Ad. Georgiadis: We will do what is necessary legally to cancel the registration of ‘Turkaegean’

“We will do what we have to do legally to cancel this registration and we will succeed” underlines the Minister of Development and Investments Adonis Georgiadis with his post on social media today “for all the failure with the registration of the term “Turkaegean” as trademark from Turkey”.

Among other things, the minister notes that “the Turks applied directly to the European Organization and not to us, there an examiner from a northern country saw the issue purely bureaucratically, i.e. found that no one else had registered this mark and gave it to the first applicant, i.e. in this case in Turkey. Thousands of trademarks are automatically registered every day with the same process. There was no approval from a higher political level, neither the Commission nor the EU has any responsibility… All this was done at a low bureaucratic level hence there was no political reaction”. He adds that the services here of the Ministry of Development and Investments had no jurisdiction to either approve or cut it and the EDE was ordered “not necessarily to punish someone, but to see what went wrong in the process and to fix”.

In detail, the minister states the following:

“For Turkaegean

First of all in politics when something goes wrong, you are to blame not to blame you have to show bravery and apologize. We don’t do everything perfectly nor do we always know everything. So to those who were genuinely upset with the late reaction of our State to Turkey’s registration of this “Turkaegean” term, I apologized although I was never relieved myself, I was never informed and I did not react or I could have prevented it and I did not. We will certainly do what is done at the legal level to cancel it and I believe that with the right legal arguments we will succeed.

But we have to put the debate on this issue in its proper dimensions away from the ridiculousness of the type that “I would return on foot” of the man who gave the name of Macedonia (and not a simple trademark) with Prespes to his knowledge ). And hypocrisy must have some limits.

So let’s examine this case in order:

A) the registration of this trademark is not encroached upon by any of our National Sovereignties and no, the Turks did not take the Aegean from us. In fact, we continue, now probably with indirect Turkish recognition, to have the full province of the authentic, Greek from ancient times, term “Aegean”.

B) the Turks applied directly to the European Organization and not to us, there an examiner from a northern country, saw the matter purely bureaucratically, i.e. found that no one else had registered this mark and gave it to the first applicant, i.e. to this case in Turkey. With the same process, thousands of trademarks are automatically registered every day. There was no approval from a higher political level, neither the Commission nor the EU have any responsibility, we were not sold by Europe and various other nonsense heard. All this was done at a low bureaucratic level, hence there was no political reaction.

C) the services of our Ministry here had no jurisdiction either to approve it or to cut it.

D) since it is so, why did I order the EDE? Because no one from this service informed the political leadership, for us to decide, whether or not we would like to raise an objection against this Sign. So the EDE is not necessarily done to punish someone, but to see what went wrong in the process and to correct it. Obviously I do not question the patriotism of any and many rather any employees of our Ministry or other Ministries. But this error is an opportunity to change the way we operate. These will be precisely indicated by the conclusion of the EDE.

E) as a Minister I had gone to Parliament at an unsuspecting time and explained that this service was not working as well as I would have liked and abolished it, transferring its responsibilities to the Industrial Property Organization, with an extremely better level of operation. This responsibility was transferred to the OBI in May this year, i.e. after the events. Following this OBI does not and could not have anything to do with this story.

F) the hypocrisy of my political opponents in this matter and their attempt once again to exterminate me politically this time exceeded all limits. Suddenly from being a “dangerous far-right nationalist” as I was consistently accused all these years, I now became a “traitor” and a “Turk’Adonis”. Note that this “sensitivity” was possessed by parties and people who believe “that the sea has no borders”, that “the Aegean belongs to its fish” accounts and parties that constantly for example blame Greece for the alleged pushbacks, adopting all the Turkish propaganda for the Aegean, they suddenly got angry supposedly for a brand…Hypocrites…

Finally, let’s say to Mr. Tsipras that of course during his tenure the Turks advertised the “Turkish Aegean” and then (the photo is from 2018) he neither went anywhere on foot nor protested anywhere.

Finally, I repeat, because this really bothers us, we will do what we legally have to do to cancel this endorsement and we will succeed.”