Antonis Klapsis, Associate Professor of International History and International Diplomacy at the University of Peloponnese, recounted the events leading up to the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in July 1974 on “Voice of Greece” and the show “Our Global Voice” with Petros Diplas and Dimitris Kontogiannis.
Mr Klapsis began with the election of Makarios III as Archbishop of Cyprus in 1950 and the Cypriots’ pressures on Greece to internationalize the Megalonissos issue and the objections of the centrist governments of the period 1950-1952, which followed the doctrine of El. Venizelos’s statement on the non-public confrontation with Britain. He discussed the Papagos government’s decision to internationalize the Cyprus problem through the UN, the armed struggle of EOKA, the peculiarities of Cyprus’ binding independence in the late 1950s, and Archbishop Makarios’ efforts to amend the Constitution in 1963, which led to strong opposition from Turkish Cypriots and their subsequent withdrawal from the government.