Cyprus of Turkish territory. Meanwhile, by 1964, "enosis" was a Greek policy that could not be abandoned; Makarios and the Greek prime minister Georgios Papandreou agreed that "enosis" should be the ultimate aim and King Constantine wished Cyprus "a speedy union with the mother country". Greece dispatched 10,000 troops to Cyprus to counter a possible Turkish invasion. On 15 July 1974, the Greek military junta under Dimitrios Ioannides carried out a coup d'état in Cyprus, to unite the island with Greece. The coup ousted president Makarios III and replaced him with pro-enosis nationalist Nikos Sampson. In response to the coup, five
Accession of Turkey to the European Union in the European Union. The former Greek Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis stated that Turkish membership of the EU could only be predicated upon, "full compliance, full accession" in December 2006. In 2005 the European Commission referred to relations between Turkey and Greece as "continuing to develop positively" while also citing a key barrier to progress being Turkey's ongoing claim of "casus belli" over a dispute about territorial waters boundaries. In September 2017, Greek Prime Minister, Alexis Tsipras, mentioned that halting accession talks with Turkey would be a strategic mistake by the European Union, amid a war of words raging between