Wednesday, September 30, 2020

Turkey to Greece: "We will solve our issues on the battlefield”

Oh.
From Greek City Times, September 29:
Turkey has expressed extreme annoyance by the visit of US Secretary of State to Greece.

In particular, a spokesperson for Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) accused US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo of unilateralism and said his attitude is inelegant.

Ömer Çelik, the AKP spokesperson, even called on Pompeo to maintain a neutral stance because unilateral visits and statements give the wrong messages.

At the same time, he once again made provocative statements regarding Ankara’s intentions in Greek-Turkish issues in the East Mediterranean.

“Turkey is a country of diplomacy if they want to solve the problem with diplomacy, but if they do not want, we will solve it on the battlefield,” he said.

Today, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Pompeo paid a visit to the military facilities of Souda base in Crete.

Mitsotakis and Pompeo were guided and informed by the commanders of the two bases, the American and the Greek, and then went to the naval base in Marathi at pier K14. At the same time, they were guided to a Greek frigate located at the port....
....MORE

If interested here are the Greek/U.S. joint press statements.

What with the Kurds in northern Syria and Iraq, the Armenians in the east saying "Never Again" in reference to the Turkish atrocities and genocide and Greece in the West, Turkey is down to five neighbors it isn't getting belligerent with, Ukraine, Georgia, Romania, Iran and Russia.

Whenever I think about Turkish-Russian relations I think of this painting:


https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/79/Ilja_Jefimowitsch_Repin_-_Reply_of_the_Zaporozhian_Cossacks_-_Yorck.jpg

That's "Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks" by Repin, hanging in the State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.

As the story goes, in 1676 the Turkish Sultan, despite being beaten by the Cossacks when he tried to invade what is now southern Ukraine, demanded these guys surrender and submit to Turkish rule.

And as can be seen, the Cossacks thought this was the funniest thing they had ever heard and wrote a letter in response.
A very profane, very defiant, very vulgar, very contemptuous letter.

These old boys just cracked themselves up with their letter.
And that's what I think of when I think of Russians and Turks.