ATHENS – There’s essentially nothing left of the pledges made by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan not to keep up provocations as he promised in a meeting earlier this spring in Istanbul with Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.

Getting bolder after seeing the world watch Russia invade Ukraine, the volatile Erdogan has again sent a parade of F-16 fighter jets to violate Greek airspace as NATO, to which both countries belong, looks the other way.

That has led to Greece expected to suspend a next planned round of ironically named Confidence Building Measures (CBMs) that haven’t worked – just as 64 rounds of exploratory talks have gone nowhere for years.

CBMs are held between defense ministers and that has seen wrangling intermixed with offers of diplomacy and Turkey demanding Greece take troops of islands under the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne that Turkey doesn’t recognize.

The fighter jet violations have seen the talks postponed for an indefinite time, sources not named told Kathimerini, and Greece also lodged a formal complaint with the Turkish Ambassador that was apparently ignored like all the others.

Turkey kept up the unlawful overflights during the Easter period and kept sending in the jts over a number of islands near Turkey’s coast, said the Hellenic National Defense Staff (GEETHA.)