Erdoğan: Patience running out with Greek airspace violations over Aegean Sea
"Our patience has a limit if they [Greece] continue with such illegitimate threats against us ... using their islands, their bases there. "When the end of that patience comes ... we will do what is necessary. Because locking radars onto our jets does not bode well," Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan told reporters in Sarajevo, his first stop of a three-country Balkan tour.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Tuesday warned of possible action against Greece if it maintained alleged airspace violations over the Aegean Sea that separates the two neighbours.
"Our patience has a limit if they [Greece] continue with such illegitimate threats against us ... using their islands, their bases there," Erdoğan told reporters in Sarajevo, his first stop of a three-country Balkan tour.
"When the end of that patience comes ... we will do what is necessary. Because locking radars onto our jets does not bode well," the Turkish leader charged, without elaborating.
Erdoğan was referring to Greek S-300 air defence systems allegedly locking onto Turkish jets over the Aegean.
Unless Greece comes to terms, Türkiye is ready to "go down there one night suddenly," Erdoğan said earlier on Tuesday, using a rhetoric he uses when he signals to launch a military intervention.
Erdoğan had at the weekend separately accused NATO ally Greece of "occupying" demilitarized Aegean islands.
Türkiye argues Greece is illegally arming its islands in the east of the Aegean, an action prohibited under the 1923 treaty of Lausanne and the 1947 treaty of Paris.
