Amid Türkiye's "well-intentioned approaches" to make the Aegean and Mediterranean a "sea of friendship," Defense Minister Hulusi Akar on Saturday called on NATO to urge Greece to "stop" its "impertinence."
"Despite our well-intentioned approaches, Greece continues to provoke and escalate tensions and its unlawful attitude," Akar said at the Defense Ministry's year-end evaluation meeting.
Asserting that Greece has harassed Turkish jets taking part in NATO exercises twice in the last week, Akar said: "This hostile attitude clearly shows that Greece has become so arrogant that it disregards the basic principles and values of NATO. It's time for NATO to say 'stop' to this impertinence."
Türkiye expects Greek politicians and military officials to "immediately reverse their stubborn and provocative attitudes" that they adopted for domestic political purposes, urging them to resolve existing issues via dialogue.
Underlining that Greece should take a lesson from history, Akar also pointed to the events of Sept. 9, 1922, in Izmir, a city on Türkiye's western coast that was liberated from Greek occupation in the Turkish War of Independence.
Türkiye and Greece are at odds over a number of issues, including competing claims over jurisdiction in the Eastern Mediterranean, overlapping claims over their continental shelves, maritime boundaries, airspace, energy, the ethnically split island of Cyprus, the status of the islands in the Aegean Sea and migrants.
Türkiye, a vital NATO member for over 70 years, has complained of repeated provocative actions and rhetoric by Greece in the region in recent months, including arming islands near Turkish shores that are demilitarized under treaty obligations. It says that such moves frustrate its good-faith efforts for peace.
Nordic NATO bids
On Sweden and Finland's NATO accession bids, Akar reiterated Türkiye's expectation from the two Nordic countries "to fulfill the commitments they signed in Madrid, in which is to cut their support to terrorists and to remove the restrictions they have imposed against Türkiye on the extradition list."
"It's that simple," he said.
"We support NATO's open-door policy. We are not against Sweden and Finland's NATO membership," he added.
"They say, 'there's a war between Ukraine and Russia, we expect NATO to be strong.' Türkiye is one of the most important members of NATO," he reiterated.
Meeting Türkiye's security needs "actually and logically means Türkiye being strong... Don't forget a strong Türkiye is a strong NATO."
Sweden will fulfill every promise it has made under the NATO deal signed with Türkiye to address Ankara’s security concerns, Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billström said in an interview released Friday.
Billström’s comments followed a meeting with his Turkish counterpart Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu in the capital Ankara on Thursday to discuss bilateral relations and Sweden’s NATO membership process.
In a shift away from their longstanding military non-alignment after Russia invaded Ukraine in February, Sweden and fellow Nordic nation Finland officially applied for NATO membership in June. For the two countries to join the alliance, their applications must be ratified by all 30 NATO member states.
While 28 members have done so, Türkiye and Hungary have been withholding their votes, with Ankara criticizing, especially Sweden, for harboring members of various terrorist groups, such as the PKK, and in recent years, the Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ) – the organization behind the defeated 2016 coup attempt in Türkiye. The sides inked a tripartite agreement on June 28 at a NATO summit in Madrid, where Stockholm and Helsinki vowed to address Türkiye’s security concerns and fulfill key demands such as tougher anti-terror laws and extradition of terrorist suspects.
At a press conference after the meeting, Çavuşoğlu on Thursday acknowledged that Sweden had taken steps to meet conditions mentioned in a memorandum between the three countries but said more needed to be done. "There is no concrete development regarding the extradition of terrorist-related criminals and the freezing of terrorist assets," Çavuşoğlu said at the news conference with Billstrom in the capital Ankara.
One sticking point has been extraditions of terrorists to Türkiye and Çavuşoğlu lamented a decision earlier last week when Sweden’s top court denied a request from Ankara to extradite a fugitive with links to the FETÖ.
Billström’s visit came days after Sweden’s top court refused to extradite FETÖ fugitive Bülent Keneş, whom Türkiye accuses of being among the coup plotters. Keneş, who received asylum in Sweden, was the editor of the English-language Today’s Zaman newspaper, which was owned by FETÖ and the government closed down as part of its crackdown on the group. Çavuşoğlu had described the decision as a "very negative" development.
War on terror
Akar also emphasized the negative perceptions among the Turkish and American public that heightened due to U.S. support for PKK/YPG terrorists in Syria. It was also triggered due to accusations against Ankara of harming the fight against Daesh, and Washington moving away from its former balanced policy in Türkiye and Greece and lifting its arms embargo on the Greek Cypriot administration.
"We expect the necessary measures and corrections from our ally and strategic partner, the United States, in these matters," he added.
The defense minister also commented on the prospective U.S. sale of F-16 fighter jets to Türkiye, saying that as Ankara works to "improve the approach of our U.S. counterparts," it also expects a "positive and concrete" conclusion to the sale and modernization of aircraft from Washington.
Ankara requested F-16s and modernization kits in October 2021. The $6 billion deal would include the sale of 40 jets, as well as modernization kits for 79 warplanes that the Turkish Air Forces Command already has in its inventory.
On the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) operational figures, Akar said at least 3,982 terrorists had been eliminated since the beginning of the year in northern Iraq and Syria.
He noted that a total of 553 operations, including 100 large and 453 of medium scale, were carried out this year, while 4,103 caves used by terrorists were destroyed, around 2,800 weapons and more than 1 million pieces of ammunition were seized.
Türkiye is in close cooperation and coordination with Iraqi authorities in its operations in northern Iraq against PKK terrorists, Akar also said, adding that at least 506 terrorists were killed and nearly 2,000 mines and handmade explosives were destroyed, along with nearly 600 caves, shelters and tunnels as part of Operation Claw-Lock.
PKK terrorists have hideouts in northern Iraq, across the Turkish border, which they use to plot attacks on Türkiye.
Türkiye launched Operation Claw-Lock in April to target the terrorist group PKK's hideouts in the Metina, Zap and Avasin-Basyan regions of northern Iraq, located near the Turkish border.
It was preceded by two operations – Claw-Tiger and Claw-Eagle – launched in 2020 to root out terrorists hiding out in northern Iraq and plotting cross-border attacks in Türkiye.
Since 2016, Ankara has also launched a trio of successful counterterrorism operations across its border in northern Syria to prevent the formation of a terror corridor and enable the peaceful settlement of residents: Euphrates Shield (2016), Olive Branch (2018) and Peace Spring (2019).
Ukraine war
Akar also conceded that Russia's war on Ukraine "will not end easily," despite Ankara's repeated efforts to arrange peace talks between Kyiv and Moscow. NATO member Türkiye, which has friendly relations with both of its Black Sea neighbors, has positioned itself as a neutral player and tried to broker a truce.
But the continuing war, which entered its 10th month, is dashing Ankara's hopes. "It appears that this war will not end easily," Akar told journalists during the year-end briefing in the capital Ankara.
He pointed to Western support for Ukraine and Russia's statements that it would not give up on his reasoning. "It would not be wrong to say that despite all our goodwill and call for a cease-fire, this war is likely to continue in 2023," Akar said.
Türkiye, which brokered a deal with the United Nations for the export of Ukrainian grain through the Black Sea this summer, is seeking to bring together Russian and Ukrainian leaders for negotiations to end the war.
It already hosted a meeting between the Russian and Ukrainian foreign ministers during the early stages of the war in March and held other talks between the two warring parties in Istanbul. "As Türkiye, we call for a cease-fire, at least a humanitarian cease-fire. Then a permanent cease-fire and then peace talks," Akar said.
Türkiye has however shied away from Western sanctions against Russia with which it has boosted trade while supplying Ukraine with combat drones.