent state.
AFP
