By Michele Kambas
NICOSIA (Reuters) – Every week for the past 20 years, a group of Greek and Turkish Cypriots have gathered in a cobbled courtyard in Cyprus’s divided capital Nicosia to reminisce about the past and dream of a reunited homeland.
With the longest stalemate in peace negotiations in memory, it is a bleak prospect.
Andreas Paralikis and his friends jokingly refer to themselves as the Traitors Club, among an ever-expanding civil society seeking to forge links across the divide where politicians have failed.
Over the years, the Traitors Club has morphed from a group of well-meaning strangers from both sides of the conflict into a tight group of friends with a message for leaders that lasting peace is possible.
“We have become such good friends,” says Paralikis, a Greek Cypriot. “Coming here every Saturday is part of our life.” Turkish Cypriot Hasan Chirakli concurred.
“This place has given us the opportunity of having some hope for the Cyprus problem. To show people that Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots can be friends, and live together.”
They were young men when on July 15, 1974, a coup ordered by the junta then ruling Greece attempted to overthrow an elected Cypriot government, prompting a Turkish invasion five days later.
The seeds of division were sown earlier, when a power-sharing administration of Greek and Turkish Cypriots crumbled amid violence just three years after independence from Britain.
Half-a-century on from the invasion, Turkish troops remain in the so-called Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, a breakaway enclave recognised only by Ankara.
The situation remains an emotional trigger for NATO allies Greece and Turkey, frustrates Ankara’s ambitions of joining the European Union, and hinders energy potential in the east Mediterranean because of overlapping claims.
Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan will be present for celebrations in northern Cyprus on Saturday. In the south – recognised internationally as the legitimate Cyprus government, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis will join Greek Cypriots in a day of mourning, marked by air raid sirens at dawn.
IN LIMBO
A few metres away from the Buyuk Han, a 16th century Ottoman inn where the Traitors spend their Saturdays lies a ceasefire boundary first created in December 1963.
Buttressed by oil drums and stacks of sandbags, this time warp of decaying, bullet-riddled buildings known as the “Green Line” runs through the heart of the city, patrolled by a U.N. force known as UNFICYP.
In one abandoned apartment, unused tins of powdered milk sit on a kitchen shelf. An upright piano is propped against a wall in the living room, its keys missing. Further along the line a basement full of Toyota cars – brand new in 1974 – are left to rot.
The ceasefire line fans out to a 180 km (116 mile) buffer zone bisecting Cyprus east to west. The U.N. reports its authority is regularly challenged by both sides.
Peace talks are now stalled at two seemingly irreconcilable concepts – Greek Cypriots want reunification as a federation. Turkish Cypriots want a two-state settlement.
“The Secretary-General has made clear – the window of opportunity is only becoming smaller with the passage of time,” U.N. spokesperson Aleem Siddique said.
“There is a need for the leaders on the island to redouble their efforts to secure a political solution,” he said, standing with the crumbling ruins of Nicosia airport, abandoned in fighting in 1974, in the background.
Diplomats say the U.N. might give the Cyprus process one more push in September, when Greek Cypriot leader and President Nikos Christodoulides and Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar are in New York.
CLOCK IS TICKING
The Cypriots who drink coffee every Saturday are partly steeled by past failures, but admit to feeling frustrated.
“Its very disappointing,” said Sarper Ince, a retired teacher. “We are trying to keep our hopes not very high because we keep getting disappointed.”
“Hate and war never ended with a winner. There are always two losers,” added Nicolas Karageorgis, another regular.
“One loses more, the other one less. We don’t want to be losers.”
As well as sharing in the joys of life, they have also shared its sorrows.
A large portrait of one early member, Suleyman Erguclu, adorns the wall. A former journalist, Erguclu died in his sleep last August aged 68, never managing to see a reunited Cyprus. His last posts on social media were of his friends at Buyuk Han, taken a day before he died.
(Additional reporting by Yiannis Kouroglou, writing by Michele Kambas, editing by Angus MacSwan)
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