Erdogan provokes Greeks with unhistorical claims

With a message of just a few words, Greece’s foreign ministry responded to statements by Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan who claimed on the occasion of the 101. anniversary of the Asia Minor disaster that it was the Greeks who destroyed Izmir (Smyrna).

In a statement, the Greek Ministry described Erdogan’s claims on the Asia Minor disaster as “hostile” and “unhistorical” and noted:

“Hostile statements are counterproductive and do not contribute to the consolidation of the climate of calm, cooperation and dialogue that is being attempted to be built in Greece-Turkey relations in the current period.”

Erdogan’s provocative statements

“August is for us such a special month, as we have written history with our victories. We have come to the end of this month, when we wrote history in golden letters, as in Magikert, Belgrade and Cyprus.

We close August with a great victory that led to the foundation of our history. On August 26, 1922, our army launched the great offensive under the command of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, our heroic army broke through the enemy fronts, and on August 30, it defeated a large part of the Greek invasion forces and opened the way to Smyrna .

Fifteen days after the start of the ‘great offensive’, the Turkish flags were flying in Smyrna, which had been destroyed and burned by the fleeing enemy. And so we won the war with battles that we fought for 3.5 years against the enemy, who with his treacherous ambitions and his dirty boots soiled our permanent homeland. Anatolia.”

Erdogan’s statements were made just a few days before Greek FM Giorgos Gerapetritis meets his Turkish counterpart Hakan Fidan in Ankara on September 5 and a couple of weeks before a supposedly scheduled Mitsotakis-Erdogan meeting at the sidelines of UN Convention towards the end of the next month.