Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis was denounced by the spokesperson of Turkey's ruling AKP party Ömer Çelik for not inviting the pseudo-state of occupied northern Cyprus to the Philia Forum, while he also threatened Greece and Cyprus.
Speaking after a meeting of his party's central committee, Çelik said:
"Mitsotakis presenting the Turkish army as occupying and then organizing a conference called the 'Philia Forum,' attended by the Foreign Ministers of Greece, Egypt, France, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and the [Republic of] Cyprus, the question is: Why was the Turkish Republic, a Mediterranean country and a country at the center of these issues, not invited to this forum?"
"In a meeting that was attended by the Greek Cypriot side, why was not the [unrecognized so-called] Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus [TRNC] invited? No meeting can be a friendship forum excluding the TRNC," he said.
Çelik said that "if the Greece and Cyprus dreams of taking with them those countries that have problems for other reasons with Turkey to achieve their maximalist goals, we would like to guarantee that we will turn this into a nightmare."
"We are not going to let this dream come true. They will not imagine such a thing, they will not take a step with such dreams, they will not even go crazy. They will not escape the nightmare if they take a step," he added.
Turkey is immensely frustrated as the Philia Forum, the brainchild of Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias, completely isolated Turkey in the East Mediterranean region, while boosting Greece's relations with Arab states in the Persian Gulf.
Effectively, as Turkey continues to act outside of international law and continues its threats and provocations against neighbouring countries, Greece has successfully sidelined Ankara as the key country of the East Mediterranean.
READ MORE: Philia Forum put Greece in the center of new transcontinental geopolitical order.