Turkey on Thursday accused Greece of “provocative” acts, including violation of Turkey’s airspace and territorial waters, in a statement released after the National Security Council (MGK) meeting, state-run Anadolu news agency reported.
The violations by the neighboring country are “unacceptable,” the MGK statement said, while accusing Greece of ignoring international law and taking a stance against neighborly relations and NATO partnership.
The council urged Greece to end immediately its “violent and inhumane practices against irregular migrants.”
Greece and Turkey have long been at odds over a string of issues, including the ethnically divided Mediterranean island of Cyprus, the status of Aegean islands and the movement of migrants across the Aegean Sea.
Ankara maintains that Greece has militarised 16 out of 23 of its Aegean islands in what it calls a flagrant violation of international agreements and international law and tensions between the NATO allies have soared in recent months over pending maritime issues in the Aegean Sea, including overlapping claims on the continental shelves and maritime boundaries.
The MGK also urged NATO allies’ support in the fight against terrorist groups, including the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and its offshoots, as well as the Gülen movement, a religious group lead by U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gülen.
The PKK has fought a four-decade war for Kurdish autonomy from Turkey at the cost of about 40,000 lives, most of them Kurdish. The group is labelled as a terrorist organisation by the United States and the rest of NATO.
Ahval