Apostolos Kouroupakis
Jimmy Carter passed away last week December 29, 2024, in his hometown of Plains, Georgia, at the age of 100. He had been elected President of the United States of America, with the Democrats, in the November 1976 US elections (his opponent was Republican Gerald Ford) and was proclaimed as the 39th President of the United States on 20 January 1977, remaining in the White House until 20 January 1981. But what makes President Carter important to Cyprus, or even how the election of an American president is relevant to Cyprus? The explanation is that his statements about Cyprus and the Cyprus problem were quite strong and probably pro-Cypriot during the election period, which raised high hopes among the Greek Cypriot refugees who only two years before had been driven out of their cities, towns and villages by the Turkish invasion in the summer of 1974. And of course there was a feeling that the previous Ford administration, with Henry Kissinger as Secretary of State, was partly to blame for the Cyprus tragedy.
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