The fallout from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s recent visit to Greece continued this week, with the relevant Greek foreign minister charging that the outspoken Turkish leader ultimately gave an exclusive interview to an Athens-area television station, prior to his official visit to Athens last week, because he was influenced by his media adviser.
The “influence”, in this case, according to Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias, was ostensibly due to the fact that the adviser, well-known Turkish television producer Acun Ilicali, holds a very lucrative contract with Greece’s Skai broadcaster, allowing the latter to produce and broadcast the Greek version of the well-known “Survivor” franchise.
Kotzias spoke in Parliament on Thursday amid a 24-hour media strike in the country.
Erdogan gave a wide-ranging television interview to Skai and well-known Greek journalist and “Kathimerini” daily chief editor Alexis Papahelas. The interview was broadcast two days before Erdogan arrived in Athens for a two-day official visit to Greece.
In his televised statements and answers to the journalist’s questions, the powerful Turkish president broached, for the first time in such a prominent manner, the need, as he said, to revise or update the landmark 1923 Lausanne Treaty.
In Parliament, Kotzias claimed that Erdogan was previously scheduled to given an interview to the state-run news agency.
In a reply a day later, the private broadcaster’s management reminded that the Turkish president has previously given four similar interviews to Papahelas in the past.
The Greek foreign minister spoke during a debate in Parliament and attempted to deflect continuing criticism of the Erdogan visit, replete with charges that the embattled leftist-rightist coalition government failed to properly prepare or even anticipate the Turkish side’s positions or new claims.
One well-known deputy, Communist Party (KKE) MP Liana Kanelli, herself a well-known print and broadcast journalist before entering politics, dismissed Kotzias’ charges, saying it’s naive to believe that Erdogan “discovered” the Lausanne Treaty issue because he was being interviewed on Skai instead of a state-run media outlet.
