President Erdoğan warns Greece to demilitarize Aegean islands

While referring to the Greek withdrawal during the Turkish War of Independence, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on June 9 warned Greece not to dream or take actions that will make it regret in the future.

"We warn Greece once more to avoid dreams, statements and actions that will lead to regret, as it did a century ago, and to return to its senses," Erdoğan tweeted in three languages: Turkish, Greek and English.

Turkey neither violates anyone's rights or law nor lets anyone violate its own, the president said.

"Turkey will not relinquish its rights in the Aegean and will not refrain from using the powers granted to it by international agreements for the armament of the islands when necessary," he stated.

Greece and Turkey are NATO allies but have a history of disputes over a range of issues, including mineral exploration in the eastern Mediterranean and rival claims in the Aegean Sea.

The two countries came close to war three times in the past half-century, the last being in 1996 over the ownership of an uninhabited eastern Aegean islet. But Ankara has recently been questioning Greece's sovereignty over large, inhabited Greek islands — Rhodes, Kos and Lesbos, for example, would meet the description of "militarized" islands.

 

Erdogan, Diplomacy,

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