North ‘PM’ Ustel undergoes abdominal surgery

The north’s ‘prime minister’ Unal Ustel underwent abdominal surgery on Saturday after having been admitted to hospital with complaints of “severe abdominal pain” on Friday.

Doctors at the private Near East hospital on the outskirts of northern Nicosia, where Ustel is being treated, explained that he had undergone an “emergency endoscopic examination” on Friday evening which produced “no findings which would explain his complaints”.

As such, he then underwent an ultrasound scan, which found an increase in the size of his gall bladder and “widespread sludge”.

He spent the night in hospital before undergoing surgery on Saturday.

Ustel became ‘prime minister’ in May 2022 when his predecessor Faiz Sucuoglu found himself unable to form a governing coalition after refusing to acquiesce to a list of demands put down by his coalition partners the DP and the YDP.

He is already the fifth-longest serving ‘prime minister’ in the north’s history, and with the weekend’s leadership challenge now having been survived, Ustel now cannot be removed by his party through conventional means until after the latest date on which the north can next hold ‘parliamentary’ elections, in February 2027.

Should he remain in office until those elections, he will be second in the all-time list behind only Dervish Eroglu.