When in 2020 we had the Oruts Rais crisis, the Emirati F-16s came and stationed in Chania armed, the foreign minister revealed
There has never been a period in the history of Greek-Turkish relations like the one we are going through “with 3.5 years of continuous crisis and indeed an escalating crisis” underlined the Minister of Foreign Affairs Nikos Dendiasduring his speech at an event of the permanent committee of the electoral district of Fokida of New Democracy, for the cutting of the New Year’s pie in ‘Amfissa.
As he reminded, relations with Turkey are timeless difficult with repeated seizuresbut which “were limited in time”.
We are not afraid of them. We know very well where we are and why. The example of Russia, if you project it to our neighborhood, is exactly Turkish revisionism. “With force I seek to change the borders”. No! 100 times no! (from the speech at the DEEP event of Fokida #ND). pic.twitter.com/xkC7N0IiJV
— Nikos Dendias (@NikosDendias) January 22, 2023
The big difference of these three and a half years is the duration of the crisis”, he noted and “every day is worse than the previous one, what is said today is worse than what was said yesterday. We have never experienced this before.”
“This required a continuous activity in order to be able to create a front to stop a perception of revisionism, that is, to change the border conditions, the conditions that Turkey was trying to impose through intimidation, and I want to tell you that I am proud, because I think we succeeded good”, he noted and added:
“We will have the huge honor when we hand over, to hand over the Greek territory bigger than we received it and that is a huge pride.”
As he mentioned, the government implemented a policy of open horizons. “We did not stop at the Aegean and the Balkans as is usually the case. We’ve expanded our footprint.”
“We made a policy, I call it a policy of 6 intersecting circles: Europe, from there and beyond our wider region – Israel, Egypt, the Arab world, North Africa, the Balkans. Beyond them, the rest of Africa. Greece had never dealt with Africa in its history.”
Tomorrow, after all, he is going to South Africa, where “a Greek minister has to go for 25 years. And yet, in South Africa we have, apart from being the biggest economic power on the African continent, we have a huge and powerful diaspora, which we don’t seem to remember very well.”
He will then go to Mozambique, who is the next president of the Security Council, just as Kambon (where he was last week) was the previous president of the Security Council, while Ghana (where he was the day before) was the previous one.
“You understand, when it has a crisis with Turkey, how important the United Nations Security Council is. We cannot ignore things. We cannot close ourselves in a microcosm” said Mr. Dendias.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs underlined that Greece’s relationship with the USA “is better than ever”: “Konstantinos Karamanlis was fighting to keep the 7 to 10. 10 guns Turkey 7 us. If one knows arithmetic, one can easily count now what the ratio is: it is 10-0,” he emphasized.
“Let’s assume, so to speak, that Turkey succeeds and convinces the United States to modernize the F-16s,” he said characteristically. “When Turkey gets the first modernized F-16, Greece will have 83 F-16s at the Viper level, the 70 level, 24 Rafales which are 4.5 generation fighters and will receive the first F-35.”
“We are not afraid of them, clean talk”, he noted characteristically. “The fact that we do not respond in the same way to insults, slanders, threats, has to do with our culture and the fact that we believe in a modern European democratic progressive country. This is who we are. We will not set up cockfights and fights.”
He also referred to the song “I will come one night” that the Turkish president has used to threaten Greece, which as he recalled was the song of the invasion that the Turks sang in ’63, an invasion that took place in Cyprus years later.
“We hear them, we note them, we understand them. We are ready. But know that this does not mean that we will follow the same language and the same example. We are a different thing,” he emphasized.
Referring to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Mr. Dendias once again defended Greece’s clean position. As he pointed out, he himself tried hard, for three years, to rebuild Greece’s relations with Russia. “But everything has a limit, everything has a limit,” he pointed out. “We have a clear choice in our foreign policy. And our choice, our gospel, is international law, independence, territorial integrity, equality, equality of states. That is, the charter of the United Nations.”
“There was no choice here,” he pointed out. “If we accept through the invasion of a larger country into a smaller country, regardless of whether it was right, whether it said something right, regardless of all that, the moment a large country, any country, invades another country, the whatever right he has, whatever right he has, has disappeared […] Things become white – black, good – bad”, he underlined. “The example of Russia, if you project it to our neighborhood, is exactly Turkish revisionism. By force I seek to change the borders. No. A hundred times no. This is not how it’s done. So we didn’t have the slightest choice in that.”
He also mentioned that he himself is proudbecause “in the 3.5 years we have succeeded in the broad framework of national unanimity” in matters of foreign policy and that the basic choices are not disputed: the agreements with Italy, with Egypt, historic agreements, the defense agreement with the United States, its 2nd amendment, the defense agreement with France.
He also noted that Greece has a long relationship with France and the Mitsotakis government is not the first to buy arms from France. However, “it is the first time that the Greek government has convinced the French Republic to sign a bilateral defense agreement. France, with only one other country in the world has a bilateral defense agreement: with Germany for historical reasons, signed it after World War II. We are the only ones.”
He also recalled the defense agreement with the United Arab Emirates, the largest military power in the Arab Gulf. Note how when in ’20 we had the crisis with the Oruts Race, the Emirati F-16s came and stationed in Chania armed.
Referring to the work of the government and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he pointed out that he has “signed most of the agreements ever signed by the Hellenic Republic or the Greek state since its establishment”.
“All this, to create this framework that will allow the country to be safe, stable, to be able to allow your citizens, you, to create and ultimately live happily with a better future for their children.” He pointed out that now is the time for the Greek people to measure and choose and stressed: “These are turbulent times. Especially after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, our world is not as we knew it, it is not the same.”
“We honestly submit our own proposal. We tell them that in the storm a ship cannot have many captains. And you can’t during the storm talk and say let the ship go and who will hold the steering wheel”, he noted and concluded: “In our opinion there is a good captain, he has proven it. There is a good crew and a good course for the boat.”
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