Greece’s Defense Minister Panos Kammenos announced a massive shift of 7,000 soldiers to Greek Islands in close proximity to Turkey, as well as to the northeastern region of Evros, where a land border is shared.
Kammenos said one half of the soldiers would be placed at the Aegean Islands and the other half at Evros.
Kammenos referred to an added responsibility to defend Greece’s borders, as tensions with Turkey which he called “an enemy that continues to provoke us.”
“In the coming months, Greece will be transformed into a country developing its own natural resources, natural gas, and oil. That means that the responsibility to defend our country is extended to the borders of its economic zone, or several hundred miles in all directions. This means reorganization and more means, which we will manage to acquire despite the crisis,” he said.
“If they have the guts, let them dare to challenge one inch of our territory,” Kammenos said while attending a reservist exercise on the island of Ikaria. “The Greeks, united, will crush them.”
Relations between the two countries are tense, following numerous incidents that have sparked a war of words between the political leaders in Athens and Ankara and an ever-growing belligerence of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is using the conflict to rile up his local base.
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