The calendar reads November 22, 1962. Archbishop Makarios is preparing to depart for Ankara, just two years after Cyprus gained independence.
His ministers, including Polykarpos Giorkatzis and Tassos Papadopoulos, are at the airport to bid him farewell and kiss his hand.
ΣΧΕΤΙΚΑ ΑΡΘΡΑ
Averof’s rebranding leans to the left
In fact, the then President of Turkey, Cemal Gürsel, made his private plane available to transport Makarios to Ankara and personally welcomed him at the airport alongside Prime Minister İnönü.
During this historic visit, however, tensions were not absent, as Turkish students booed the motorcade.
The solutions to the problems that were beginning to emerge on the island never materialized.
And a year later, Cyprus began to sink into bloodshed…
It took a full 37 years for a President of the Republic of Cyprus to visit Turkey again.
In the meantime, the brutal Turkish invasion took place, and as the years passed, the Republic of Cyprus began knocking on the door of the European Union.
In November 1999, Glafkos Clerides traveled to Istanbul for the Summit of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
Turkey no longer recognized the Republic of Cyprus. Consequently, the developments that unfolded—and continue to this day, 27 years later—came as no surprise. Glafkos Clerides’ title as President of the Republic of Cyprus had initially been omitted from the list of participants, before being corrected following interventions.
Anastasiades 2016
In early 2016, Nicos Anastasiades received an invitation to Istanbul to participate in the first UN World Humanitarian Summit, which was attended by dozens of heads of state and government.
Alpha Cyprus was the first to report on this invitation at the time.
In May 2016, Anastasiades was welcomed upon his arrival by Turkey’s then-Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu.
Although the visit began smoothly, it was marred by numerous incidents.
Nicos Anastasiades decided not to attend the official dinner hosted by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in honor of the leaders participating in the Summit, when he learned that the then-Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci had also been invited, believing that this was an attempt to elevate the status of the pseudo-state.
The diplomatic tensions were such that the President of the Republic of Cyprus canceled his scheduled meeting with Akinci, as part of the talks, immediately after the summit.
Nikos Christodoulides becomes the fourth President of the Republic of Cyprus to visit Turkey.
Watch the report by Giorgos Georgiadis
