President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Sunday renewed his warning against Greece not to engage in provocations in the Aegean Sea as tensions between the two neighboring countries are once again flying high.
"Don't mess with us. We have no quarrel with you in the Aegean,” Erdoğan said at an event in the southeastern Mardin province on Saturday.
"They did some crazy things in the Aegean again. Of course, we also did what was necessary," Erdoğan said, referring to Greek planes trying to interfere in a NATO training mission conducted in international airspace over the Aegean Sea.
Greek planes tried to block the mission, the Defense Ministry said on Saturday, adding that the Turkish Air Forces Command gave them the "necessary response ... and the NATO mission was successfully completed."
The president said he has told officials to "do what is necessary ... if Greece continues to act out," repeating his warning: "We may come suddenly one night."
Erdoğan said Türkiye's recent ballistic missile test "scares" Athens.
Türkiye test-fired its domestically produced short-range ballistic missile Tayfun (Typhoon) in October. The missile can hit a target at a distance of 561 kilometers (349 miles) in 456 seconds.
Türkiye and Greece have long-standing sea and air boundary disputes that intensified with moves to explore potential undersea natural gas reserves.
Türkiye and Greece are at odds over a number of issues, including competing claims over jurisdiction in the Eastern Mediterranean, overlapping claims over their continental shelves, maritime boundaries, airspace, energy, the ethnically split island of Cyprus, the status of the islands in the Aegean Sea and migrants.
Relations deteriorated after Erdoğan said Mitsotakis "no longer exists" for him, when the Greek premier Kyriakos Mitsotakis lobbied to block sales of F-16 fighter jets to Türkiye during a visit to the United States, despite previously agreeing with Erdoğan "to not include third countries in our dispute." In May, Erdoğan cut ties with Mitsotakis and declared all other channels of communication between the countries closed.
The most recent incidents to have spurred tensions include two Greek coast guard boats opening fire on a cargo ship in international waters, continued pushbacks by Greek elements recorded by Turkish UAVs and a previous harassment of Turkish fighter jets on a NATO mission by Greece’s Russian-made S-300s.
Ankara accuses Athens of illegally militarizing Greek islands in the Eastern Aegean and questions Greece’s sovereignty over them. There is also a dispute over the exploitation of mineral resources in the Aegean.
