{"id":41386,"date":"2024-02-13T07:53:43","date_gmt":"2024-02-13T05:53:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.onisilos.gr\/?p=41386"},"modified":"2024-02-13T07:53:43","modified_gmt":"2024-02-13T05:53:43","slug":"turkey-threatens-to-invade-greece-and-armenia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.onisilos.gr\/?p=41386","title":{"rendered":"Turkey Threatens to Invade Greece and Armenia"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Michael Rubin*
\nMiddle East Forum Observer<\/i>
\n

\n

On January 27, 2024, two days after the Biden administration again urged<\/a> Congress to greenlight F-16 sales to Turkey, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan said<\/a> at a public meeting of his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), “Our struggle did not end with expelling the enemy [Greeks] from our lands and throwing them into the sea from Izmir.” It was a provocative statement given the massacre at Smyrna, today’s Izmir, killed up to 100,000 and, according to scholars<\/a>, amounted to genocide<\/a> against Anatolia’s Greek Christians.<\/span><\/p>\n

On cue, just over a week later, Turkish analysts on CNN T\u00fcrk discussed<\/a> the prospects of Turkey launching Tayfuns, Turkey’s first indigenous ballistic missile, at Greece. “If we fire it from Edirne or Izmir, we can hit Athens,” they concluded.<\/span><\/p>\n

Pride in “throwing Greeks into the sea” is mainstream among Erdo\u011fan’s government. It is also a popular slogan in Turkey. There are Turkish nationalist songs as well as annual public ceremonies that celebrate the massacre of Smyrna’s centuries-old Christian population as “Izmir’s liberation from enemy forces.” To mark the 100th<\/sup> anniversary of the massacre in 2022, for example, one of Turkey’s biggest pop stars gave a concert<\/a> in the city center in Izmir, celebrating the slaughter. Hundreds of thousands<\/a> attended.<\/span><\/p>\n