Kyriakos Mitsotakis, from Brussels, gave his own answer to Antonis Samaras, for what he said about the government’s stance on Greek-Turkish, after the end of the European Council Summit.
Responding to a question about voices in the country talking about selling out, “Cyprus and Aegean package” including that of former Prime Minister Mr. Samaras, he positioned himself saying: “Let me make a distinction between the views of Mr. Samaras and the rest of the voices that are heard around these issues. For Mr. Samaras, I will say that his opinions are respected. He himself had even met with Mr. Erdogan and I remind you that exploratory contacts were made with Turkey during his days.”
And he added: “But now I put that matter aside. I find that there are many extremely extreme voices in Greece from parties that are to the right of New Democracy and from various mass media, which roughly accuse the government and me, the foreign minister, of being concessionaires, why are we doing what? Why are we discussing with Turkey? I wonder where all those super patriots were when we protected Greece’s borders on the Evros?
Where were all these super-patriots when we extended territorial waters to 12 miles in the Ionian, when we signed the exclusive economic zone with Egypt, creating sovereign rights by seal, by law where were all these super-patriots when we bought the Rafales? When we placed the order for the F-35s?
I’ve talked about “lentil patriots” before. And in any case, today Greece is able to discuss with Turkey civilly, but also in a much stronger position than it was in 2019, and we are discussing it. It doesn’t mean we agree or sell out or betray anyone.
And the country has paid very dearly in its history for this extreme rhetoric, which ultimately does not serve the national interest and certainly does not bring any meaningful alternative to the table.
So Greece – in this I fully support the Minister of Foreign Affairs – will continue to talk with Turkey as we have already done.
I have met six times with Mr. Erdogan. This does not mean that we have agreed that we are close to an agreement on the maritime zones, EEZ and continental shelf issues. We still have a long way to go to get to that point.
But I wanted to give this slightly more extended answer to all those who consider themselves more patriotic than we all are. I suspect that in a real crisis they would be the first to “put the tail on the legs”.
Finally, about the migratory said the following:
“The fact that we managed to reach an agreement on the conclusions in the migration chapter is a very positive development and if you allow me to make a more general observation: Greece has been defending a strict but fair migration policy since 2019, placing great emphasis on the external dimension of migration , in the protection of the external borders of the European Union.
And the problems that Poland is facing today with the instrumentalization of the migration problem by Belarus and Russia, Greece faced them first.
I want to remind you that since March 2020 we have been showing full support to a country that is facing similar problems.
In recent years, however, Europe’s immigration policy has changed and has come much closer to Greek positions, and this is now a self-evident conclusion. Which results from the conclusions of the European Council itself.
The external dimension of immigration, the protection of European borders, the Pact on Migration and Asylum are successes of Europe and are positions which are close to the Greek positions.
Europe has made a decision. It is a decision which obviously serves Greek interests as well, that it is not possible for traffickers to determine who will enter the European Union.
And what we are now coming to complete as a next step is to launch a European framework for returns.
Because our argumentation will only be complete if we say that we determine who wants to enter the European Union, but whoever cannot and does not have a place in Europe, because they are not entitled to asylum, must return to the country from which they came.
And this is exactly the purpose of the directive we gave to the European Commission to quickly work out new European legislation around the issues of returns.
Check out his statement:
#Mitsotakis #superpatriots #protected #borders #Evros
