But this is not the first such case. For example, in the mid-1970s, first Athens and then Ankara missed the Eurovision Song Contest a year apart. In both cases, this was due to Turkey’s invasion of Cyprus and Greece’s reaction to it, RBC reported.
In addition, Lebanon, which did not want to fulfill the requirement of obligatory broadcasting of the Israeli number, did not take part in the contest in 2005.
In 2017, Russia refused to participate in Eurovision because of Ukraine’s refusal to let singer Yulia Samoilova into the country. The Russian side rejected the proposal to replace the artist or organize her performance in a remote format.
