“Turkey is not concerned about the maritime boundaries deal between Greece and Italy as it does not involve the Eastern Mediterranean or the Aegean Seas, where Turkey has shores,” Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Thursday.
“Their deal has proven the validity of Turkey’s argument on such maritime deals,” he said speaking to NTV.
He claimed that Greece had been demanding all islands, islets and rocks to be treated as the mainland, but they accepted Turkey’s argument in the Aegean and Mediterranean seas in their agreement with Italy.
The Greek Cypriot administration unilaterally declared its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) on March 21, 2003, all around Cyprus island, ignoring the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) and Turkey’s rights as if it is the only owner of the island, he said further.
Cavusoglu cleverly forgot to mention that the “TRNC” is the illegally occupied north of Cyprus.
However, he took again the issue of Hagia Sophia claiming that its status “is not an international matter but is a matter of national sovereignty for Turkey.”
He reiterated that the country’s top administrative court will make the final decision on the status of Hagia Sophia, whether it will be reconverted into a mosque or remain as a museum.
Built in380 AD, Hagia Sophia served as the patriarchal converted into a mosque after the Fall on Constantinople in 1453. It was converted into a museum in 1936.
Cavusoglu criticized Greece for comments on the matter, and claimed that the Greek government should not be talking about minority rights and religious freedoms when it consistently violates such principles.
“Greece is one of the last countries to lecture the world on minority rights as it is the only country in Europe without a mosque in its capital and has penalized minority religious authorities in Western Thrace for holding Friday prayers,” Çavuşoğlu said. He continued by noting that the Turkish minority in the area cannot even refer to themselves as Turks and the Greek government has been sentenced three times for violating their rights.
