Turkey withdraws warships after strong response from Greece

Turkey withdrew some warships and hurried to delete a propaganda tweet posted by the Turkish Embassy in the US, that claimed the Oruç Reis drilling ship started research in Greek maritime space.

The Turkish research ship remains moored outside Antalya despite Turkey boldly announcing that from the Tuesday that just passed until August 2, that it would violate Greece’s water.

The Turkish embassy accused Greece of pretending that the search area is in Greek territorial waters, in an attempt to justify its maximalist aspirations.

Hours later, the tweet was deleted and the embassy wrote that Oruç Reis had stated on July 21 that it would begin investigations.

Greek President Katerina Sakellaropoulou met with the National Defense Minister Nikolaos Panagiotopoulos to discuss the latest developments in the Aegean and the movements of the Turkish fleet.

The following is their dialogue:

President: What are we learning?
Defense Minister: We are in our position and they are in theirs …
President: Is Oruç Reis still anchored?
Defense Minister: The situation will be normalized when the fleets return to the naval bases … We are a country that never suffers.

The Defense Minister who was accompanied by the head of the military, even stressed to Sakellaroupoulou that “We have strong backs of support” pointing to Konstantinos Floros.

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis did not hide his intense annoyance with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s provocations. When asked by a journalist how he felt seeing the image through Hagia Sophia, he replied: “I did not feel anything less than all Greeks.”

Although Erdoğan had a cheap “victory” by converting Hagia Sophia, Turkey’s inability to penetrate Greek maritime space since Tuesday and withdrawing its warships demonstrates that Turkey is unwilling to risk war with a country that is not already devastated by years of war like Libya or Syria as it has significant internal military issues.