Turkey's president plans provocative 'picnic' in symbolic Cyprus ghost town
Published Date: 11/13/2020
Source: news.yahoo.com
Turkey’s president is to make a provocative visit on Sunday to a once glamorous holiday resort that for nearly 50 years has been a surreal ghost town in the no-man’s-land that divides the Greek and Turkish parts of Cyprus. Recep Tayyip Erdogan has infuriated many Greek Cypriots by saying he will have “a picnic” amid the ruins of Varosha, a town of abandoned high-rise hotels, dilapidated restaurants and overgrown gardens. The Turkish leader announced the visit to Varosha, which has been sealed off since Turkey’s 1974 invasion of the island, during a news conference in Ankara last month. “We can have a picnic at Varosha,” he said. “We see it on screen, now we want to see it for ourselves.”