The window of opportunity to reunite the divided island of Cyprus slammed shut in 2004, when Greek-Cypriot voters overwhelmingly rejected a United Nations plan. A week later the Greek-Cypriot government was allowed to join the European Union anyway, while the Turkish-Cypriots, who had voted in favour of reunification, were frozen out. But some people just won't give up. A year ago, with new leadership on both sides, the Greek-Cypriots and Turkish-Cypriots embarked on another round of talks aimed at reunifying the island. But good intentions are not enough. Dimitris Christofias, the Greek-Cypriot president, and Mehmet Ali Talat, his Turkish-Cypriot counterpart, are old friends, and they both genuinely want to put the country back together, but after 50 meetings time is running out. There will be elections in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus in April, and the new president is likely to be hostile to reunification. The chance of Turkey ever joining the European Community is now shrinking towards zero and without the incentive of that goal, why would Ankara ever force the Turkish population of North Cyprus back into a union with the Greek-dominated Republic of Cyprus?The present obstacle to EU membership for Turkey, which first applied 22 years ago, is the opposition of the German, Austrian and French governments. They believe a Muslim-majority country has no place in what they see as a Christian Europe.If anti-Muslim prejudice were the only obstacle, it could still become a EU member one of these days, but the tectonic shift is not driven by whoever is in power in Paris, Berlin or Vienna. It is driven by a growing concern in the EU that global warming is going to generate huge numbers of desperate climate refugees in Africa and the Middle East who will try to get into Europe. If this view comes to prevail in the EU, the main question becomes: where do we hold the line against waves of climate refugees? Should we try to control the frontier along the eastern borders of Greece and Bulgaria (about 300km), or bring Turkey into the EU and try to control 1100km of borders with Syria, Iraq, Iran, Armenia and Georgia? It's not rocket science. Unless it is overwhelmed by climate change, Turkey will be all right outside the EU. It will overtake Germany in population within a decade, and has a higher per capita income than several Eastern European members of the EU. Turkey was a second-rank great power until the end of the 19th century, and is likely to be back in that role by the mid-21st.But if that is the role Turkey will be playing, why would it want to withdraw its troops from North Cyprus and push the Turkish-Cypriots into a single state with the Greek-Cypriots? Why would the Turkish-Cypriots themselves want to resume their place as an unloved minority in a Greek-run state, rather than retain their own state in close association with the rising regional great power?This is not the last chance for reunification of Cyprus: 2004 was. Greek-speaking Cyprus is prosperous and secure, Turkish-speaking Cyprus is approaching the same state, and Turkey has no incentive to support the creation of a reunified state in Cyprus. Partition is permanent. It's over.Gwynne Dyer is a London-based journalist whose work is published in more than 45 countries.