By MENELAOS HADJICOSTIS
Associated Press

NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) - Voters in Cyprus cast ballots in a presidential election Sunday hoping the Mediterranean island nation will overcome the decades of division that have kept the island split along ethnic lines.

Opinion polls show incumbent President Nicos Anastasiades leading his two main opponents, but not guaranteed to get the 50 percent support needed to avoid a Feb. 4 runoff.

Concerns have arisen over widespread voter apathy, especially among young people unhappy with a political system they see as tainted by corruption and ineptitude.

With three hours to go before polls closed, Chief Returning Officer Kypros Kyprianou said just over half of registered voters had cast ballots so far. That's nearly 11 percent fewer than during the same point of balloting for the 2013 presidential election.

"I urge all citizens to come out and vote," Anastasiades said after voting. "No one is justified to complain about the election's results afterward," if they don't participate.

Other candidates include Stavros Malas, backed by the communist AKEL party, and Nicholas Papadopoulos, leader of the center-right DIKO party and the son of the late former President Tassos Papadopoulos.

Cyprus was split into a Greek-speaking south and a Turkish-speaking north in 1974 when Turkey invaded following a coup by supporters of union with Greece. Only Turkey recognizes a Turkish Cypriot declaration of independence and it maintains more than 35,000 Turkish troops in the north.

Voter Stella Olympiou said: "I'm hoping for a solution to Cyprus' division first of all, and to improve the people's standard of living, to give us back the cuts from our salaries."

Another voter, Maria Georgiou, said the next president needs to push the country forward. "We've been at a standstill too long," she said.

Anastasiades, 71, has campaigned on his experience, which he says brought reunification talks with breakaway Turkish Cypriots farther than at any time in more than four decades.

But both Malas, 50, and Papadopoulos, 44, have attacked Anastasiades for the failure of the recent peace talks that ended in July. Malas said the president was not bold enough to clinch a deal, and Papadopoulos said the president made too many concessions at the talks.

Anastasiades and Malas have said they would reach out to Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci to the negotiations restarted. Papadopoulos said he would first sound out U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

Malas and Papadopoulos also accused the incumbent of not doing enough to support a shrinking middle class hit hard after 2013 when Cyprus needed a multibillion-euro rescue package from its Eurozone partners and the International Monetary Fund.

Anastasiades has said his leadership brought the country's economy back from near bankruptcy.

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