Dimitrios Ioannidis

Henry Kissinger, the former US secretary of state who passed away on Thursday, took with him the secrets that pursued him like ghosts, making him steer clear of the Cyprus issue. Based on personal experiences linked to an obsession with the events of 1974, I can attest that this historic episode greatly perturbed him. In reality, Greece and Cyprus became victims of his cynical realism.

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.