In Cyprus

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides will meet in Athens on Thursday 19 September to discuss the Crete-Cyprus electricity interconnection project.

The American Hellenic Institute (AHI) criticized Netflix's decision to restrict the international release of "Famagusta" to Greece and Cyprus due to Turkish government pressure.

Scheduled to premiere on September 20, the series covers the 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus.

With the scars still visible on his body 50 years after Turkey invaded Cyprus, Angelos Vougioukas, a member of the Panhellenic Association of Cyprus Fighters of 1974, looks back on the crucial first hours of the Turkish occupation of Cyprus, and the 99 days he spent as a prisoner of the Turkish forces.

Cyprus summers are strewn with tragedies and anniversaries. When the calendars turn on the last day of June, it’s as if something darkens even the sun that bathes the island. Besides, even if one wanted to forget, the signs that say: “Stop. Turkish-occupied territory.”

Events celebrating Europe Day and the 20th anniversary of Cyprus' accession to the EU are being organized this week by the European Parliament Office in Cyprus and the European Commission Representation in Cyprus, with the participation in two of them, of the Cypriot president Nikos Christodoulides, and the European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, Stella Kyriakides.

This summer will mark 50 years since Turkey's invasion of Cyprus, and for the last five decades tens of thousands of Turkish occupation troops have been present in the northern part of the island. 50 years later, the US still refuses to officially recognize Turkey's illegal occupation as an occupation.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in a speech he delivered to Turkish military personnel at a dinner Monday, not only defended the Turkish invasion of Cyprus but went even further by arguing that if Turkish forces had moved further south in 1974, then Cyprus might be all Turkish today

More specifically, Erdogan said:

According to the conventional interpretation of the events that transpired in 1973-1974, it was not the Polytechnic Uprising that actually precipitated the military dictatorship's downfall but the Turkish invasion of Cyprus eight months later, which was prompted by the overthrow of the Cypriot government of Archbishop Makarios III by Dimitrios Ioannidis' regime in Athens.

On the 40th anniversary of the unilateral Turkish Cypriot declaration of independence in the occupied northern part of Cyprus in November 1983, Greece has called on Turkey to adhere to UN resolutions on the ethnically-split Mediterranean island.

Every year on July 20th we remember the beginning of Turkey's invasion of Cyprus. July 20th, however, only marks phase one of the Turkish invasion. On August 14th, 1974 - despite the collapse of the dictatorship in Greece, the restoration of a democratic government in Cyprus, and the diplomatic efforts underway to find a way forward - Turkey launched phase two of its invasion, or Attila II.