Ankara escalates the challenges: Akar talks about self-defense – Athens’ response

By Niki Zorba

Consecutive and with an obvious tendency to escalate towards Greece, are the statements of Turkish officials, shortly before they took the drilling rig out for research in the Southern Mediterranean.

The baton from Ibrahim Kalin was taken by the Turkish Minister of Defense, Hulusi Akar, who portrayed Greece as an expansionist power and spoke about Turkey’s right to self-defense.

“something is brewing against Turkey”, said the Turkish Ministerciting our country’s defense spending and talking about Greek expansionism, suggesting that Ankara has a right to self-defense in the Aegean.

“There is no logic for Greece with 3,000 islands in the Aegean to come in front of our noses and accuse us of expansionism,” said H. Akar, largely concluding that Greece, with procedures that started from 1832 onwards, has covered the entire Aegean and is an expansionist force against Turkey!”:

“They have covered the entire Aegean. Who is the expansionist? Here we are talking about a country that since its foundation has expanded 5 or 7 times. Who is the expansionist? Against Turkey”, Akar’s exact statement.

The Turkish Minister of Defense also referred to this as the cause of the Turkish paroxysm: the attitude of Greece’s allies towards Turkish provocations in general and the blockade with F-16s by the USA:

“Greece tried unsuccessfully to convince the United States not to sell F-16s to Turkey and announced a meeting at the technical level between Turkish and US delegations on August 15,” he said.

Unsubstantiated claims

The message that Athens sends is constant despite all the Turkish outbursts:

1. We are following very carefully and coolly the positions concerning Turkey’s new floating drilling rig, as well as its sailing. Greece always seeks to avoid tensions, but without making any concessions regarding issues of national sovereignty and sovereign rights.

2. Despite the continued Turkish provocation, it is clear that Greece has managed to highlight the fact that the Turkish claims or allegations have absolutely no basis.

3. This is shown by the public and clear positions of the German foreign minister during her successive visits to Athens and Istanbul, which reflect the demands made by the prime minister to the chancellor Olaf Scholz during their meeting on the sidelines of the European Council, in end of May, on the need to move Berlin away from the rhetoric of equal distance.

In addition, Athens reminds, among other things, that:

During his meeting with Mr. Soltz, Kyriakos Mitsotakis showed the map of the “Blue Homeland”, which shows the arbitrary Turkish claims and pointed out that Berlin cannot, in the face of such a situation, maintain equal distances between Athens and Ankara.

This discussion was made public by the Prime Minister at the press conference after the end of the European Council: “I made it clear to the Chancellor that there is no policy of equal distance in these issues from one member state of the European Union towards another member state of the European Union, the which is directly threatened by a neighbor which even has the status of a candidate country for membership in the European Union”.