Former New Democracy Prime Minister Antonis Samaras has challenged the foreign policy by Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis especially with regards to Turkey. In an exclusive interview with the Sunday edition of newspaper Kathimerini, the arch-conservative former PM blasted the choices of the current PM regarding resuming of the exploratory talks with Turkey or even considering to appeal of the International Court of The Hague for the continental shelf. It is the first time a former PM openly and publicly criticizes the policies of a current PM.
Antonis Samaras, who was PM from 2012 to 2015, opposed the exploratory talks with Turkey emphasizing that “you do not appease the expansionist.”
He also noted that the exploratory talks which resume in Istanbul tomorrow, Jan 25, “cancel” possible sanctions against Turkey.
“The international community does not ‘punish’ a country while it is formally negotiating. At the same time, Turkey does not accept the International Law of the Sea. It proceeds threatening with the use of force, which is prohibited by the UN founding declaration. [Turkey] generally snubs the whole world and is constantly raising new issues against us”, Samaras said.
He added that “the next peak of the Turkish threat will be Thrace where it already calls for a revision of the Lausanne Treaty.”
The former PM also opposed an appeal to the International Court of The Hague saying that “in this way we will give up everything that the International Law provides in our favor.”
Regarding the Prespes Agreement with North Macedonia, Samaras noted that “the problem we had was transformed into another – more dangerous” as “Turkey’s penetration in the region was not stopped after the Prespes Agreement, on the contrary, it was strengthened.”
In this context, he leaves open the possibility that when the memoranda of cooperation with Northern Macedonia come to the Parliament, he will vote against them.
Regarding the economy, the former prime minister said that the government was not to blame for the pandemic. In his interview with kathimerini, he asked that the EU proceeds with “partial debt relief for all countries” in order to restore growth.
Antonis Samaras is considered to lean more to the right of the conservative New Democracy, while Mitsotakis claims that the party to belong to “center-right”. As every former PM, Samaras has his own faction in the party and the government with some cabinet ministers to have come to ND from nationalist party LAOS.
Note that the factions within ND are mostly affiliated with Karamanlis, Mitsotakis and Samaras.
