Greece Says Türkiye Must Lift War Threat to Get Access to EU Defense Funds
Türkiye must lift a 30-year old war threat against Greece if it wants Athens to consent to Ankara accessing European Union defense funds, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on Thursday.
Greece and Türkiye, NATO allies but historic foes, have been at odds for decades over a range of issues from airspace to the extent of their maritime boundaries and ethnically-split Cyprus.
In 1995, the Turkish parliament declared a "casus belli", or cause for war, if Greece unilaterally expanded its territorial waters beyond six nautical miles in the Aegean Sea.
"If Türkiye wishes access into European defense financing tools, the legitimate concerns of both Greece and Cyprus should be taken into account," Mitsotakis said, referring to projects such as the EU's new flagship arms-buying fund, Security Action for Europe (SAFE), Reuters reported.
"It has been 30 years since the Turkish National Assembly voted on the infamous casus belli. I think that 30 years later, the time has come to directly ask our Turkish friends to take it off the table," he told Skai radio.
Mitsotakis said he would convey the message to Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan soon, citing improved bilateral ties.
Asked about Greece trying to keep Türkiye away from EU defense projects, a Turkish defense ministry source said earlier that any attempts to disregard Türkiye's importance for European security were bound to fail.
"Carrying bilateral disputes to multilateral platforms and putting forth an approach aimed at excluding our country is both a step that is not taken with good intentions, and not a smart one," the source said.
Ankara and Athens have been exploring whether they can start talks aimed at demarcating their maritime zones. Mitsotakis said that a high-level meeting between the two countries will take place in the coming months.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Al Arabiya
5 hours ago
- Al Arabiya
Europe facing security ‘perfect storm': EU defense chief
Europe is facing a 'perfect storm' on defense as it presses to rearm in the face of Russian aggression and doubts over US engagement, the EU's defense commissioner said Tuesday. 'Our readiness for defense is not sufficient. It demands an urgent ramp-up and a longer term strategy how to replace American capabilities in Europe,' commissioner Andrius Kubilius said. 'The forthcoming American withdrawal from Europe is a new reality.' Kubilius said Europe needs to avoid an 'angry divorce' with Washington as US President Donald Trump's administration weighs shifting forces from the continent. NATO countries look set to agree at a summit in the Hague later in the month to massively ramp up defense spending in a bid to keep Trump on side. The EU for its part has launched a raft of initiatives worth some 800 billion euros aimed at helping countries bolster their defenses. Next week, Brussels is set to unveil proposals designed to slash red tape to allow Europe's defense industry to bolster production. 'Without this simplification, nothing else in defense readiness will be possible to achieve,' Kubilius said. 'Red alert against red tape -- bureaucracy must not be an obstacle to our defense.' The call from the top EU official overseeing the defense industry comes after NATO chief Mark Rutte on Monday reiterated a warning that Russia could be ready to attack the alliance in five years. Rutte called for a 'quantum leap' on defense preparations and said that NATO needed to boost its air defenses by 400 percent to face the threat.
