Mitsotakis at UN appeals to Turkish people: ‘We are not your enemies, we are your neighbours’

By George Gilson

With the anti-Greek rhetoric of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and top government officials long dominating headlines of the mostly pro-government Turkish press and mass media, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis chose to address the Turkish people directly to offer a message of conciliation, in his 23 September address to the UN General Assembly.

“We are not your enemies, we are your neighbours,” Mitsotakis declared in a speech delivered late Friday evening, Greek time.

Mitsotakis said that Athens will unswervingly defend its red lines against Turkish revisionism and threats against the territorial integrity of Greece’s Aegean islands, which Turkey has persistently been challenging with public pronouncement of Erdogan and members of his government.

The Greek PM said that these threats extend to even large, populated Greek islands such as Chios and Rhodes.

Call for Greek-Turkish dialogue

With Erdogan having ruled out any high-level Greek Turkish dialogue, going as far as to declare that for him Mitsotakis “does not exist”, the Greek PM reiterated that he is always open to and seeks dialogue with Turkey, and underlined that for very long periods in the  history the Greek and Turkish peoples have lived peacefully side by side.

He cited as a model of bilateral cooperation the fact that just eight years after the Greek Army was routed by the Turkish forces of the founder of the Republic of Turkey, Kemal Ataturk, in the Asia Minor Catastrophe of 1922 [this year marks the 100th anniversary], the great Greek statesman and prime minister, Eleftherios Venizelos, signed a Friendship Agreement with Ataturk.

PM open to dialogue, praises Turkey on role in Kyiv-Moscow grain export deal

Mitsotakis said that he is always open to dialogue based on international law, but that Turkey is currently playing a clearly destabilising role in both the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean.

Though the speech offered sharp criticism of Turkey’s bellicose behaviour toward Greece, Mitsotakis also sent clear conciliatory messages that may be viewed as an olive branch toward Ankara.

He cited Ankara’s constructive role in helping to achieve the UN-brokered Kyiv-Moscow agreement that permitted the crucial export of grain from Ukraine.’

Erdogan’s threats of war: ‘We’ll come at night’ the ‘language of an aggressor’

Noting the declarations of Erdogan and other officials that Turkish forces may “come at night” [to land on one of the Greek Islands of the eastern Aegean], Mitsotakis stressed that this “is the language of an aggressor”, and not a peacemaker, as Erdogan had claimed Turkey is in his 20 September address to the UN General Assembly.

Mitsotakis said that if Erdogan wants to talk about red lines, Greece’s response is that Turkey’s territorial claims to Greek islands are “groundless and unacceptable” and will not be tolerated.

‘All Greeks united on protection of territorial integrity, sovereignty’

Mitsotakis stressed that Turkey’s disputing of Greece’s sovereignty over its Aegean islands constitutes a red line for all Greeks, who are entirely united in this.

“As the Prime Minister of Greece, I shall never accept a violation of the territorial integrity, security, and stability of my country. Greece will not accept bullying from anyone,” he declared.

Dangerous Turkish rhetoric

With almost daily, sharp rhetorical attacks against Greek by Erdogan, government officials, and opposition politicians (who go as far as to say Turkey will throw the Greeks into the sea as it did in 1922, or that Ankara will place a Turkish flag on all Aegean islands), Mitsotakis underlined the danger of such rhetoric and of Erdogan’s refusal to enter into any dialogue with Greece.

Rebutting Erdogan’s charges regarding Greece’s treatment of refugees

Mitsotakis strongly rebutted Erdogan’s charges that the Greek Coast Guard allegedly sinks boats carrying refugees from the coast of Turkey in the context of illegal pushbacks, underlining that Greece has saved the lives of thousands of refugees and migrants, including a group of 134 people, some children, on 22 September.

The Greek PM charged that Turkey since 2020 (when it tried to push thousands of refugees into Greece at the Evros Greek-Turkish border, and the effort was blocked by Greek border guards, with police and army assistance) has tried to weaponise the refugee issue against Greece.

He underlined that the refugees and migrants headed for the Greek islands leave the coast of Turkey in broad daylight [there are many organised groups of Turkish human smugglers who charge poor migrants high fees], indicating that Ankara is tolerating if not directly cooperating in these dangerous journeys, and clearly is not acknowledging its responsibility for the plight of these people, who are packed on often decrepit dinghies in Turkey without life vests, often leading to human tragedies.