Turkey’s Erdogan halts talks with Greece as tensions flare again
ANKARA (Reuters) -President Tayyip Erdogan stated on Wednesday Turkey was halting talks with Greece, partly over a dispute with the Greek prime minister and what Ankara calls airspace violations, marking the newest reversal within the neighbours’ long-testy relationship.
Final yr, after a five-year hiatus, the 2 NATO members resumed talks to handle their variations within the Mediterranean Sea and different bilateral points. The talks have made little progress and the nations have regularly traded barbs.
Erdogan stated Turkey had cancelled a bilateral cooperation platform, dubbed the Excessive-Degree Strategic Council, with Greece, including in a speech to lawmakers from his ruling celebration that Ankara needed international coverage that “had sturdy character”.
“You retain placing on exhibits for us along with your planes,” Erdogan stated, referring to a dispute about airspace over islands within the Aegean Sea. “What are you doing? Pull your self collectively. Do you not be taught classes from historical past?”
“Do not attempt to dance with Turkey. You will get drained and caught on the street. We’re now not holding bilateral talks with them. This Greece is not going to see cause,” he stated.
The nations have lengthy been at odds over a bunch of points equivalent to maritime boundaries, overlapping claims over their continental cabinets, airspace, migrants and ethnically break up Cyprus.
Tensions flared once more final week when Erdogan stated Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis “now not exists” for him, accusing him of making an attempt to dam gross sales of F-16 fighter jets to Turkey throughout a go to to the USA.
On Tuesday, Mitsotakis advised reporters after a European Union summit that he had briefed his EU counterparts over Turkey’s “aggressiveness” and “provocations which can’t be tolerated by Greece or the European Union”.
“I can’t be concerned in a recreation of private insults…,” he stated.
Turkish Overseas Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu stated on Tuesday Greece was violating worldwide agreements that decide the demilitarised standing of islands within the Aegean, warning that if Athens didn’t change course Ankara would launch challenges over the islands’ standing.
Greece’s Overseas Ministry stated Cavusoglu’s feedback confirmed Turkey was threatening Athens.
(Reporting by Tuvan Gumrukcu in Ankara, Ezgi Erkoyun in Istanbul and Renee Maltezou in Athens;Writing by Daren ButlerEditing by Jonathan Spicer and Helen Popper)
