Cypriots cling to hope in peace talks

As a new showdown looms over troubled Cyprus reunification talks, peace activists are clinging to the last vestiges of hope that a deal can be struck ending decades of division on the ethnically split island.

Every Saturday for more than a decade, people from rival sides have met over coffee at a medieval inn on the Turkish Cypriot side of Nicosia to discuss their vision of a united country.

But for the past two months, their chats have had to deal with a marked slowdown in the momentum of formal talks on reunification between Nicos Anastasiades and Mustafa Akinci, the Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders.

These formal peace talks — billed by diplomats as the best chance in decades to end the Cyprus conflict — are stuck as the two sides disagree on the way forward.

Last week a United Nations envoy launched shuttle diplomacy to avoid the prospect of collapse, and concerns are mounting that the process could be sidelined by Greek Cypriot elections next year.

Those at the coffee talks are concerned.

“We are very anxious, but that makes us all the more determined for a solution,” says Andreas Paralikis, a Greek Cypriot economist who was among the first to start mingling with Turkish Cypriots after checkpoint controls were eased to allow the crossing of people in 2003.

He belongs to a generation traumatised by war. He was a teenager when Turkey launched an invasion of Cyprus in 1974, carving the island into two after a brief Greek-inspired coup.

Now, with other Cypriots of all ages, he sits at the Buyuk Han to debate a conflict which has been omnipresent all their lives.

Although officially the process is open ended, the talks are taking place against the backdrop of plans by Greek Cypriots to push forward with exploration for natural gas offshore, an endeavour Turkey says is illegal, but that Cyprus says is its sovereign right.