A verbal dispute has erupted between outgoing US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the Turkish foreign minister over Washington’s rejection of Ankara’s interventions and positions in the eastern Mediterranean, Libya, Syria and the Karabakh region.
The dispute erupted during a videoconference of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) foreign ministers.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg expressed willingness to exert efforts to reduce tension between Ankara and Athens while Turkey announced that it was ready for an unconditional dialogue.
But Pompeo criticized Turkey, accusing it of not adhering to NATO’s principles and undermining its cohesion.
The US official described Ankara’s activities in the Eastern Mediterranean, Libya, Syria and Karabakh as "provocative.”
Pompeo said "Turkey's possession of the S-400 missile system was a gift to Russia, from an ally in the NATO.”
In his statement during the videoconference meeting held on Tuesday night, the US Secretary of State said the military de-confliction mechanism agreed upon between Athens and Ankara in October is suspended due to Turkey.
In return, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu accused his US counterpart of contacting European allies and urging them to align themselves against Turkey, to become blindly biased to Greece in regional conflicts, and refuse to sell US Patriot anti-aircraft weapons to Ankara, which was forced to buy the S-400 system from Russia.
Cavusoglu said the US supports what he called “Kurdish terrorist organizations” in Syria, referring to the Kurdish People's Protection Units, while Turkey is fighting ISIS.
The Turkish official added that the United States and France have contributed to the exacerbation of the conflict in the Karabakh region by supporting Armenia in the war that Azerbaijan won with Turkish military support.
In response to Cavusoglu's accusation against Pompeo and the United States on Greece, Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias replied: "If the Greek position is extreme, then international law is as well."
Meanwhile, the head of the Turkish Presidency's Communication Department, Fakhruddin Altun, said his country had received unprecedented "hostile" treatment from Washington in recent years, and that Ankara's view of the US as a NATO ally did not change despite that.
On the other hand, Cavusoglu praised Germany for playing the role of "honest mediator" in its attempt to mediate in the conflicts in the Mediterranean, but at the same time he accused it of "piracy", due to the German inspection of a Turkish cargo ship, off the Libyan coast.
For his part, Stoltenberg avoided commenting on the Pompeo-Cavusoglu exchange of verbal dispute, indicating instead that NATO's mechanism helped reduce the conflict between Athens and Ankara.
"We have seen that the de-confliction mechanism helped reduce the risk of accidents between the Greek and Turkish armies," he said.
He emphasized that the solution lies on the mediation efforts led by Germany and the political will of Greece and Turkey.
