Long road ahead for renewed Cyprus reunification talks
Cypriots watched the negotiations in Geneva with skepticism. While their leaders did not agree, they did focus on the hardest nut to crack, security, and they agreed to work further on it.
NICOSIA, Cyprus — Whenever I go to Cyprus, I like to go to Paphos Gate, a gap in the massive Venetian walls that encapsulates the island’s condition. On the one side, the flags of Cyprus and Greece flutter in the wind above an old concrete pillbox that looks as if it were built for a World War II film. On the other side are the flagpoles of Turkey and Turkish Cyprus, but their “flags” are rigid — they are made of metal. They stand behind a fence topped with barbed wire and in front of a Turkish army pillbox.
In between these symbols of hostility, cars and pedestrians pass through the gate. Yes, Cyprus has been divided into two armed camps since the Turkish invasion of 1974 but, like the traffic through Paphos Gate, life goes on.
While walking to the gate Jan. 13, I met an old journalist friend who has lived in Cyprus for years. “Nothing’s changed,” he told me with a bemused shrug of his shoulders.
But when I got to the gate, I saw things had changed. The pillboxes are empty. In the 1980s, I used to see Turkish Cypriot soldiers walking along the Venetian wall behind the fence. There would be Greek Cypriot troops watching them from the pillbox opposite and, at a fork in the road just inside the gate, Swedish UN troops watching both sides.
