Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, on Wednesday accused Greece of failing to fulfill “promises” made during negotiations within the European Union and NATO, and said his country would continue to give Greece “the answer it deserves.”

Erdogan’s comments came days after Ankara redeployed its search vessel, Oruc Reis, for a new energy exploration mission in disputed waters in the eastern Mediterranean, reigniting tensions with Greece and Cyprus over sea boundaries and exploration rights.

READ MORE: Turkey issues new Navtex in Eastern Mediterranean for Oruc Reis vessel.

Those tensions had flared up over the summer, prompting a military buildup, bellicose rhetoric and fears of a confrontation between the two NATO members and historic regional rivals.

“Our Oruc Reis has returned to its duty in the Mediterranean,” Erdogan told legislators of his ruling party in a speech in parliament.

“We will continue to give the response they deserve on the field, to Greece and the Greek Cypriot administration who have not kept their promises during talks within the EU and NATO platforms.”

He didn’t spell out what the promises were but Turkish officials have been accusing Greek officials of engaging in a series of “provocations,” despite efforts to revive the so-called exploratory talks between the neighbors that were aimed at resolving disputes and were last held in 2016.

READ MORE: Turkey, Greece agree to resume talks after four years.

Greece’s government said, meanwhile, that it wouldn’t take part in planned exploratory talks with Turkey as long as the survey mission was in progress.

“It is impossible to hold talks about a (maritime region) when a survey in that region is underway,” government spokesman, Stelios Petsas, told private Skai television.

During his speech, Erdogan also rebuffed international criticism over Turkey’s move to open the beachfront of Cyprus’ fenced-off suburb of Varosha in divided Cyprus’ breakaway Turkish Cypriot north.

“The fenced-off Varosha region belongs to the Turks of northern Cyprus. This should be known as such,” he said.

Varosha remained off-limits and in Turkish military control after its Greek Cypriot residents fled before advancing troops in 1974 when Turkey invaded and sliced the island along ethnic lines after a coup by supporters of union with Greece.

READ MORE: Occupied Cyprus to reopen beach abandoned in no-man’s land since 1974 conflict.

The leaders of Greece’s fascist Golden Dawn party were sentenced to prison on Wednesday for running a criminal gang linked with hate crimes.

Presiding judge, Maria Lepenioti, handed down 13-year jail terms to six former lawmakers, including Golden Dawn’s leader Nikos Mihaloliakos, a 62-year-old mathematician and Holocaust denier, at the Athens Criminal Appeals Court.

The court also handed a life sentence to Golden Dawn member Yiorgos Roupakias for the murder of Pavlos Fyssas, an anti-fascist rapper, and 10 years in jail for belonging to a criminal group.

Other former lawmakers were sentenced to five-seven years in prison for being members of a criminal group. The court will decide later this week if any of the sentences can be suspended.

READ MORE: Golden Dawn party members found guilty of running criminal organisation.

“Today’s sentencing of the neo-Nazi organisation demonstrates the resilience of our democracy and the rule of law,” Prime Minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, said in a tweet on Wednesday evening.

“This verdict marks the end of a traumatic period in Greece’s history. Together we move forward with this chapter closed.”

Human rights groups and immigrant associations have also praised the conviction of Golden Dawn’s leadership.

“Survivors of these crimes have a right to see justice done and this goes a long way to showing that the state will not tolerate such vicious attacks,” Eva Cosse at Human Rights Watch told The Associated Press.

“Racist and xenophobic violence is intended to send a hateful message, and it’s the prosecutor’s role to send an equally powerful counter-message, and for the court to apply an appropriate sentence that reflects the gravity of the crime.”

Golden Dawn, founded in the 1980s and once Greece’s third-largest political party, entered parliament for the first time in 2012 at the peak of an economic crisis on a fiercely anti-immigrant platform, tapping into public anger over painful austerity measures and what many saw as a corrupt and cozy political establishment.

Golden Dawn’s top figures were arrested in 2013, after the killing of Fyssas prompted huge protests across Greece and led to a government crackdown on the party.

Police found unlicensed weapons and Nazi flags in the homes of party members.

A total 68 had been on trial, including the entire Golden Dawn leadership, accused of four crimes.

Last week, when Golden Dawn was found guilty, thousands of anti-racist protesters celebrated the landmark verdict.

“Pavlos, you did it!” the rapper’s mother, Magda, shouted outside the court after the verdict was announced, her hands raised in triumph.

She has attended most of the hearing’s 453 sessions and was again present in court on Wednesday.

RELATED: ‘Democracy has won’: Golden Dawn guilty verdict celebrated across Greece.

A Greek court on Tuesday sentenced a man to life in jail for raping and killing an American scientist on the island of Crete in 2019.

Suzanne Eaton, 60, a molecular biologist at the Max Planck Institute in Dresden, Germany, was found dead in a disused military bunker in July of last year, around a week after she went missing after going out for a jog.

A 28-year-old man from Crete, identified as Ioannis Paraskakis, initially told Greek police he had killed Eaton. He later said his confession was made under duress and that his involvement in her disappearance was an accident.

A court in the town of Chania sentenced Paraskakis to life imprisonment for manslaughter, 13 years for rape and four months for the possession of firearms, the semi-official Athens News Agency reported.

Eaton had been in Crete for a science conference.

The accused was charged with knocking her down with his car, then dragging her to another area where he raped her.

Eaton’s colleagues raised the alarm on the day of her disappearance, triggering a massive search. It is believed she died on the day of her disappearance, on July 2, 2019.

Her body was found by cavers in a bunker, a system of man-made caves used by the Nazis during the occupation of Crete in World War Two.

Sourced By: Reuters

Greece will not engage in exploratory talks with Turkey as long as Turkish survey vessel Oruc Reis remains in its continental shelf waters, the government’s spokesman said on Tuesday.

“As long as the Oruc Reis is in the area we will not hold exploratory contacts with Turkey,” Stelios Petsas told Skai Radio.

READ MORE: Turkey issues new Navtex in Eastern Mediterranean for Oruc Reis vessel

On Monday, Greece said Ankara’s decision to send the vessel close to Kastellorizo, a Greek island near the Turkish coast, was a “major escalation” and a “direct threat to peace in the region”.

Turkey had withdrawn the vessel from contested waters in the eastern Mediterranean last month to “allow diplomacy” before an EU summit at which sanctions against Turkey were discussed.

At the time, Turkish Defence Minister, Hulusi Akar, played down the significance of the move, saying the ship had returned to shore as part of scheduled plans and insisted it did not mean Ankara was “giving up our rights there.”

“There will be planned movements backwards and forwards,” Akar told state news agency Anadolu in Antalya, southern Turkey, in September.

At the summit, the EU said that if Turkey continued operations in the region, sanctions could be imposed as soon as December.

Sourced By: Reuters

The Golden Dawn trial has commenced in Athens today and the Greek prosecutor has presented her proposals for the sentencing.

• 13 years for party leadership.
• 7 years for other former MPs.
• Life imprisonment for man convicted of murdering Pavlos Fyssas and 6-8 years for his accomplices.

The court will now hear the case of the defense lawyers, before it issues its final ruling, probably on Thursday.

The court which ruled last Wednesday that the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party is a criminal organisation, also ruled on Monday that its leadership is not eligible for leniency.