Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu claimed on Wednesday that the sovereignty of certain Greek islands and islets “is not clear.” Prompt was the response of the Foreign Ministry in Athens.
Speaking to Turkish TV 100, Cavusoglou said that “there are islands and islets whose sovereignty is not clear” and listed several issues which he claimed were not solved between the two countries.
“There are with Greece in the Aegean that have not been solved… The conditional shelf, the FIR and the control of the civil aviation. As there are islands and islets whose sovereignty has not been determined,” Cavusoglu said.
The Turkish Foreign Minister argued in this “claimed” sense of him that the harassment of the helicopter carrying Greek Defense Minister Nikos Panagiotopoulos and Chief of General Staff, General Konstantinos Floros was not any, as the Turkish F-16s were conducting “routine flights” in the area.
“The provocative violations of our sovereignty in the air or at sea are not legitimized because they occur repeatedly or are endowed with the description ‘routine’,” Greek Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexandros Gennimatas said just a few hours after Cavusoglu’s interview.
“They remain illegal – in complete violation of international law and counter to the obligations undertaken by a country that says it wants to become a member of the EU – and undermine peace and stability in the region,” Gennimatas added.
Irony: in the same interview Cavusoglu said that “If Turkey were a member of the European Union, today, the EU would be stronger in the fight against not only COVID-19, but also all other hardships.”
