[Screen grab from Fox News video]
Turkey’s pursuit of regional natural resources coupled with its controversial geopolitical pursuits in the Middle East and Aegean Sea indicate that the country is looking to “recreate” the Ottoman Empire, Greek Defense Minister Nikos Dendias said during an interview with Fox News Digital on Saturday.
“There’s some people in Turkey that go back to the Ottoman times and believe that they could recreate the Ottoman Empire, including parts of Greece, parts of Syria, parts of Iraq, parts of Iran, half of the Caucasus, etc.,” the minister said, according to the TV channel.
“I hope that this is daydream, but it creates a lot of problems in the relations with Greece, a lot of problems within NATO.”
Dendias argued that the alleged close relationship between the US and the Turkish presidents could uniquely position Donald Trump to “whisper” in the ear of Recep Tayyip Erdogan and remind him that “international law, international [rules] of the sea, is a way of life in this modern world.”
“I assume that it will not be good at all for NATO and would not be good at all for the United States of America to encourage Turkey to create a huge problem in the eastern front of NATO, taking also into account what’s happening in the Middle East and what’s happening between Russia and Ukraine,” he added.
Discussing Turkey’s military exercises in the Black, Mediterranean and Aegean Seas known as Blue Homeland earlier this month, the Greek minister said: “This [is a] new Turkish neo-imperialist, neo-Ottoman approach. It started appearing somewhere in the first decade of the 21st century […] which, in essence, claims that half of the Greek islands in the Aegean belong to Turkey.”
“And sometimes they even go further. They claim that Crete, a huge island with very important NATO presence and an American base in Souda – again, should belong to Turkey.”
Dendias said Greece’s tense relations with Turkey have made its defensive posture in NATO unique because it has forced Athens to be on top of its defense spending.