FM Dendias: Turkey operates ‘in a way that is totally against what a modern 21st century country is expected to do’

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Foreign Affairs Minister Nikos Dendias spoke at the 5th Digital Conversation Series event hosted by The Hellenic Initiative Australia (THI) on Friday, themed as ‘The Greek Diaspora & Foreign Policy’.

Asked first about Greece-Turkey relations, Dendias said that “the obvious way forward for Turkey is to remain an ally within the NATO framework, and a country that would like to get as close as possible to the European Union, meaning the values and the principles of the European Union, not just the Single Market, and eventually, in some distant future, become also a member of the European Union.”

Turkey, he added, “is diverging from the NATO paradigm or from the European paradigm, in the sense that it advocates values and really deals in a way that is totally against what a modern 21st century country is expected to do.”

“What we are seeing is returning back to some sort of neo-Ottoman ideological approach, a revisionism which thinks of recreating the Ottoman Empire with terms like ‘Mavi Vatan’, which means the ‘Blue Homeland’, which encompasses half of the Aegean and a big part of the Eastern Mediterranean.”

Furthermore, he added, Turkey is “also issuing a threat of war, a casus belli against Greece, if Greece extends, as it is entitled according to International Law, its territorial waters to 12 miles.”

Moreover, “overflights over Greek islands, and even the Greek mainland, is an everyday agenda for this ministry. And countless other provocations against Greece.”

Greek diaspora, he added, “can advocate Greece’s positions. And I have to say, we make the life of the diaspora easier in the sense that, let’s use Australia as an example, what we advocate is exactly what the Australian State advocates: International Law, International Law of the Sea.”

“When Australia speaks about the challenge presented in the South China sea in the Pacific, it uses exactly the same terms, exactly the same values that we project in the Aegean and the Mediterranean,” he noted.

It is important “to explain, to show the similarities of our positions and the Australian positions of the issues of International Law of the Sea,” Dendias added.

Asked about the fact that diaspora Greeks will be voting in Greece’s next national elections for the first time, Dendias said that this “is extremely important because we believe we have a story to tell to our diaspora, and because the diaspora consists mostly of successful people, I think they are people who would subscribe to that story, the story of the Mitsotakis government.”

However, “the more important thing is the strongest connection with the motherland. If you vote, if you express an opinion to where the country should go, that means you are an informed citizen of that country, you care about what is happening in Greece, you care about what will happen to Greece, you care about taxes in Greece, you care about everyday life in Greece, you care about the Greek foreign policy, you care about the image of Greece.”

Source: ANA – MPA

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