Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Huseyin Muftuoglu described the Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias’s statement regarding the 43rd anniversary of the Cyprus Peace Operation as “unacceptable”.

Earlier on Thursday, Kotzias issued a statement which said that the intervention was “one of the most tragic pages in the history of Hellenism”.

In a statement, Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Huseyin Muftuoglu said: “As the Prime Minister once again emphasized in Lefkosa today (yesterday), the Peace Operation was carried out within the framework of the rights and obligations of Turkey arising from international treaties.”

By taking the decision to intervene, Turkey prevented a large-scale massacre of the widely-outnumbered Turkish Cypriot people, and ensured that the ethnic violence and conflict on the islands would not be repeated again.

“As a guarantor, Turkey showed the whole world that day that it would not allow Enosis (unification of Cyprus with Greece,) and that the Turkish Cypriots were not alone.”

“Turkey maintains its determination not to allow the common struggle of Greek Cypriots and Greece, expressed in the Greek Foreign Minister’s message, to threaten the peaceful existence and freedom of the Turkish Cypriot people,” Muftuoglu added.