Erdogan goes further in claim on islands like Rhodes and Samos and suggests missile attack on Athens | Abroad

“You mention Tayfun and the Greek gets nervous,” Erdogan said on Sunday evening at a youth gathering in northern Turkey. The range of the ballistic missile is estimated at 300 kilometers. The Turkish president urged Greece to make peace soon with regard to the islands and warned that Turkey would intervene if Greece “tries to take something here and there.”

Turkey claims to be the rightful ruler on the islands that were part of the Ottoman Empire for hundreds of years. After that broke up, some islands went to Greece in 1923. After the Second World War, Kos and Rhodes were added. This was laid down in the treaties of Lausanne and Paris.

Turkey is questioning Greece’s sovereignty over several inhabited and uninhabited Greek islands in the eastern Mediterranean, citing military presence there. This is not in accordance with the two treaties, the Turks said. Athens, on the other hand, justifies the militarization with the threat of numerous landing craft on the Turkish coast and the right of each state to self-defense.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Cavusoglu said in May that Turkey would “take further steps” if Greece did not withdraw its troops from the eastern islands.

The dispute over the islands is just one of many conflicts between NATO allies. For example, the Turks are angry about the close cooperation between the Greeks and the United States, which have military bases in Greece. Ankara and Athens are also fighting over natural gas reserves in the seabed and the status of Cyprus, which has a Turkish and a Greek part.