Erdogan goes further in claiming islands like Cyprus, Rhodes and Samos and suggests missile attack on Athens. Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has tried to intimidate neighbouring Greece and Cyprus by suggesting a missile strike when Greece ‘would not calm down ” in the dispute over some Greek islands near the Turkish coast, including popular holiday islands such as Samos and Rhodes. According to Erdogan, Greece is nervous because the Tayfun missile developed by Turkey could also hit Athens.
“You call Tayfun and the Greek gets nervous,” Erdogan said Sunday night at a youth meeting in northern Turkey. The range of the ballistic missile is estimated at 300 kilometers.
The Turkish president told Greece to make peace soon with regard to the islands and warned that Turkey would intervene if Greece ” tried to take something away here and there.”
Turkey claims to be the rightful ruler of the islands that were part of the Ottoman Empire for hundreds of years. After that disintegration, some islands went to Greece in 1923. After the Second World War, Kos and Rhodes were added. This was enshrined in the Treaties of Lausanne and Paris.
Turkey is calling into question Greece’s sovereignty over several inhabited and uninhabited Greek islands in the eastern Mediterranean because there are military personnel there. This is not in accordance with the two treaties, according to the Turks. Athens, on the other hand, justifies the militarization with the threat of numerous landing craft on the Turkish coast and the right of every state to self-defense.