Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias made a special reference to Greek-Turkish relations, speaking today during the annual general assembly of the Association of Businesses and Industries of the Peloponnese and Western Greece, held in Patras.
In particular, he said, "the Greek argumentation is absolutely adequate, absolutely convincing and has in its arsenal the most modern arguments of international law". "On the contrary", he continued, "the Turkish positions do not stand up to any criticism, they are manifestations of a neo-Ottoman revisionism, parts of an ideology of a regional alleged superpower, which attempts to impose its will through the threat of force against its neighbours".
As he added, "I sincerely hope that Turkey will see clearly that this policy is a dead end, that it will return to the path of convergence towards the European Union, European and global values, and that it will understand that Greece can be a bridge to Europe, a bridge to a better future, which I firmly believe is the hope of a very important part of the Turkish people and Turkish society, that is, whenever and if given the opportunity to speak freely and to stop the attempt to imprison Turkish society and, by extension, Greece in the future.
Nikos Dendias continued by pointing out that "in claims and rivalries that belong to past centuries and past eras, it should be made clear to Turkey that the policy of the gunboats, the policy of Suleiman the Magnificent in the Mediterranean, belongs completely to another era, whether Suleiman in the 16th century, or the gunboats in the 19th and even in the early 20th century. In any case, by no means in the 21st century."
"But I am not very optimistic", Nikos Dendias said, stressing at this point that "our answer is national unanimity, national unanimity, our ability to project our positions and our conviction that regardless of the parameters, the country is strong and can, based on its own Armed Forces and the strength of its society and economy, defend national rights and the future of future generations".
Also, Nikos Dendias said during his speech that when he was given the enormous honour of becoming Foreign Minister, "I believed that we would be able to find codes of communication with Turkey and resolve the only difference we have, which is the continental shelf and the exclusive economic zone in the seas surrounding us."
As he added, "this optimism has grown because after 50 years we were able to resolve the issue with Italy and we signed the relevant agreement, we resolved the issue with Egypt and I signed the relevant agreement, we resolved in principle the issue with Albania and I believe that after the election of the new president we will be able to proceed with the signing of the agreement with Albania and the referral of our dispute to The Hague."
"So with this perception," he added, "I thought that Greece would be able to find codes of understanding with Turkey and we would be able to resolve our dispute, but unfortunately this was an absolutely wrong prediction."
He went on to say that "we were faced with a constant expansion of arguments and claims against our homeland, beyond international law, beyond any logic": "I mention by way of example the Turkish-Croatian memorandum, which divides sea areas, ignoring the presence of Crete in the middle, ignoring that under international law islands have the same rights as the mainland, namely territorial waters and even territorial waters up to 12 miles, but also an exclusive economic zone and a continental shelf.
To make the absurdity of this agreement clear, imagine if Greece signed exclusive economic zones with Spain, ignoring that Italy is in the middle.
And also the ideology of the blue homeland, the notion that the Greek islands of the eastern Aegean lie on the Turkish continental shelf and have no other rights, i.e. they must be cut off from the core of Greece to which they belong by the Treaty of Lausanne.
And even worse, they added in the last year the new argument that Greek sovereignty over the eastern Aegean islands is based on the demilitarization agreement, otherwise Greek sovereignty is not absolute but relative. And therefore it is indirectly but clearly contested by the Turkish side."
"To all this," he stressed, "we have responded with a series of letters, the last one was sent a few days ago to the United Nations and is perhaps the most interesting from the point of view of international law."
Source: protothema.gr
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