Putting Cyprus together may be impossible

APOSTOLIS, A RETIREDABBATRNCTRNCTRNC Greek-Cypriot dentist aged 78, tours his former clinic in Varosha, now a derelict shell of a building, for the first time in nearly half a century. His friend Despo wipes away tears in front of her grandfather’s old shop, where she would park her bike after school. Varosha was once home to some 39,000 Greek-Cypriots and swarms of tourists. Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton strolled on its beaches. Four young Swedes, later known as , gave one of their first concerts here. Now it is a ghost town, overgrown by bushes and trees. Opposite Apostolis’s clinic, painted over the façade of what was once a Greek high school, are a pair of flags, one Turkish, the other belonging to the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus (), set up after the island was split by a Turkish invasion in 1974 into Greek and Turkish portions.Fenced off since the invasion, when its Greek-Cypriot residents fled the advancing Turkish troops, Varosha was partially reopened earlier this year. Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, ordered the army to hand the town over to the . This has allowed visits by Greek-Cypriots living in the southern part of the island, in the Republic of Cyprus, which the outside world considers the legitimate government of the whole place. But it also bolsters the , which no country but Turkey recognises, and paves the way for the development of property still claimed by displaced Greeks. That, in turn, further complicates the Herculean task of reuniting the island. That was the point: Mr Erdogan and Ersin Tatar, the Turkish-Cypriot leader, have insisted for the past year that a united Cyprus is no longer possible. In New York in September Mr Tatar and Nicos Anastasiades, president of the Republic of Cyprus, seemed to agree that they had nothing to discuss.