Foreign Ministry: ‘Dodecanese islands status governed by the 1947 Paris Peace Treaty’

Greece’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded on Tuesday to remarks by Turkish Movement Party leader Devlet Bahceli, who questioned Greece’s sovereignty over the Dodecanese islands in the southeastern Aegean, with a statement emphasizing that the status of the islands is governed by the 1947 Paris Peace Treaty.
“The status of the Dodecanese is defined by the 1947 Paris Peace Treaty, an international agreement. Greece, as a sovereign state, fully retains its natural and legal right to self-defense, as enshrined in Article 51 of the United Nations Charter,” the statement stressed. “This right becomes even more vital when Greece is threatened with war (casus belli) for exercising sovereignty in accordance with international law. Maintaining peace demands prudence and responsibility, not provocative rhetoric. Sovereignty is non-negotiable and revisionist views are universally rejected.”
According to Kathimerini earlier, the Turkish MHP party’s leader, a political ally of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, asserted, “we cannot think of the Dodecanese without Turkiye,” and added, “For Turkiye to exist without the Dodecanese is merely a dream.”