Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan voiced determination Thursday to”neutralize” those who try to prevent his country from fulfilling its targets.

In a speech on the occasion of Turkey’s Republic Day holiday, Erdogan said that his country was founded 103 years ago after seven foreign occupying powers were defeated.

“Today we are equally determined to neutralize whoever attempts to raise obstacles to the attainment of our targets,” he added, without specifying who he might refer to. Greece was one of the seven powers he initially mentioned.

Erdogan spoke shortly after Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis described a disputed maritime rights agreement between Turkey and Libya as a “flagrant violation of the fundamental principles of the international law of the sea.”

Speaking at a high-level debate of the Greek presidency ⁠of the United Nations Security Council on maritime security, Mitsotakis said Greece and Libya were natural neighbors with opposite coasts and were entitled to delimit their maritime zones by agreement.

“By contrast, Turkey and Libya do not have … opposite or adjacent coasts. Yet, they have attempted to establish an artificial maritime boundary between them,” he said, describing the move as “absurd.”

Greece, Cyprus, Egypt, Israel and France, as well as the European Union, have rejected the Turkish-Libyan agreement, signed in 2019 by Ankara and Libya’s internationally recognized government that’s based in the west of the country. Rival authorities in eastern Libya initially opposed the deal but approved it last week.

Source: Ekathimerini.com