Nikos Anastasiades

The chosen by President-elect Donald Trump for Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, was until now the CEO of Exxon Mobile, the company which along with Qatar Petroleum were chosen by the Cypriot government to develop field No10 in the island’s EEZ.

Since Mustafa Akıncı became president of Turkish Cyprus, and efforts to find a federal resolution to the Cyprus problem picked up momentum, each time the ship of talks hit the rocks, the Greek Cypriots managed to get something extra to refloat the vessel.

A British colleague, who has been following the Cyprus problem right from the start in 1963, once said the Cyprus talks were very much like a plane that smoothly takes off every 10 years before making a crash landing each time. 

The Mont Pelerin rendezvous of the Turkish and Greek Cypriot leaders was slated to be an "end game" but it turned out to be an almost "game over." Upon request of the Greek Cypriot leaders, the deadlocked talks were suspended for one week and are scheduled to resume, this time in Geneva, on Nov. 20.

Greek Cyprus threatened on March 15 to derail a proposed EU deal with Turkey to curb the flow of migrants to Europe, insisting on longstanding demands including that Ankara recognize its government.
EU President Donald Tusk, meanwhile, said the deal needed to be rebalanced to be accepted by all 28 member states and EU institutions.

Was it indeed an effort aimed at arresting the decline in the share of his Movement for Social Democracy's (EDEK) votes or was he really concerned about the Cyprus talks process?

The Turkish Foreign Ministry has condemned an arson attack on a mosque located in Greek Cyprus, while the top Christian and Muslim leaders of Cyprus have said the attack had sowed discord and undermined peace on the island.

The four-page document that Greek Cypriot leader Nikos Anastasiades gave to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon during a meeting at Davos on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum underlined once again how delusional it might be to expect a quick Cyprus fix.

Ever since I started covering the Cyprus issue in 1990, I have heard two main things from Turkish officials, whom I considered to have the most rational and realistic approaches: 

1 - The parameters of the solution are known to both sides, there's no need to discover America over and over again. What is needed is for the actors to take the bitter pill and go that last extra mile. 

Turkey has made a diplomatic jumpstart to 2016.