Category: 2021

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis was denounced by the spokesperson of Turkey’s ruling AKP party Ömer Çelik for not inviting the pseudo-state of occupied northern Cyprus to the Philia Forum, while he also threatened Greece and Cyprus.

Speaking after a meeting of his party’s central committee, Çelik said:

“Mitsotakis presenting the Turkish army as occupying and then organizing a conference called the ‘Philia Forum,’ attended by the Foreign Ministers of Greece, Egypt, France, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and the [Republic of] Cyprus, the question is: Why was the Turkish Republic, a Mediterranean country and a country at the center of these issues, not invited to this forum?”

Ömer Çelik.

“In a meeting that was attended by the Greek Cypriot side, why was not the [unrecognized so-called] Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus [TRNC] invited? No meeting can be a friendship forum excluding the TRNC,” he said.

Çelik said that “if the Greece and Cyprus dreams of taking with them those countries that have problems for other reasons with Turkey to achieve their maximalist goals, we would like to guarantee that we will turn this into a nightmare.”

“We are not going to let this dream come true. They will not imagine such a thing, they will not take a step with such dreams, they will not even go crazy. They will not escape the nightmare if they take a step,” he added.

Turkey is immensely frustrated as the Philia Forum, the brainchild of Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias, completely isolated Turkey in the East Mediterranean region, while boosting Greece’s relations with Arab states in the Persian Gulf.

Effectively, as Turkey continues to act outside of international law and continues its threats and provocations against neighbouring countries, Greece has successfully sidelined Ankara as the key country of the East Mediterranean.

Thousands of protesters rallied in the capital of Armenia on Saturday to demand the resignation of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, who they accuse of mishandling last year’s war with Azerbaijan.

Pashinyan has resisted pressure to step down since November, when he signed a peace deal brokered by Russia that ended the six-week conflict with neighbor Azerbaijan.

In the deal, received with hostility in Armenia, Pashinyan ceded swathes of territory in and around the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region to end fighting that had claimed some 6,000 lives.

Demonstrators gathered Saturday on Freedom Square in the centre Yerevan under a heavy police presence shouting “Armenia without Nikol!” and “Nikol traitor,” an AFP journalist reported.

“Our dream is a mighty, powerful homeland and the sole obstacle that hampers the achievement of this goal is Nikol Pashinyan,” Ishkhan Saghatelyan, a leader of opposition Dashnaktsutyun party, told the crowd.

“We will not step back, we will get rid of Pashinyan,” he said.

In the 1990s, Armenian-backed separatists in Nagorno-Karabakh declared independence from Azerbaijan in a war for the mountainous province that left tens of thousands dead.

But in the latest conflict, which erupted in late September, Turkey backed Azerbaijan, although denying accusations from several sources that it had sent mercenaries to the frontlines.

Armenia’s ally Russia, although it refused to intervene militarily, brokered the ceasefire and has since deployed thousands of peacekeepers to Nagorno-Karabakh.