TThe Uretsky president called on the Greek authorities to “learn lessons from history” and threatened consequences in case of provocations. Earlier, Ankara said that Greece had brought S-300 complexes to Turkish fighters, Athens denies this Recep Tayyip Erdogan Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, speaking at the Teknofest Aviation, Space and technology festival in the city of Samsun in the north of the country, appealed to the Greek authorities to “learn lessons from history,” Anadolu agency reports. “If you continue the current course of provocations, you will pay a high price. I want to tell Athens only one thing: do not forget about Izmir! <...> We will take the necessary steps at the right time. This can happen unexpectedly and on any of the nights,” the Turkish leader said. According to the agency, Erdogan is referring to the capture of Smyrna (modern Izmir) in September 1922, an episode of the Greco-Turkish War of 1919–1922. The Turkish army under the command of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk entered the city occupied by Greece, and the Greek troops were forced to leave it.
Relations between Ankara and Athens have deteriorated in the last few months due to a dispute over the status of islands in the eastern Aegean Sea, which were transferred to Greece following the Lausanne Treaty of 1923. The countries continued to argue about the delimitation of territorial waters and airspace, and Turkey made claims to Greece because of the weapons onislands. Erdogan said earlier that attempts to use islands with a non-military status in the exercises would end in disaster, accusing Athens of putting pressure on the Turkish minority that lives in Western Thrace, Rhodes and Kos. In response, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said that “history is not being rewritten because someone arbitrarily constructs it in his mind.”
At the end of August, CNN Turk reported that Turkish Air Force F-16 aircraft were flying in international space in the Aegean Sea and the Eastern Mediterranean, and Greece aimed missiles at them from the S-300 air defense system. According to Yeni Şafak’s source in the Turkish Defense Ministry, Ankara has decided to apply to NATO. The Greek Defense Ministry rejects the statements of the Turkish side and calls them myths, writes Newsbomb.gr with reference to sources in the department.
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