With the stakes so high for Greece in Sunday's knife-edge referendum, some Greeks living abroad have flown home to cast their votes in hopes of tipping the outcome one way or the other.
On Saturday at Athens airport, among the streams of tourists heading for Greek island vacations, there were a few expatriated Greeks who had come back for the ballot.
"I came just to vote," Kostas Kokkinos, a 60-year-old Greek living on the EU island nation of Cyprus, told AFP as relatives greeted him in the arrivals hall.
He said he was voting "Yes" in the referendum, and then leaving just a day or two later.
Voting on the referendum was only possible in Greece, meaning members of the country's vast diaspora -- around one million of which were eligible to vote -- had to travel to Greece if they wanted to have their say.
Thanasis Hadzilacos, a professor in his late 60s working at Cyprus's Open University, brought his summer Greek vacation forward because of the referendum.
"I came earlier in order to vote," he said.
He added that he had been closely following events in Greece via the Internet but was not entirely certain which way he would vote until he spoke face-to-face with his Greek friends.
"I think I will vote 'No'," he said.
"I don't think either result will make much difference anyway, especially as it is so close."
The feeling in Cyprus, with its predominant ethnic Greek population and scars from its own 2012-2013 debt crisis, was of "sorrow and pity", Hadzilacos said.
With the stakes so high for Greece in Sunday’s knife-edge referendum, some Greeks living abroad have flown home to cast their votes in hopes of tipping the outcome one way or the other.
On Saturday at Athens airport, among the streams of tourists heading for Greek island vacations, there were a few expatriated Greeks who had come back for the ballot.
“I came just to vote,” Kostas Kokkinos, a 60-year-old Greek living on the EU island nation of Cyprus, told AFP as relatives greeted him in the arrivals hall.
He said he was voting “Yes” in the referendum, and then leaving just a day or two later.
Voting on the referendum was only possible in Greece, meaning members of the country’s vast diaspora — around one million of which were eligible to vote — had to travel to Greece if they wanted to have their say.
Thanasis Hadzilacos, a professor in his late 60s working at Cyprus’s Open University, brought his summer Greek vacation forward because of the referendum.
“I came earlier in order to vote,” he said.
He added that he had been closely following events in Greece via the Internet but was not entirely certain which way he would vote until he spoke face-to-face with his Greek friends.
“I think I will vote ‘No’,” he said.
“I don’t think either result will make much difference anyway, especially as it is so close.”
The feeling in Cyprus, with its predominant ethnic Greek population and scars from its own 2012-2013 debt crisis, was of “sorrow and pity”, Hadzilacos said.
