From my notebook: what others wrote off as a pointless mission impossible

Konstantinos Kombos arrived in Bishkek just hours after Kyrgyzstan had secured a seat on the UN Security Council for the 2027-28 term. Kyrgyzstan was the final stop on the Foreign Minister’s tour of Central Asian countries — a region Turkey regards as its own sphere of influence, making any visit by a Cypriot Foreign Minister something close to a mission impossible.

Clearly, many of his predecessors saw it that way too. With a handful of exceptions — among them Nikos Christodoulides’s visit to...