“Greece will not leave any challenge unanswered,” Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on Friday, expressing the hope that the “unacceptable rhetoric” from Turkey will cease, ekathimerini.com reports.
Speaking after the end of the informal EU summit in Prague, Mitsotakis said: “I hope that this unacceptable rhetoric of questioning our country’s sovereignty over the islands of the eastern Aegean will finally stop,” he said.
Referring to Erdogan’s controversial comments on Greece at a dinner on Thursday evening, Mitsotakis said “those who participated in the meeting saw the dialogue and drew their own conclusions. It was useful to exchange views in front of other leaders.”
Those present could see “who provokes and uses rhetoric that does not suit the geopolitical context,” he said, adding that “practical contempt for international law does not fit today’s world.”
He said the “the Turkish president is not used to receiving responses to the opinions he expresses.”
Such an “exchange of views” could work to deescalate the situation, Mitsotakis continued.
He said the European Council has a framework to proceed with sanctions “if Turkey crosses red lines” but he expressed the hope that it would not come to that.
“Also, based on the eighth package of sanctions against Russia, there is a possibility of imposing sanctions on Turkish entities that are judged to be in violation of the sanctions against Russia by exporting European products to it,” he added.
