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–Greece relations Cyprus–Greece relations Cypriot–Greek relations are the foreign relations between Cyprus and Greece. Cyprus has an embassy in Athens and a consulate-general in Thessaloniki. Greece has an embassy in Nicosia. Both countries are full members of the European Union, Council of Europe and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). Relations between the two countries have been exceptionally close since antiquity. The Greek Cypriot majority in Cyprus and the ethnic Greek population of Greece share a common ethnicity, heritage, language, and religion, leading to an exceptionally close relationship between the two countries. Traditionally, Greece has been the major export