Greece is scared of Turkish ballistic missile Tayfun, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on Sunday, warning Athens once again not to militarize the Aegean islands.
"Now we have started to build our missiles. Of course, this production frightens the Greeks. When you say ‘Tayfun' (Typhoon), the Greek is scared. They (Greece) say it will hit Athens. Of course, it will hit it," Erdoğan said at an event in northern Samsun province.
"If you try to buy something (to arm yourselves) from here and there, from America to the islands, a country like Türkiye will not be a bystander. It has to do something," Erdoğan continued.
In October, Türkiye test-fired the domestically produced short-range ballistic missile Tayfun over the Black Sea. The missile can hit a target at a distance of 561 kilometers (349 miles) in 456 seconds.
Türkiye and Greece are at odds over several 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.
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.
