JOURNALIST: At this point I would like to welcome and thank Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias, who is with us.
Mr. Kotzias, good morning.
N. KOTZIAS: And I wish you a good day, although I see it is a beautiful day without my wishes. Good morning to our listeners, as well.
JOURNALIST: Thank you. Let's start with the 'borders of our heart,' as Recep Erdogan put it.
N. KOTZIAS: Let's start with a clarification, because the opposition press takes liberties with reality. The Foreign Ministry, as you know, issued an announcement regarding the latest statements from Erdogan, having read his statements in Turkish, according to the posting on the site of the Turkish Presidency itself.
That's why, in our announcement, we made no reference to a referendum or anything else. There were to incorrect despatches from the Ankara Press Office and from the Athens News Agency, from Istanbul, that state that Erdogan talked about a referendum. We made no such announcement.
Now the ridiculous part of the press and news media is the accusations that we are a dysfunctional Ministry because we haven't read Erdogan's actual announcement, but let ourselves be mislead by the ANA.
We made no mention of a referendum. We made no error in our announcement and they are accusing us of something we didn't do. This can happen only in today's Greece.
JOURNALIST: I think that a careful reader of the Ministry's announcements can easily understand this, because I, too, read the Turkish Presidency's announcement. It is clear.
N. KOTZIAS: Yes, but I see absurd things being written, even in today's Kathimerini. Saying we're dysfunctional and we don't know what we're doing, blaming us for what happened to everyone else. For example, New Democracy's Mr. Kefalogiannis submitted a question -- in good faith, I say -- to the European Parliament based on the announcement put out by the ANA. But we weren't the ones who made such a mistake, because we are careful and study the Turkish websites of the Turkish Foreign Ministry, of the Turkish Presidency, etc.
Let's have done with the senseless opposition that does nothing but harm.
JOURNALIST: Mr. Minister, let's return a little to what the Turkish President did say, nevertheless. This isn't the first time he's done it.
N. KOTZIAS: I have said for some time now -- I said it at the Council on Foreign Policy we held before the summer, with regard to Turkey in particular -- that Turkey is a restless power. It has a large number of clashes and contradictions. Religious, economic, social, ethnic -- it has an environment around it where there is a lot of turmoil and war. I am referring in particular to Syria and Iraq.
And all of these things are making the Turkish government restless. What Greek foreign policy is doing is not letting this restlessness find expression in foreign policy.
Second, there are a lot of revisionist forces in Turkey. Revisionist forces, I mean, in international relations -- those who want to change the status quo and, in fact, change international agreements.
To a degree, there are forces in Turkey -- and their views were reflected in a number of statements from the President of Turkey himself -- that dream of the revision of the 20th century agreements that determine and define the very borders of post-Ottoman Turkey.
In my opinion, they are wrong to dispute the Treaty of Lausanne, and they aren't doing so with an eye to Greece right now. They always have the Aegean issues in mind, of course, but they are looking at Mosul, which they tried to claim in the early 20th century, as well as their urgent need -- in quotation marks -- to participate in the Western bloc, in the plans to retake Mosul.
JOURNALIST: We see what's happening in Mosul right now, with Turkey's stance.
N. KOTZIAS: Where the large oil wells and populations of Turkish origin are located. And of course this is also linked with an effort to avert the formulation of a hub zone, from Iraq to Syria and from Syria to the Mediterranean, which would allow for the existence of major natural gas and oil pipelines that would not cross Turkey, despite coming from its east. Because until now, as you know, all of the pipelines, with the exception of one, pass through Turkey towards Europe.
So if a functional Iraq and Syria are created -- functional states incorporated into the international system, and there is in fact a hub zone in these two -- it is obvious that there are alternative routes for the pipelines, and this heightens Turkey's restlessness.
Let me say that we need to adopt a moderate approach and not lose our composure over this. That is, sometimes I see a commotion in the opposition, as if they are ready to take up arms at any time. But at the same time, we mustn't underestimate the significance of this type of revisionism. It requires sobriety, as I always say, composure and resolve.
