Faithful to the doctrine of provocations and inflammatory statements once again was the Turkish Minister of Defense Hulusi Akar.
This time, according to SKAI, Akar, speaking to the Anadolu agency, went so far as to accuse Greece of expansionism while once again raising the question of the Greek islands’ sovereignty.
In fact, he stated that Turkey has the right to self-defense in the Aegean due to the “militarization of the islands”.
At the same time, the Turkish Defense Minister targets both Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias, stressing that they are spoiling “the possible positive climate that could be created between the two countries”.
“The attitude of our neighbor Greece is strange, abnormal and decisive. It’s abnormal posture, literally. As they didn’t just go to the USA, so that we wouldn’t be given the F-16s, they also went to Germany and said ‘don’t give the submarines’. We do not want the Greek-Turkish problems to become Turkey-EU, Turkey-Europe, Turkey-NATO and Turkey-USA problems. The problems of the two countries are problems of Greece and Turkey. But unfortunately the Prime Minister of Greece, as well as the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Greece, with aggressive rhetoric and aggressive actions are spoiling the possible positive climate that could be created between the two countries”, said Hulusi Akar.
“They make baseless statements. Now they keep talking about neo-Ottomanism. In our conversations, in our meetings, in our requests there is no such thing. We say international law, treaties of Lausanne and Paris. This is what we say and we claim our rights”, he emphasized at another point of his interview, twisting the fact once again.
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Then, after showing maps, he emphasized that “that is you with 3,000 islands in the Aegean and you will come in front of our noses and accuse us of expansionism? There really is no logic. We want third countries to see and understand this. There is something that has started in 1832 and continues. There is a process. They have covered the entire Aegean! Who is the expansionist? Even high school students see this. Here we are talking about a country that has expanded 5 or 7 times since its foundation. Who is the expansionist? Against Turkey!”.
Afterwards, the Turkish Defense Minister said that Greece has increased its defense budget to a significant extent. “They quintupled him! We tell them don’t get tired, what you are doing is little for the Turkish Armed Forces”.
“In the 12th article of the Treaty of Lausanne and in the 14th article of the Treaty of Paris it is stated that these islands were granted to Greece under the condition of demilitarization. They are the islands with a demilitarized status. There are 23 islands, of which they militarized 16! And they come before us with frivolous arguments”, he underlined.
“They went and installed airfields, tanks, mortars. So doesn’t that give us the right to self-defense? Isn’t the installation of weapons under our noses a threat to our country? What happens if we react? Doesn’t the sovereignty of these islands become debatable because of militarization?” Hulusi Akar added…
