Varosha: Forgotten tourist resort could settle the Cyprus dispute

A northern Cyprus beach resort, patronised in the swinging sixties by actresses Brigitte Bardot and Elizabeth Taylor, but now so deserted that its windowless hotels resemble concrete skeletons, may hold the key to overcoming one of the world's most intractable diplomatic disputes.

Until Turkey's armed forces invaded Cyprus in 1974 in response to a Greek-inspired coup aimed at uniting the island with Greece, Varosha epitomised the sybaritic pleasures of the east Mediterranean. But Varosha's mainly Greek Cypriot population fled the approaching Turkish forces, never to return. For 41 years, the resort has been empty, under Turkish military guard and so frozen in time that clothes shop mannequins still wear the fashions of 1974.

This may be about to change - and, with it, the prospects for settling the Cyprus dispute. The reason lies in the election on Sunday of Mustafa Akinci, an independent leftist, as leader of the Turkish Cypriot-controlled northern part of Cyprus.

Varosha is located near the city of Famagusta in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, a self-proclaimed state that no country except Turkey recognises. Mr Akinci has aired the idea of returning Varosha to the internationally recognised government of Cyprus, which is under Greek Cypriot control, as an act of good faith to build momentum for a settlement.

Until Mr Akinci, even Turkish Cypriot leaders open to a peace deal were reluctant to hand back Varosha unless as part of a trade-off in a final settlement. But Mr Akinci is different. During 14 years as mayor of the northern half of Nicosia, Cyprus's divided capital, he worked assiduously on projects of practical co-operation with his Greek Cypriot opposite numbers. His recent election campaign used an olive branch as its emblem.

By the standards of four decades of Cyprus-related diplomacy, events have moved with lightning speed this week. First, Nicos Anastasiades, Cyprus's president, gave an unusually warm welcome to Mr Akinci's election victory, saying: "At last, our hopes are high that this country can be reunified."

Then the two leaders had a long telephone conversation and agreed to meet on Saturday. Their talks will be a prelude to the formal reopening of peace talks, which were suspended in October 2014 because of a quarrel between the Cyprus government, which is an EU member-state, and Turkey over offshore energy exploration.

As always in the Cyprus dispute, it is best not to raise one's hopes high just because each side's leaders talk up a deal. As Alexander Downer, a former Australian foreign minister who served from 2008 to 2014 as the UN envoy for Cyprus, once observed wearily: "It's easy to sound in favour of a solution . . . You can train a parrot in a pet shop to say that."

But a Cyprus government spokesman said on Tuesday that, like Mr Akinci, the Greek Cypriots would soon announce unilateral confidence-building measures of their own.

One possibility, though perhaps not immediately, is a Greek Cypriot decision to permit a full range of international airlines to use Ercan airport in the Turkish Cypriot zone. This would help end the isolation of the Turkish Cypriots, whose mini-state is not in the EU, though its citizens can acquire Cyprus passports and so enjoy the benefits of EU membership.

The US, concerned about geopolitical risks in the east Mediterranean, and the UK, which operates a sovereign military base near Varosha, are undoubtedly eager to see Mr Akinci and the Greek Cypriots make progress.

Less certain is the attitude of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, president of Turkey, which pours financial investments and subsidies into the island's north, keeps sizeable military forces there and dislikes Mr Akinci's suggestion that it is high time for relations between Ankara and the Turkish Cypriots to be more equal.

Here are new types of friction which, rather than mistrust between Greek and Turkish Cypriots, may emerge as the real obstacle to a Varosha deal and full reconciliation on the island.

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