Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan insists on extreme rhetoric against Greece. This time though, the Turkish president went so far as to launch threats on Twitter in the Greek language!
"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.," reads one of the posts in the official account of the Turkish president.
Continuing, Erdoğan said his country "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."
In a series of other posts, the Turkish president said: "We leave it to the international community to decide what it means to demand 40,000 kilometres maritime jurisdiction for Megitsi island, which is less than 2 kilometres from our country’s mainland but more than 600 kilometres from Greece [mainland] in the Eastern Mediterranean.".
He goes so far to make threats when speaking about the militarised islands in the Aegean Sea, saying that Greece's "use NATO and third party countries as a tool in this unlawfulness is nothing but an effort that will have a tragic ending"
Erdoğan also claims that Turkey "As an ally that has paid the highest price within NATO, we have calmly welcomed the provocations of Greece, which has not even responded to our military delegation meeting invitations for the last 2 years."
"However, we see that our counterpart misinterprets our patience and calm," he added.
In essence, this is a repetition of the threatening messages sent by Erdogan from Izmir , where he was for the military exercise "EFES 2022", where by pulling the rope above, he threatened our country that Turkey will use its power to implement the conditions " that Greece is violating "and called on Athens" not to repeat the mistakes it made a century ago."
In a message in Greek and Turkish, opposition SYRIZA President and former Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras commented on the provocative and threatening messages from the Turkish president.
As Tsipras noted on Twitter, "Greece will protect its sovereignty against any threat. So let the challenges stop and let us return to dialogue on the basis of international law."
The new statements by Turkish leadership are "historically unfounded and baseless tales that cannot challenge and, much less so, replace International Law and international treaties," Greek government spokesman Yiannis Economou said on Thursday.
Responding to media reports on further claims by the Turkish president that Greece should demilitarise the Greek islands, the spokesman underlined that "overall nothing can hurt our sovereign rights and our national sovereignty in any way."
Economou then called on Turkey "to stop the tactic of provocation and comprehend that the only path is a responsible and sincere communication in the framework of International Law and absolute respect of sovereignty."
The Greek foreign ministry on Thursday published a series of 16 maps on its website that seek to demonstrate and explain the illegal and revisionist nature of Turkey's assertions and actions concerning the Greek islands from 1973 until the present.
"In an effort to increase the wider public’s awareness of Turkish revisionism, the attached maps depict in a vivid and irrefutable way the Turkish illegal unilateral actions and claims," a foreign ministry announcement said.
As the announcement explained, the maps begin chronologically with the status quo enshrined in the Lausanne (1923) and Paris (1947) Treaties.
"Turkish claims are then presented, beginning with the illegal licensing of the Turkish state oil company (TPAO) for exploration of oil fields in areas of the Greek continental shelf in the North Aegean in 1973, and continuing with the attempt to usurp Greece’s responsibility for Search and Rescue services in half of the Aegean in the 1980s, the 'grey zone' theory in the 1990s, further escalation with the granting of new licenses in the Eastern Mediterranean, the endorsement of the 'Blue Homeland' as an official doctrine, the 'Turkish-Libyan Memorandu', reaching as far as the Turkish theory of the demilitarisation status of the Aegean islands," the minister said.
"The above-mentioned maps document the extent of Turkish revisionism in order to upend the status quo, violating International Law and the International Law of the Sea, and threatening peace, security and stability in our region."
The maps can be viewed on the ministry's website at the LINK.