NATO Summit a ‘diplomatic Waterloo’ for Greece, says Tsipras

This week’s NATO Summit was a “terrible diplomatic defeat” for Greece, opposition SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras has said, describing developments in Madrid with regards to Greek-Turkish relations as a “diplomatic Waterloo.”

Speaking in an interview to Open TV on Thursday night, Tsipras said that the government appears to have placed the bar so low, it was satisfied with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan not raising the issue of the sovereignty of the Greek islands at the meeting of NATO leaders in Madrid. 

“We saw what happened in Madrid [on Wednesday], but the Greek government says it is satisfied,” the Athens-Macedonian News Agency reported him as saying. 

According to the leader of Greece’s main opposition party, what can be taken away from the summit is “confirmation of the West’s support for Turkey despite the extreme revisionist policy it expresses.”

Tsipras went on to accuse the conservative government of “engaging in a dangerous foreign policy that is leading us from defeat to defeat,” saying that Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis responds to such setbacks by “pulling armaments programs out of his sleeve.”