Deescalation in the Aegean amidst Turkish inflammatory rhetoric

After the Turkish Foreign Minister and his representative, Hami Aksoy, first commented on the Hagia Sophia, statements came yesterday by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who dissatisfied with the general outcry, claimed that the West isdissatisfied that Istanbul "is Turkish territory".

"At the opening of Hagia Sophia (as a mosque), we noticed that some countries do not know that Istanbul is Turkish territory. Centuries have passed since its conquest, and we see that it is still not acceptable that Istanbul is in the hands of the Turkish nation and the Muslims."

Earlier on Saturday, Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Hami Aksoy called Greece a spoiled child of Europe and accused it of being anti-Islamic.

"Greece must wake up from the dream of Byzantium, from which it has not woken up for 567 years", he said, while in his announcement, he refers to an incident of burning a Turkish flag in Thessaloniki, saying that "these racist heads have not learned a lesson from history and let them remember what happened to those in the Aegean who did not show respect to the Turkish flag ".

The Greek Foreign Minister responded to Aksoi's statements, referring to a "delusion of religious and nationalist fanaticism".

"The international community of the 21st century is astonished to see the delusions of religious and nationalist fanaticism in present-day Turkey. "They have been condemned and are unworthy of an answer, while they expose more and more internationally those who extort and incite them", the Greek Foreign Minister stated characteristically.