TURKEY: Gazing through the evening heat haze at two festively decked-out Turkish frigates standing offshore, I am either in Kyrenia or Girne and immediately in the troubled waters of the Cyprus question.
Girne is the Turkish name on the signposts for this ancient carob-trading seaport turned resort, and Kyrenia is the still-used Greek name. To most politicians in the Turkish protectorate of northern Cyprus, 1974 was yesterday and 1963 was the day before that, I had gathered during last week's daunting round of celebrations of the 28th anniversary of the 1974 "peace and freedom intervention".
Meanwhile mourning marked the event in the Greek-Cypriot south, where 1974 is "the Turkish invasion".
The northern Cyprus leader, Mr Rauf Denktash (78), used this occasion skilfully to ram home the message that the invasion had followed 11 years of misery and persecution since 1963. In that seminal year, Cyprus's partnership agreement of three years before, when Britain left, ended in fighting. The black-robed archbishop President Makarios was blamed.
In this intersecting imbroglio - now involving the EU, the UN, Turkey and Greece - the presence of Ankara's new hard-line Foreign Minister, Mr Sukru Sina Gurel, and his Minister of State for Cyprus Affairs, Ms Tayyibe Gulek, added interest. This especially when he said there was no relationship between Turkey's EU "accession process" and settling the Cyprus partition issue.
(An analysis in an Istanbul newspaper meanwhile raised the hare of a possible veto of Turkey by Greek Cyprus if it entered before.)
One of the main opposition leaders in the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus (TRNC) finds "the Motherland's" thinking "short-sighted". Mr Mehmet Ali Talat of the Republican Party, who intends to challenge Denktash in elections in 18 months, said the tens of thousands of Turkish troops here will eventually be on the table.
He wants a federal solution and says the status quo is maintained by force.
The Turkish Foreign Minister also accused the south of being disingenuous in current negotiations and reiterated Ankara's option to annex its protectorate.
"Our options are unlimited," he said. This would be in the event of failure of face-to-face talks between Mr Denktash and President Glafcos Clerides (83) of the Republic of Cyprus.
They have been getting nowhere since January and last met on Tuesday to argue the difference between a confederal and a federal solution. The Turks also chided the EU for its stance that Cyprus could enter even without a partition settlement.
Mr Gurel said: "It will be a European Union problem in the end. If the EU goes on with its wrong steps regarding Cyprus they will end up finalising the division of the island making it permanent and putting upon it a European Union stamp and making Turkey and the TRNC freer than ever to go along their own way."
At Saturday's national parade, dominated by perhaps a mile of military hardware, the Turkish minister apparently saw no irony when he said it was "a paradox" that the south had just displayed its new attack helicopters at a time of peace talks.
He backed "equal sovereignty" for the two sides.
His junior colleague said the EU was not a party to the partition negotiations "and declarations giving encouragement to one side certainly do not help". Under Cyprus's 1960 independence treaty, Turkey was a guarantor, she said.
Most northern politicians seem emotionally unable to move on without an acknowledgement of their sovereignty, of "the fact that we exist", as Mr Denktash told a plush breakfast for foreign journalists and academics.
There is supposed to be a "blackout" on the talks but the northern leader did not mince words in giving his version of them. "We are not going to be colonised by the Greek Cypriots," he said likening their policies to those of Mr Slobodan Milosevic.
He even issued a statement saying "rumours" were being spread that "even though the Greek Cypriots have accepted Turkish Cypriot sovereignty, Mr Denktash is stalling'. This is a big lie." He called again for "a new partnership" to replace that of 1960.
"We say 'accept that we are sovereign over our territory so that we can negotiate'. Their answer is simply 'no'." The events sought to get another message out: that but for the invasion "there would be no Turkish Cypriots here today", as Mr Denktash put it. A plausible part of his stance is that the TRNC is a functioning state with democratic institutions.
There was much talk of "the Belgian model" and even the Swiss, but it remained unclear just what may be the story by the end of the year when the partition talks are to end and the EU is ready to start accession talks.
The best question of the week came from an Austrian journalist: "Well," she said, after sitting through a tedious history lesson from the Speaker of the TRNC parliament on the mendacity of the Greek Cypriots, "do you have anything in common?"
Prof Dr Vehbi Zeki Serter was non-plussed. He started with a list of what is not shared. Eventually he came up with "a certain Mediterranean outlook, perhaps", making one wonder why he would want to live in one of two "semi-detached houses", as he explained the confederal idea - never mind a federation.