ATHENS – Turkey’s recent letter to international organisations, as well as to specific EU member-states “reiterates ad nauseam its standing, unfounded and illegal unilateral claims”, Greek diplomatic sources said on Wednesday.

The specific claims are completely groundless and violate fundamental rules of international law, specifically of the Law of the Sea, the same sources added.

Unfortunately, the sources underlined, this letter “is a monument of the distortion of reality to a point that exceeds the limits of rationality and enters into the realm of science fiction.”

Greece has repeatedly rejected the sum total of Turkey’s claims with a series of arguments which are included in the relevant letters that Athens has sent to the UN secretary general, they added.

The fact that the Turkish letter concludes by asking the recipients (EU, UN, NATO) “to contribute to the efforts for the strengthening of peace and security in the Aegean by encouraging Greece to avoid the escalation of the rhetoric and of other relevant actions and to begin a substantial dialogue with Turkey based on the international law can only be construed as irony,” the sources noted.

They also noted remarks made by Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias to his French counterpart Catherine Colonna on Tuesday, in which he pointed out the fact that Turkish officials have stated publicly and repeatedly that: the Aegean islands are under Greek “occupation”, that Turkey “can come in the night” to invade them and that “Greece is not Turkey’s equal. It is not its interlocutor”.