Dendias slams Turkish revisionism, calls on US to support smaller countries based on international law

Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias deconstructed Ankara's revisionist, expansionist policies and threats against Greek sovereignty and outlined the priorities and challenges of Greek foreign policy at a meeting at the foreign ministry today with students and graduates of the Kennedy School of Government.

"This is a Turkish map. You see where the dividing line is and you see that Crete is also coloured red [as Turkish territory]. Now, if Turkey starts from that point of view, how can we ever have a good understanding with Turkey?" Dendias said of Ankara's neo-Ottoman "Blue Motherland" theory, which claims dozens of Aegean islands and islets and large swathes of Greece's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) as its own.

'Continual crisis with Turkey over the last three years'

Cyprus: How the huge natural gas deposits can affect the region's geopolitics

Dendias underlined that Ankara over the last three years has engaged in unprecedented provocations against Greece [with major crises on land, in 2020, when Turkey unscuccessfully tried to push thousands of migrants in the Evros border region into Greece, and in the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean, where in August, 2020, Greece and Turkey reached the verge of a military clash].

"Throughout these three years, we have been experiencing a constant crisis, with vicissitudes, with Turkey, and that has never occurred since 1974 [when Ankara invaded and continues to occupy nearly 40 percent of the territory of the Republic of Cyprus].

Bahceli's map and Turkish revisionism

Dendias showed the Kennedy School graduates a copy of a map, with all the Greek Aegean islands as well as Crete coloured in red, signifying that they are Turkish territory.

The map was...