For about a week now, Turkey has started a new absurd and baseless narrative which revolves around the Greek S-300 air defense missile systems, on the occasion of their alleged “lockdown” of Turkish fighter jets flying on August 23 in area west of Rhodes.
In this context, both President Erdogan and Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar have launched a barrage of inflammatory statements, speaking of “hostile action” with the Turkish media creating a “war climate” aimed at further escalating the already strained Greek-Turkish relations. In fact, the Turkish Ministry of Defense announced yesterday that it will send “evidence” to NATO and more specifically radar images which, as it claims, confirm the incident.
However, this case, which has been denied in every official way by the Greek side, also concerned the Turkish Admiral Cihat Yaitzi, the “father” of the famous “Blue Homeland” doctrine, who made incredible statements in the pro-government newspaper Yeni Safak, saying that the Greek S-300s have been upgraded almost to the level of…S-400s!
In particular, the retired Turkish officer initially said that Greece maintains active and operational S-300 air defense missile systems and then emphasized that the Russians secretly upgraded these systems in 2018-2019. He then added that “it is unacceptable for a NATO member state to do this to an allied state, for this reason an emergency NATO meeting must be held. Once the radar data is submitted to NATO, a decision should be made against Greece.”
