Kasselakis under fire for calling Turkish-occupied entity on Cyprus ‘their statelet’
SYRIZA leadership race contender Stefanos Kasselakis has come under fire for his description of the Turkish-occupied northern part of Cyprus as “their statelet.”
He used the controversial term when speaking to the media in the western Attica town of Egaleo after a political event late on Thursday. When prompted by a journalist, he quickly corrected himself to describe the entity as a “pseudo-state.”
Kasselakis, the frontrunner in Sunday’s leadership run-off election, had used the original term when criticizing Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis for not responding to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s recent call at the UN General Assembly on the international “to recognize the TRNC’s [sic] sovereignty and establish diplomatic, political, and economic ties with this country.”
“It is unacceptable that Mr Mitsotakis did not respond to Erdogan’s invitation to recognize the second half, the northern part, of their statelet, the north, in Cyprus,” he said.
His rival for the leadership spot, Effie Ahtsioglou, later described Kasselakis’ terminology as “a very serious error; a mistake that reveals ignorance about one of the most critical issues of our foreign policy. And this should concern us.”
In a social media post published early Friday morning, Kasselakis (35) blamed his use of the term “their statelet” to the “fatigue and sleeplessness of the campaign trail” and to the fact that he only recently moved back to Greece from the United States after moving there at the age of 14.
“There are times when I have to search to find a word in Greek,” he said.
