A Greek government spokesman on Friday dismissed the latest bellicose and increasingly paranoid language emanating from official Turkey, with a combative Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan this time calling on the Greek people to vote out the Mitsotakis government in Athens.
“It’s a reality that our neighbor in the Aegean – politically, economically and militarily – is not at the same level as us. That’s why in Turkey’s strategic calculations it (Greece) has the place it deserves. I hope the Greek people will give a message and lesson, via the democratic route, to those in power (in Greece), who run after adventures that will mark a catastrophic end for the Greek people,” Erdogan told an audience of military cadets.
In Athens, government spokesman Yannis Economou replied that the Turkish president appears troubled by Greece’s continuous strengthening in the military, diplomatic and economic fields.
“It’s very obvious that the prime minister’s (Kyriakos Mitsotakis) successes and the continuous strengthening of Greece are bothering Mr. Erdogan. Even if he wants Greece weak, we are doing and will continue to do everything that promotes our just national interests. Besides, someone truly powerful doesn’t need to declare this all the time,” the spokesman added.
Erdogan quickly returned to a steady diet of nationalist rhetoric and threats only days after presenting a more conciliatory tone at a NATO summit in Madrid.
Switching between exhortations and “warnings”, often expressed in a streetwise manner, and with a view to staying in power ahead of a coming election in Turkey, he added:
“Instead of solving our differences with dialogue and negotiation, they (Greek side) are hiding behind the skirts of others; we recommend to the administration of Greece, which trying to convey bravado, to learn a lesson from developments in our region, as well as from events a century ago,” the Islamist Turkish leader said, referring to the Greco-Turkish war of 1919-22.
In a related development, Greek MEP Eva Kaili on Friday charged, in a letter to the EU Commission, that an ongoing tourism ad campaign within the EU by the Turkish state, featuring the term “Turkaegean”, as illegal.
“Registration of the brand name ‘Turkaegean’ is yet anther example of Turkey’s hostile foreign policy against the EU and its member-states,” Kaili, an EP vice-president, wrote in a tabled question towards the Commission.
In the tabled question, Kaili, who is elected with the KINAL-PASOK party and a member of the group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in the EP, asked what steps the Commission will immediate take to delete the specific term from the Union’s European Union Intellectual Property Office and to block the use of the term by Turkey.”
Finally, Kaili emphasized that the term cannot be employed as a geographical denominator for commercial uses.
