Türkiye will not stand by while Greece takes actions that threaten its security, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said Wednesday, warning that Ankara will respond “both legally and in the field.”
Greece's recent attitude toward Türkiye is against the spirit of good neighborly relations and the NATO alliance, Erdoğan said in a televised interview in Ankara, adding it is neither "possible to explain nor accept the attitude that Greece has taken toward Türkiye in the last period."
He reiterated that Athens is arming islands very close to Türkiye's coasts and major settlements in violation of international law.
"Greece's allegations that Türkiye violates its airspace are baseless. Actually, Greece violates our airspace and increases tensions," he said, adding, "of course, our air force and coast guard do not and will not leave these hostile actions unanswered."
Türkiye and Greece are at odds over several issues, including competing claims to 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.
On the other side, the Turkish coast guard said Wednesday that Türkiye criticized Greece for releasing reports of old footage concerning a confrontation between the coast guards of the two nations in the Aegean Sea and presented it as if it had just occurred.
The coast guard said in a statement that on Jan. 5, Greece shared a video showing Turkish-flagged fishing vessels carrying out fishing activities off the coast of the Cape of Tekağaç in the Didim district of western Aydın province.
The video showed a Turkish coast guard boat removing the Greek coast guard asset from the area so the Turkish fishing vessels could continue fishing activities. "When the Greek coast guard boat shot into the air during their removal from the area, the Turkish coast guard boat responded in kind," it said.
"On Feb. 1, 2023, the footage of the Greek coast guard asset firing in the air while being pushed back from a Turkish coast guard boat was shared on some Greek news portals and social media as if the mentioned incident had just happened and were a recent one," the statement read.
