Erdogan writes off Greece’s Mitsotakis, maintains stance on NATO expansion
Enraged by the Greek premier’s remarks to US Congress against arms sales to Turkey, Erdogan denounces Greece, along with Sweden and Finland, for supporting terrorism.
Opening up a new battlefront with NATO allies, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced late Monday that he had “written off” Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis for lobbying the US Congress against military sales to Turkey.
The president’s criticism of Greece, another NATO ally, comes as Erdogan and his political ally Devlet Bahceli maintain Ankara’s objections to NATO accession of Sweden and Finland. Following Erdogan’s phone conversation with his Finnish and Swedish counterparts over the weekend, two delegations, headed by Swedish State Secretary Oscar Stenstrom and Finnish State Secretary Jukka Salovaara, will hold talks in Ankara on Wednesday. The Turkish side will be chaired by Deputy Foreign Minister Sedat Onal and Ibrahim Kalin, the presidential spokesman and Turkey’s de facto national security adviser.
Erdogan, who made a fiery address to the nation after the cabinet meeting late Monday, reiterated what he called Ankara’s “principled approach” to NATO’s enlargement. “I have told all our counterparts that they have to choose between providing practical and political support to terrorist organizations and expecting Turkey’s consent to their NATO membership,” he said, singling out Sweden, whose streets he claimed were filled with flags of terrorist groups PKK/YPG “a few days ago.”
Upping the rhetoric, Bahceli said that Turkey would leave NATO if his country’s security concerns were not met.
