Turkey made one more step closer to irrationality, as shortly before the start of the 63rd round of exploratory contacts in Ankara and based on its known demand for the demilitarization of the Greek Aegean islands, now reaches the point of formally claiming that its choice Athens to maintain an army on these islands, deprives Greece of the right of sovereignty on these territories!
It all started last summer, when Turkey’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Feridun Sinirlioglu, wrote a letter to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on July 13 accusing Greece of “violating international treaties by militarizing the islands in Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean”.
Just 24 hours after July 27, the Greek permanent representative to the UN, Maria Theofili, responded to every demand of Turkey with a full body of arguments, invoking international law, rejecting any attempt by Ankara to challenge Greece’s sovereign rights in eastern Aegean.
However, on September 30, Feridun Sinirlioglou answered with an even more absurd rhetoric where in a letter to Antonio Guterres, according to the newspaper Kathimerini, he notes, among other things, that “Greek sovereignty in the islands of the Eastern Aegean depends on their demilitarization”. That is, these islands should no longer belong to Greece since it maintains an army on them!
Sinirlioglu reiterates that the demilitarization regime concerns Lesvos, Chios, Samos and Ikaria, while adding that the Lemnos and Samothrace the provisions are even stricter due to “proximity to the Turkish hinterland”.
Thus, he calls “once again on Greece to comply with the demilitarization provisions” of a series of treaties “and to restore the demilitarized status of the islands of the Eastern Aegean, as it was before the violations of Greece”.
In fact, in order to support his positions he proceeds to an unprecedented misinterpretation of the treaties of Lausanne (1923) and Paris (1947).
Foreign Affairs Committee passes Greek-French Defence Treaty
However, the Greek Foreign Minister, Nikos Dendias, responded to Ankara’s growing demand for the demilitarization of the islands and speaking to the competent parliamentary committee that is working on the Greek-French defense pact, informed them of the letter that was received on Monday afternoon.
As Mr. Dendias said, such claims can only be rejected while he accused Turkey of maintaining the Aegean army, the largest amphibious fleet, opposite the Greek islands.
As Nikos Dendias said: “Turkey claims that our country illegally maintains an army on these islands. That is, these islands threaten Turkey. The Greek islands of the Eastern Aegean threaten Turkey. Turkey keeps the Aegean army against them. The allegedly threatened Turkey maintains against them the largest amphibious fleet in the Mediterranean. It has issued a threat of war (Casus Belli) against Greece if we expand our territorial waters by exercising our legal right. It is the only country, the only country on the planet that has issued a threat of war against another country for the exercise of legal rights. And of course it has the past of the invasion to Cyprus. This Turkey, then, with this past and these contradictions, is asking us to disarm the islands of the Eastern Aegean. You understand that this can only be rejected, after much praise, for the umpteenth time, I must say, by this government, and all governments”.
