ATHENS – Greece’s allies and partners “should not give in to Turkey’s blackmailing, regardless of how it may be cloaked as,” Greek Foreign Affairs Minister Nikos Dendias told ‘TA NEA’ newspaper on Saturday.

Despite “assurances from the Turkish side, we are witnessing an escalation of Turkish aggressive rhetoric, as well as unprecedented actions against our sovereignty and sovereign rights,” he added.

Greece’s response to these focuses on three parameters, he noted. Firstly, “we react with prudence and composure. We are not carried away by extreme rhetoric from across the Aegean. We choose the way and the time that we will answer to these.”

Secondly, “we respect and promote the positions of principle on which we have based our foreign policy: respect for International Law and the protection of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of all states,” he said. These principles “we apply in the case of Ukraine but also concerning Turkey,” he stressed.

Thirdly, “we do not have, and we do not seek to have, a Turkish-centric foreign policy that merely reacts to the neighbor’s actions.”

Greece is not a “cunning pseudo-neutral actor,” he stressed. “It just fully embraces the values of Democracies, and is not blackmailing anyone.”

Dendias pointed out that Turkish aggression “is not limited to Greece, as is evident from the rumors of an impending Turkish invasion in northern Syria, and from its strong reaction to the prospect of Finland’s and Sweden’s NATO accession, which we must face with vigor and maturity, as it is yet more proof of Turkey’s revisionist stance.”