Cyprus dispute Kingdom of Cyprus. In February 1489 it was seized by the Republic of Venice. Between September 1570 and August 1571 it was conquered by the Ottoman Empire, starting three centuries of Turkish rule over Cyprus. Starting in the early nineteenth century, ethnic Greeks of the island sought to bring about an end to almost 300 years of Ottoman rule and unite Cyprus with Greece. The United Kingdom took administrative control of the island in 1878, to prevent Ottoman possessions from falling under Russian control following the Cyprus Convention, which led to the call for union with Greece ("enosis") to grow
Cyprus dispute the boundaries of the island of Cyprus itself and involve the guarantor powers under the Zürich and London Agreement (Turkey, Greece, and the United Kingdom), the United Nations and the European Union, along with (unofficially) the United States. The 1974 Cypriot coup d'état, ordered and executed by the Greek military junta, was followed five days later by Turkey's invasion/intervention, leading to the occupation of the northern part of the internationally recognized Republic of Cyprus. In 1983, the Turkish Cypriot community unilaterally declared independence, forming the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, a sovereign entity that lacks international recognition with the exception