Turkey’s opposition challenges Erdogan to “take back 18 islands occupied by Greece”

Turkey’s government and opposition are delivering a nationalistic race targeting Greece and Cyprus. After Erdogan’s spin on the Lausanne Treaty, the “borders of our heart” and Cyprus flag, the Kemalists from CHP joined the chorus asking him to reveal when exactly he plans to “take back 18 islands” from Greece!

Speaking at the parliamentary party group but addressing the Prime Minister, Binali Yildirim, the leader of Ataturk’s Republican Party CHP, Kemal Kilicdaroglu said

“In Cyprus, this time the TRNC* has 37% of the land. They want to reduce it to 29.2%. They want to sell Cyprus. We ask them: Is this island ours? Yes, they say.

Should our flag be on these islands? Yes, they say. But there, there is the flag of Greece. Then why don’t you intervene? we ask them. And what do they answer? We have more important things to do, we have a leader and we are seeking a chair for him.

The Greek flag is waving on 18 islands. These islands belong to us. When we hear the rooster crow. There is the Greek flag. They are under occupation. They speak about the Lausanne saying ‘we lost territories.’ We lost 18 islands under our nose. And now I ask Binali Yildirim. Will you take back the 18 islands or not? Are you nationalist or not?” (via Sigmalive)

So the threats and challenges coming from Turkey are just expression of internal struggle between Kemalists and Islamists trying to prove who is the most nationalist of all?

Possible. The problem is, however, that we cannot know how far the choleric and unpredictable President of Turkey can go. History has shown that Ankara can be very quickly practically aggressive when cornered for whatever reasons.

By the way: a couple of months ago, when the CHP brought up the issue claiming that the “islands occupied by Greece” were 16. Now, the CHP added two more.

*TRNC – the illegally Turkish-occupied part of Northern Cyprus since 1974

PS Why not make the islands “20” right away? When we take them back, we can nicely divide them among our two countries when we renegotiate the Lausanne Treaty. 😛