Turkey, faithful to itd policy of provocations, once again threatened Greece, this time via Vice President Fuat Oktay.
Oktay, in an interview he gave on a YouTube channel, expressed his displeasure over the fact that a few days ago the head of the Hellenic National Defence General Staff (GEETHA), Konstantinos Floros, visited the islands of the eastern Aegean.
“We see who comes and congratulates who, right? Yesterday, the mayor of Istanbul was congratulated by the mayor of Athens: 'We are by your side, brother'. The 'brotherhood' between them is clear," the Turkish vice president said.
"Tell your brother who is with you to tell the Chief of the General Staff not to take pictures with Halicarnassus (Ἁλικαρνασσός, Turkish: Bodrum) behind him," he added.
"Turkey does not allow such photos and is doing what it has to do. Turkey does not speak empty words, when it says 'we will come suddenly', if it says it, we will do it. Especially Recep Tayyip Erdoğan does not speak to the public," said the vice president of Turkey.
It is recalled that Turkey warned Greece in December 2022 that a missile could hit the Greek capital unless “you stay calm,” further escalating its rhetoric against Athens.
“Now we have started to make our own missiles,” Erdoğan said during a speech on Sunday in Samsun, in northern Turkey. “Of course, this production scares the Greeks. When you say ‘Tayfun,’ the Greek gets scared and say, ‘It will hit Athens.’ Well, of course it will.”
Tayfun, which is Turkish for “typhoon” is a short-range ballistic missile developed by Turkey. The missile, which was test-fired in October over the Black Sea and hit a target at a distance of about 560 kilometres, a range more than double that of the current missiles in Turkey’s arsenal.
“If you don’t stay calm, if you try to buy something [to arm yourself] from here and there, from America to the islands, a country like Turkey will not be a bystander. It has to do something,” Erdoğan added.
Turkey has stepped up its rhetoric against Greece in recent months amid what Ankara sees as a growing military buildup on the Greek Aegean islands, close to Turkey’s coastline. In a repeated, thinly veiled threat, Erdoğan has said: “We can come down suddenly one night when the time comes.”
Last week, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu warned Greece to stop militarizing the Aegean islands, otherwise Ankara “will take the necessary steps on the ground.”
Despite being NATO allies, the neighboring countries have been at odds for decades over a number of bilateral disputes, including maritime boundaries, overlapping claims to their continental shelves, and the long-running Cyprus dispute.
Earlier this year, Greece called upon its Western allies to put an end to Turkey’s inflammatory rhetoric or risk another Ukraine situation.
READ MORE: İbrahim Kalın: Greece will have serious consequences if it expands its territorial waters.