Greece’s Tsipras: Turkey’s NATO victory ‘terrible diplomatic defeat’
The deal between Turkey, Sweden and Finland at the NATO summit in Madrid is “a diplomatic waterloo for the Greek positions,” main opposition Syriza leader and former-Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said in an interview with Open TV on Thursday night.
He accused the conservative New Democracy government of placing the bar too low, while he accused them of being satisfied that the issue of the sovereignty of the Greek islands was not raised at the summit by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
The former prime minister said: “We should not only be concerned about the sale of F-16s to Turkey but also about the confirmation of the West’s overall support to Turkey.”
He went on to accuse the Kyriakos Mitsotakis government of “engaging in a dangerous foreign policy” that is “leading us from defeat to defeat.”
Although his party supported the procurement of the Belharra frigates and the upgrade of Greek F-16s, he said that one must also look into whether the country has the financial capabilities for these purchases.
In a question about when he estimates that elections will be held, he replied that “it is obvious that Mr. Mitsotakis is planning elections for September” and called on the prime minister to announce the date.
He added that Greece needs a progressive government “but this requires that Syriza comes first in elections – we want to come in first with a wide margin.”
However, “the most critical thing is to have parity in the media coverage” and criticized that the two parties do not get equal time for their campaigns.
“Syriza has a 15% coverage while New Democracy has 75% – is this democracy?”
Wrapping up Tsipras said that the conservative government of Mitsotakis is engaging in double profiteering against society, by not controlling excessive profiteering by energy companies and by introducing excessive taxes.
“The state’s revenues have increased by 3.8 billion euros ($3.95 billion) because of higher taxes,” he said, “and then Mitsotakis comes in to provide preelection bonuses,” he concluded.
