Yesterday evening Mel (our friend from Lesvos), Marion, Sanne, Rob and I had a very long chat on Skype.
On a certain moment the conversation ended up with Turkey and its president Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Mel told us that there always has been a certain of distrust between the Turkish people and the people of Lesvos, which is not strange if you know that Turkey occupied Lesvos for around 400 years.
The last period Mel said she felt that things were relaxing a bit more. Quite some Turkish people were visiting Lesvos to discover their part of the history on the island. After all many of them have not only a place in history on Lesvos, but many also have family on Lesvos.
This was of course a good change. And many of the Turkish guests were very friendly and happy to be on Lesvos to learn about the past of their land and family.
But the current president of Turkey is causing unrest among the Greek people. He stated now more than once that he wants to reinstate the Ottoman Empire and that the islands in the eastern part of the Aegean Sea belong to Turkey. Lesvos is one of those islands!
With 400 years occupation by Turkey in their history, it is very understandable that this makes the people of Lesvos feel very uncomfortable.
This statement of Erdogan is nonsense. So yes, Turkey occupied (read carefully: OCCUPIED, not owned) Lesvos for 400 year. But which country owned Lesvos before that many, many more years than those 400 years? Yes, there is indeed just one country that can say that Lesvos belongs to it and that is Greece and Greece only.
And logically the Greece government made all ready very clear that Turkey will not even get a centimetre of those islands. And right so!
Now Mel (and we with her) don’t think that Edrogan will be so stupid to really try to get these island, because then they will not only find the Greek army at their doors, but the NATO with them.
Anyway, it shows a lot of arrogance to make this kind of statements, but that is something we are used to by now from Erdogan.
“Gevaarlijk mannetje, die Erdogan”, said Sanne in true Dutch (which means “Dangerous fellow, that Erdogan”).
Funny thing is that er already religious conspiracy stories going around that this all has to do with the predicted “End Time”. Yeah sure…
(Credit map: TES Lessons)
I do fully agree with the statement that Erdogan is a dangerous man. Just look how is he is “saving” the democracy in his country. And he uses that coup to legitimize everything he does and wants
As said, I also think that is not so stupid to force a war. He cannot be that stupid….