Istanbul, Sept. 7, (dpa/GNA) - Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Tuesday threatened action against Greece if it maintained alleged airspace violations over the Aegean Sea that separates the two neighbours.
“Our patience has a limit if they [Greece] continue with such illegitimate threats against us … using their islands, their bases there,” Erdoğan told reporters in Sarajevo, his first stop of a three-country Balkan tour.
“When the end of that patience comes … we will do what is necessary. Because locking radars onto our jets does not bode well,” the Turkish leader charged, without elaborating.
Erdoğan was referring to Greek S-300 air defence systems allegedly locking onto Turkish jets over the Aegean.
Athens denies the charges.
Unless Greece comes to terms, Turkey is ready to “go down there one night suddenly,” Erdoğan said earlier on Tuesday, using a rhetoric he uses when he threatens to launch a military intervention.
Erdoğan had at the weekend separately accused NATO ally Greece of “occupying” demilitarized Aegean islands.
Turkey argues Greece is illegally arming its islands in the east of the Aegean, an action prohibited under the 1923 treaty of Lausanne and the 1947 treaty of Paris.
Athens argues that soldiers are positioned to fend off vessels approaching from Turkey’s west coast.
“It is unacceptable that Greece is receiving threats from a country that is a NATO ally – threats that go so far as to question Greek sovereignty,” Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis told state broadcaster on Tuesday.
GNA