Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan referred to Greece, as well as the Greek-Turkish dispute, during a press conference following the NATO Summit.
Responding to the Greek prime minister’s claim that the casus belli is a “historical inaccuracy,” the Turkish president made a rather surprising comment:
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“The overwhelming majority of my people don’t even know what the issue of ‘casus belli’ is. If you ask them what it is, they won’t know. That’s why I don’t think we should burden our people with these issues. And we’re already telling our Greek friends: let’s not burden either Greek citizens or our own citizens with this. Come, sit down, let’s talk, and let’s get the job done.”
“Have we ever asked Mr. Mitsotakis about the defense equipment Greece has procured: ‘Why did you buy these?’” he asked at another point in his remarks.
He added that “we could say things like that, but there was no reason to. They are free to buy and sell as they wish. As for Turkey, we already produce these systems ourselves.”
Elsewhere, the Turkish president commented that the objections raised by Greece and Israel regarding Turkey’s acquisition of F-35s “have no place in my world.”
Netanyahu knows what he’s getting into; Mitsotakis shouldn’t have made the mistake of echoing his statements, Tayyip Erdoğan added.
At the same time, the Turkish president made it clear that he shares the Greek prime minister’s view on the Aegean. “I, too, share the same view as Mitsotakis regarding the resolution of Aegean issues. I hope that first our foreign ministers, and then, if necessary, we ourselves will sit down at the table and discuss this issue. But let me say this clearly and openly: resolving the issues concerning these waters is first and foremost the responsibility of the leaders,” he stated.
It should be noted that earlier on Wednesday, in remarks to the Turkish channel A Haber, Kyriakos Mitsotakis had emphasized that the only difference between Greece and Turkey is the delimitation of maritime zones.
