The meeting of the foreign ministers of Greece and Turkey, George Gerapetritis and Hakan Fidan, respectively, on September 5 in Ankara may be in the final stretch. Still, the latest statements of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan are not going unnoticed in Athens.
After the provocative statements at an event for the 101st anniversary of the victory of the Turks against the Greeks and the allied forces in 1922, with him going so far as to claim that: "The Greeks burned Smyrna", Erdogan referred again to Greece, sending a "message" about Turkey's positions in the Aegean Sea and Eastern Mediterranean.
Speaking at the Turkish Naval Academy, the Turkish president asserted that Ankara will continue to defend its rights in the Aegean and Cyprus.
"Our behaviour towards aggressive actions in the Aegean is already known to all our interlocutors. At the same time, we defend the rights and laws of our Turkish Cypriot brothers in the Eastern Mediterranean until the end," he said, referring to the developments in Libya, with an indirect reference to the illegal Turkish-Libyan memorandum.
"By supporting the legitimate government of Libya, we prevented the division of this country and secured our rights in the Mediterranean," he said.
The statements of the Turkish president provoked the reaction of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which spoke of "hostile statements that are counterproductive and do not contribute to the consolidation of the climate of calm, cooperation and dialogue that is being attempted to be built in Greece-Turkey relations in the current period."
At the upcoming meeting between Gerapetritis and Hakan in Ankara, the possibility of a visit of Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan to Thessaloniki in November or December will be discussed as part of a meeting of the High Council of Cooperation between Greece and Turkey.
At the same time, the details for the upcoming summit between Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, provided there is no negative development that will prevent it, will be set on the sidelines of the UN Summit in New York in mid-September.
READ MORE: Turkey: "Erdoğan's words created a crisis in Greece", writes Sözcü.
