Over the years, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has repeatedly made the hand sign of the ultra-nationalist, neo-fascist, and Islamist ‘Grey Wolves’.
The former US Secretary of State says Erdogan’s tactics ‘do not befit good neighbourly relations between two NATO member states’, only way to confront Putin ‘adequate show of force’.
Turkey may have suspended its effort to aggressively press its claims against Greece, but it is certain that it will revive them, perhaps even more vigorously, when international political conditions permit.
Greek-Turkish relations are an extremely powerful card in the Turkish president’s hand, which, as it appeared, he has no intention of exhausting, yet
The general consensus among observers was that Biden had offered assurances that he will try to push the sale of 40 F-16s to Turkey through Congress.
Erdogan clearly indicated that he got what he wanted from the deal regarding Sweden and Finland, and that declared he would leave the summit with his 'hands full'.
In response to Turkey’s challenges to Greece’s sovereignty over Aegean islands, the US and the EU recently issued statements supporting respect for Greece’s sovereign rights.
The Turkish president did not say whether he will raise at the NATO summit his persistent demands that Greece demilitarise a number of its Eastern Aegean islands
'Greece is maintaining its composure. At the same time, it is absolutely prepared, at any moment, to defend its sovereignty and sovereign rights,' said Katerina Sakellaropoulou.
' I am not the one who will say we are not talking, but we shall defend Greek positions with the absolute certitude that we have [international] law on our side,' Mitsotakis said.
The Greek Armed Forces must bolster their deterrent capabilities, so that it will be clear to all that any effort to violate Greece’s national independence is destined to fail.
'We encourage our NATO Allies, including Greece and Turkey, to work together to maintain peace and security in the region and resolve differences diplomatically.'
Earlier, Mr. Mitsotakis attended service at the Ecumenical Patriarchate, on the occasion of the ecclesiastical feast day of the Sunday of Orthodoxy
Last July Erdogan came up with the newest groundless claim - that because Greece has defensively militarised some of its islands near the Turkish coast, in violation of the treaties of Lausanne and Paris, Athens automatically loses sovereignty over those islands.
It remains to be seen what will be the policy of the new German government, after the departure of Angela Merkel and the appointment of the Green party’s Annalena Baerbock as the country’s foreign minister.
'The socialist prime minister of Spain was obliged to take into consideration the decisions of the EU,' said government spokesman Yannis Economou, noting that the leader of Spain’s opposition has opposed a further tightening of relations with Ankara.
The author of Erdogan’s brand of expansionist neo-Ottomanism and of pan-Islamism in the Middle East was his former foreign minister and prime minister, Mevlut Davutoglu, a noted professor of international relations.
Sources say that the Joint Chiefs of Staff are closely coordinating with the chief of Greek Police and the chief of the Hellenic Coast Guard in order to ensure the most effective possible monitoring of the borders, and deterrence if necessary.
“Unfortunately, Alexandroupolis is not just one base – all of Greece has been transformed into a US base. I did not manage to count how many American bases there are in Greece. If we compile them, we get the sense that all of Greece is a US base,” he said.
The parliamentary representative of the secularist Republican People’s Party, established by the founder of the Turkish Republic, Kemal Ataturk, declared that Erogan has made his country a “laughing stock through his mishandling of the procurement deals.