No one should lose their composure. No on should give the opposing groups within Turkey the opportunity to come together with Greece as a common enemy.
JOURNALIST: Do you believe that the recent Turkish statements are aimed, to a degree, at jeopardising the EU-Turkey agreement on the refugees? Because the Turks have been trying to achieve various things through the refugee crisis of late.
N. KOTZIAS: The Turks are always distrustful when it comes to the European Union. They are concerned, that is, that the agreement may not be implemented and, second, that the EU always has in mind its using the same agreement as a European policy tool for exerting pressure on Turkey.
Meanwhile, in the European Union there are some states, as I said in a recent interview, that believe, or hope, this agreement will not be implemented, or that are pursuing its non-implementation, because deep down they didn't agree with such types of agreements.
Greek foreign policy is taking pains not to leave room for Turkey to withdraw from this agreement, and at the same time not to allow certain European countries to go back on the joint decision.
JOURNALIST: What is your sense, coming out of the recent meetings of Foreign Ministers -- of which there have been quite a few -- regarding the Syria issue? Because those of us who follow international issues discern a restlessness, particularly between Russia and the U.S., and I don't discern any particular willingness to find a substantial solution to the issue.
N. KOTZIAS: First of all, you're right, and I thank you for putting it the way you did at the end. We have a problem as the Left, too, you will allow me to say: that we haven't managed, in Europe, to develop an anti-war movement. We have focussed on the biggest immediate problem of the refugees and economic migrants, and we have left the fight against war out of our practices and action. The source of the refugees and the new migration flows is the war, as in Syria, Iraq and Libya, and that is why I must underscore two things for you.
We are striving consistently for stability and security in the region, and therefore for the stability and security of Egypt, regardless of the regime that exists there. We support the provision of funding -- from the UN and the European Union -- for Lebanon and Jordan for the consolidation of the five agreed industrial zones that will keep the refugees close to Syria.
Regarding the Syrian war itself, I said a year ago, at a European Council meeting, that Syria is reminiscent of the song "Everybody Loves Somebody," but in a bad way -- everybody bombs somebody.
Nine different countries have become involved in the very country they are bombarding. What is the result of this many-sided and multiform bombardment? It's very simple. There is no end to the internal civil war. Why is there no end to the civil war? Because a civil war, as history has shown, ends for one of two reasons.
First, because the involved sides don't have adequate resources to continue the civil war, or, second, because a portion of the population supporting one side gets tired and gives up the fight. But in Syria we have the following phenomenon: the resources are in a sense inexhaustible, because foreign players are constantly supplying Syria with new weapons, ammunition, etc.
And second: the human resources continue to exist -- despite the fact that the Syrian people are exhausted and have been shattered -- because forces are coming from third countries, or "fighters", terrorists from many areas of the West.
So what we have here is a constant flow of resources, as we say in international relations, that hasn't stopped, although normally this should have happened. We therefore need a very conscious anti-war policy; a policy that leads to pacification of the various sides. Unfortunately, the involved sides are not, in practice, taking their responsibility for the human lives.
Many people talk of a war that started for human rights. But what human rights can exist when we have 350,000-400,000 dead and 12-14 million people who have lost their homes and been forced to leave the region where they resided? Here we have total breakdown of societies and the notion of human rights.
JOURNALIST: I think what they are saying has now been belied. What westerners called the Arab Spring.
N. KOTZIAS: As I have no sympathy with these regimes or with the manner of Western intervention: our central issue, in parallel with the our struggle and support for the refugee issue and economic migration, must be the problem of war. We have to develop a movement to deter the continuation of the war.
I remind you that, beyond the heroic struggle of the people of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, who forced three great empires -- France, Britain and the U.S. -- to leave Indochina, an important role was played by the anti-war movement, which, in the U.S. itself, paralysed the ability of pro-war forces to gather the necessary votes in Congress.
We need an anti-war movement in the West itself, in Greece itself.
JOURNALIST: We'll close with that, and thank you very much, Mr. Minister, for the talk we had. Have a good day.
N. KOTZIAS: Have a good day, and may it be red.
JOURNALIST: Thank you.
October 19, 2016