Turkey vows to protect Turkish Cypriots’ rights, slams Greek policies

Turkey will never abandon the Turkish Cypriots and take all the necessary steps to protect their rights, the defense minister has said, slamming Greece and Greek Cyprus for disrespecting Turkey's interests and rights in the Aegean and Mediterranean.

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"It should be well known that no project that ignores and disrespects Turkey's and Turkish Cypriots' rights in the Mediterranean can succeed," Defense Minister Hulusi Akar told a symposium about the developments in the Aegean and Mediterranean on Sept. 9 in İzmir on the Aegean Coast.

Akar referred to Greece and Greek Cyprus' efforts to confine Turkey to Antalya Bay by ignoring the fact Turkey has the longest shoreline in the Mediterranean and suggesting that a 10-kilometer-square island can generate 40,000 kilometers square exclusive economic zone.

Turkey will not allow the right of Turkish Cyprus to be disregarded, Akar said. "We will never let their rights be usurped by a fait accompli," he said, citing Greek Cyprus' unwillingness to share the hydrocarbon revenues with Turkish Cyprus.

Akar explained that the Turkish side has presented its will and did its part for reaching resolution on the island but all these efforts were nixed by Greece and Greek Cyprus. "It's therefore required that a solution should be based on the establishment of two independent, equal states," he said.

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President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan sent a video message to the symposium, calling on Greece to resolve the problems through dialogue and by avoiding unilateral acts. Erdoğan recalled that thousands of refugees, who fled the civil war and massacres in Syria that have been going on for years, lost their lives in the Aegean.

"It has been engraved in the memories as a shame in the modern...