Recep Tayyip Erdogan: "We said we would respond to any attack and we responded as needed (the reference is the collision of the Greek frigate Limos against the Turkish military ship Kemal Reis ed) and that they would pay dearly for it. If it is the case we will answer again, because our research ship Oruc Reis will continue its activity until 23 August ”.
The Turkish president shows that he does not want to go back on the exploration of gas and oil in the Aegean. "Those are the spiritual borders of Turkey”Thundered Erdogan. Yesterday, the EU summit of foreign ministers concluded with a choral: "Stop tensions".
Erdogan spoke to the German Chancellor Angela Merkel and with the President of the European Council, Charles Michel"We agreed to resume a process as soon as the tension eases".
The accident. According to some Greek media, the frigate Limnos it would have hit and damaged the Turkish warship Kemal Reys which escorted the Oruc Reis off the coast between Rhodes and Crete. For the Turkish agency Eha, Kemal Reis intercepted and damaged the Greek ship, forcing it to return to port.
However, the Greek city times portal shows in some photos of the exercise carried out by the French Navy with the Greek one that the Limnos would be intact.
Emmanuel Macron is the most active: he has sent a couple of rafale planes and the La Fayette frigate for a joint exercise with the Greek and Cypriot armed forces. Erdogan on vitriol thundered: "A country that does not even have a coast in the eastern Mediterranean. Let me be very clear: don't try to put on a show ".
Meanwhile Turkish drones fly over the island of Rhodes while French fighters and drones escort the Ankara research ship.
The Turkish ship Oruc Reis intends to explore in the waters overlooking the Greek island Kastellorizo, 580 kilometers from mainland Greece, but only 2 km from the Turkish Kas. Ankara claims a space that corresponds, in part, to what it had in the Ottoman Empire. Erdogan would thus not incorporate the Sevres Treaty of 1920 and the Lausanne Pact of 1923 which reduced those borders, and he does not recognize the Paris Agreement of 1947 which took away the Dodecanese from Italy by handing it over to Athens.