‘No high-level meeting with Athens until Greek PM pulls himself together’

PRESIDENT Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on Friday that he refuses to meet with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis until the Greek leader “pulls himself together.”

On relations with Greece, Erdoğan told journalists during his return from Madrid that NATO leaders at the summit had offered to mediate and organize talks with Mitsotakis.

“We said ‘sorry, but we don’t have time for such a meeting right now.’ Because it is obvious that they are militarizing the islands,” said Erdoğan.

“Let him pull himself together. As long as he doesn’t pull himself together, it is not possible for us to meet,” he said. Historic rivals Turkey and Greece have been at odds over issues ranging from overflights and the status of Aegean islands to maritime boundaries, hydrocarbon resources in the Mediterranean and the ethnicallysplit island of Cyprus.

Tensions flared again recently over airspace and the status of demilitarized islands in the Aegean. Erdoğan has said Mitsotakis “no longer exists for him” after the Greek premier lobbied for the United States not to sell Turkey F-16 fighter jets during a speech at the U.S. Congress.

Erdoğan also announced that Turkey was halting all bilateral talks with Greece that started in 2021. He also warned Greece to demilitarize islands in the Aegean, saying he was “not joking.” He spoke during Turkish wargames near the Greek islands that included an amphibious landing scenario. Turkey is demanding that Greece demilitarize its eastern islands, citing the 20th-century treaties that ceded sovereignty of the islands to Greece. Ankara says the Aegean islands were given to Greece under the 1923 Lausanne and 1947 Paris treaties on the condition it does not arm them.