On the occasion of the official visit of the President of Turkey Rejep Tayyip Erdogan in Greece (7-8 December), the Press Office of the CC of the Communist Party of Greece issued the following statement:
"The visit of the President of Turkey T.Erdogan in our country did not confirm whatsoever the environment that the SYRIZA-ANEL government was uncourteously cultivating during the previous days by naming the visit as "historical". After all, it wouldn't be different, when only within 2017 the violations of the Greek airspace and maritime waters are thousands, while just before his visit, during an interview, the President of Turkey restored all the new provocations and assertions against the country, with the peak being the demand for the revise of the Treaty of Lausanne.
Moreover, the Erdogan visit gave the opportunity to the Turkish leadership, which occupies the 40% of Cyprus and has now invided in Syrian territories, to set the total framework of the Turkish demands, through the revision of the Lausanne Treaty, to project its persistence on the "grey zones" in the Aegean, to intervene in Thrace thus seeking the utilization of the muslim minority- which is comprised by Greek citizens- for the benefit of the interests of the Turkish bourgeoisie also according to the practice it follows in other regions of the Balkans and the Middle East.
Practically, the visit prepared by the SYRIZA-ANEL government upgraded Turkey's assertions against the sovereign rights of our country and this poignant result cannot "washed out" by the promotion of economic agreements between parts of the Greek and Turkish capital from which the people have nothing to win.
The KKE estimations are confirmed and once again it is proved that the integration and connection of the two countries in the imperialist organisations of NATO and the EU do not help peace and security for the people. The government, as well as the other bourgeois parties that support the Euroatlantic and capitalist "one-way" route of the country bear responsibility because they misdirect the people that, within round-tables and businesses, the problems will be solved for the benefit of the people.
Our people must not be content with the fairy tales that SYRIZA and the other bourgeois parties are saying that supposedly through diplomatic manipulations- either through "zeibekiko" dances, "best man" relations* or through the development of various business plans- will overcome problems that are connected to deeper causes and powerrful competitive interests.
The working people, the people in both countries, must be vigilant, because the imperialist war, which is waged for the profits of monopoly groups, is, like economic crises, nextricably bound up with this barbaric capitalist system.
The struggle of the people needs to be strengthened in both sides of the Aegean, in order to counterfight nationalism, every intent for border change, every change of international treaties that leads to the bloodshed of the people. The struggle must be strengthened, so that the conditions will be created to end, once and for all, the causes that create war".
* Note by IDC: In June 2001, the then Greek Foreign Minister George Papandreou had performed a zeibekiko dance, in front of his clapping Turkish counterpart Ismael Cem, on the sidelines of a meeting. A few years later, Greek Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis attended the wedding of the son of the then Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, being one of the groom's "best man".
