Five days before the first round, Tatar announced a partial reopening of the ghost town of Varosha, sparking international condemnation and the fall of his cabinet after the junior partner in the coalition withdrew from the government.

He announced his candidacy and set out his vision for a second term on 5 February 2020 at a rally in Nicosia titled "Trust and Determination Evening".

He defended the federal model for the resolution of the Cyprus dispute as the only feasible and reasonable option, declaring "We do not want to be a minority amongst Greek Cypriots, nor do we want to be a sub-administration dependent on Turkey.

A key campaign promise was to fully reopen the ghost town of Varosha, with the land being used by its original inhabitants under Turkish Cypriot sovereignty.

[10] Özersay ran on a platform advocating that there were alternatives to a federal solution, proposing a model of "partnership based on collaboration" instead.

[32] On 5 October, Özgür Gazete, an online newspaper in Northern Cyprus, published photos of Ersin Tatar meeting advisors of the Turkish Vice-president Fuat Oktay in a hotel in Kyrenia, reporting that the meetings had been taking place daily with Tatar briefing a Turkish ruling party campaign team about campaign developments and receiving strategic directives.

[33][34] Tatar released a statement in response, claiming that "foreign intelligence agencies had been secretly photographing technical teams from Turkey and serving them to websites set up specifically to manipulate the election".

[38] On 6 October 2020, with five days to go before the election, Ersin Tatar flew to Ankara upon the special invitation of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

The ceremony took place nonetheless, with Tatar and Erdoğan taking part virtually via videoconferencing from a live press conference in Ankara.

During the ceremony, Tatar announced that the ghost town of Varosha, which had been sealed off during the 1974 conflict after the flight of its Greek Cypriot population, would be partially reopened on 8 October.

[39] The move met with condemnation from Josep Borrell, the foreign policy chief of the European Union, and expressions of concern from the United Nations Security Council and Russia.

[51] Erhürman congratulated the two candidates reaching the second round and said that the election results would be critiqued by the CTP Party Assembly.

[52] On 13 October, the CTP Party Assembly unanimously voted to support Akıncı in the second round, citing their common goal of the federal solution as the rationale.

He promised an expansion of the relations with Turkey, stated that he would be ready for talks on the resolution of the Cyprus dispute "based on facts" and speaking in English, said "We are the voice of Turkish Cypriots, we are fighters, we are fighting to exist within the TRNC, Therefore our neighbours in the south and the international community should respect our fight to live with freedom within the TRNC."

[58][59] In his concession speech, Akıncı congratulated Tatar, but reiterated that "this was not an election conducted under normal circumstances", and wished that "no one would resort to these ways once again".

EDEK stated that the Greek Cypriots should put an "end to illusions", claiming that the results showed that Ankara had the defining role in decision making in the north.