Çağrı Erhan, a close adviser to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, lecturer of International Relations at the Altınbaş University of Istanbul, and member of the Presidential Council for Security and Foreign Polic, stated that Greece's Aegean islands belong to Turkey.
Speaking to the national network TRT, he said: “The islands of the Aegean belong to Turkey."
"The Greeks do not say that the ownership of these islands is disputed, but they say that they belong to them and that they were handed over to them, first by the Italians and then by the Paris treaty of 1947,” argued Erhan, presenting his provocative theory.
“On the contrary, we say that the ownership of these areas has been disputed for many years. I think we should stop using that kind of narrative.
"If the Greeks claim that they are theirs then we too must say ‘no’ to that and insist that these really belong to us,” he said, interpreting International Law and international agreements according to Ankara’s point of view.
Another panel member on the TV show host endorsed Erhan’s theory, saying that the islands: “were ruled for centuries by the Ottomans.
In any case, logically if we say that we did not give these islands to Greece, then their sovereignty is not disputed at all. These belong to us.”
The excerpt was published on social networks by the Turkish journalist Abdullah Bozkurt, who lives in self-exile in Sweden. Bozkurt, who maintains the independent Nordic Monitor network, is a “red flag” for President Erdogan, due to the serious revelations he makes from time to time, through the page he manages.
#Turkey steps up campaign against #Greece with President's advisor Cagri Erhan openly claiming in state-run TV that Aegean islands, whose sovereignty was recently questioned by #Erdogan gov't, actually belongs to Turks, their status not disputed at all. pic.twitter.com/kQF7nZAdHh
— Abdullah Bozkurt (@abdbozkurt) July 3, 2022
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