Markos Kyprianou is a Cypriot politician who served as Minister of Foreign Affairs until his official resignation on 19 July 2011, following the events of the Evangelos Florakis Naval Base explosion. A member of the Democratic Party, he was previously Cyprus's Minister of Finance from 2003 to 2004 and a European Commissioner from 2004 to 2008. He tendered his resignation as Commissioner on 29 February 2008 to become Foreign Minister in the government of President Dimitris Christofias; the resignation took effect on 3 March 2008, when his successor, Androulla Vassiliou, was confirmed as Commissioner.

On 11 July 2011, at Evangelos Florakis Naval Base, situated at Mari, Larnaca in Cyprus, a large amount of ammunition and military explosives self-detonated, killing 13 people, including the Commander of the Cyprus Navy, Andreas Ioannides, the base commander, Lambros Lambrou, and six firefighters. A further 62 people were injured. The explosion was the worst peacetime military accident ever recorded in Cyprus, with a yield of approximately 481 tons TNT equivalent, as determined by the official investigation into the accident. It was the largest artificial non-nuclear explosion of the 21st century until the 2020 Beirut explosions.