Asharq Al-Awsat
8 hours ago
- Asharq Al-Awsat
Sunny Greece Struggles with Solar Energy Overload
In a field in central Greece that once grew clover and corn, maintenance worker Nikos Zigomitros deftly drives a tractor between rows of solar panels, trimming weeds under a blazing sun. "Letting them grow too high impairs the panel performance," the 52-year-old explains, wiping sweat from his brow. Once a center of agricultural production, the area around Kastron Viotias, some 110 kilometers (70 miles) northwest of Athens, has seen solar parks mushroom over the past 15 years, part of a major renewable energy push in the country. Greece currently has 16 gigawatts of renewable energy installed, with solar power representing nearly 10 gigawatts, including 2.5 gigawatts that came on line last year. The rapid growth of solar is similar to other countries in Europe, where it has overtaken coal for electricity production, according to climate think tank Ember. It estimates renewables have risen to account for nearly half of the EU's electricity production. Greece did even better: 55 percent of annual consumption was covered by renewables last year, with solar accounting for around 23 percent, according to SPEF, an association which unites local solar power producers. In 2023, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis predicted that Greece would "soon generate 80 percent of its electricity needs through renewables." But getting there is proving complicated. SPEF chairman Stelios Loumakis said that the solar sector has hit a wall because of a combination of factors, including Greece's small size, limited infrastructure and delays in building up energy storage capacity. Saturated The Greek state approved too many photovoltaic projects over the last five years and the market is saturated, leading to a "severe production surplus" on sunny days, the 56-year-old chemical engineer and energy consultant said. Greece's national grid operator in May repeatedly ordered thousands of medium-sized operators to shut down during the sunniest hours of the day to avoid overburdening the network and triggering a blackout. "The trick is to balance supply and demand. If you don't do it well, you get a blackout," said Nikos Mantzaris, a senior policy analyst and partner at the independent civil organization Green Tank. In April, a huge blackout of unknown origin crippled the Iberian Peninsula. The Spanish government has said two major power fluctuations were recorded in the half-hour before the grid collapse, but the government insisted renewables were not to blame. "It could be something as mundane as a faulty cable," Mantzaris said. Batteries 'crucial' To manage the surplus, Greece is building battery storage capacity. But catching up to its solar electricity production will take years. "The next three years will be crucial," said Stelios Psomas, a policy advisor at HELAPCO, a trade association for Greek companies producing and installing solar panels. In the meantime, solar panel operators will have to ensure production does not outstrip capacity, thereby limiting their potential earnings. "Managing high shares of renewables -- especially solar -- requires significant flexibility and storage solutions," said Francesca Andreolli, a senior researcher at ECCO, a climate change think tank in Italy, which faces a similar problem. "Battery capacity has become a structural necessity for the electricity system, by absorbing excess renewable energy and releasing it when demand rises," she told AFP. Farm income Mimis Tsakanikas, a 51-year-old farmer in Kastron, readily admits that solar has been good to his family. The photovoltaic farm they built in 2012 at a cost of 210,000 euros clears at least 55,000 euros a year, far more than he could hope to earn by growing vegetables and watermelons. "This park sustains my home," he said. But the father of two also notes that the environmental balance has tipped in his area, with the spread of solar installations now causing concerns about the local microclimate. Tsakanikas says the area has already experienced temperature rises of up to 4.0 degrees Celsius (7.2 Fahrenheit), which he blames on the abundance of heat-absorbing solar panel parks in the area. "The microclimate has definitely changed, we haven't seen frost in two years," he told AFP. "(At this rate) in five years, we'll be cultivating bananas here, like in Crete," he said.
Arab News
17 hours ago
- Arab News
Russia has plans to test NATO's resolve, German intelligence chief warns
BERLIN: Russia is determined to test the resolve of the NATO alliance, including by extending its confrontation with the West beyond the borders of Ukraine, the Germany's foreign intelligence chief told the Table Media news organization. Bruno Kahl, head of the Federal Intelligence Service, said his agency had clear intelligence indications that Russian officials believed the collective defense obligations enshrined in the NATO treaty no longer had practical force. 'We are quite certain, and we have intelligence showing it, that Ukraine is only a step on the journey westward,' Kahl told Table Media in a podcast interview. 'That doesn't mean we expect tank armies to roll westwards,' he added. 'But we see that NATO's collective defense promise is to be tested.' Germany, already the second-largest provider of armaments and financial support for Ukraine in its war with Russia, has pledged to step up its support further under the new government of Chancellor Friedrich Merz, promising to help Ukraine develop new missiles that could strike deep into Russian territory. Without detailing the nature of his intelligence sources, Kahl said Russian officials were envisaging confrontations that fell short of a full military engagement that would test whether the US would really live up to its mutual aid obligations under Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty. 'They don't need to dispatch armies of tanks for that,' he said. 'It's enough to send little green men to Estonia to protect supposedly oppressed Russian minorities.' Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea involved occupation of buildings and offices by Russian soldiers in unmarked uniforms and civilian clothes, who came to be known as the 'little green men' when Moscow initially denied their identity. Kahl did not specify which officials in Moscow were thinking along these lines. Merz, who visited Donald Trump in Washington last week, pushed back against the US president's assertion that Ukraine and Russia were like two infants fighting, telling Trump that where Ukraine targeted Moscow's military, Russia bombed Ukraine's cities. Kahl said his contacts with US counterparts had left him convinced they took the Russian threat seriously. 'They take it as seriously as us, thank God,' he said.
