An article in Turkey’s pro-government newspaper Yeni Safak outlines what would happen in the case that Greece and Turkey were at war. It concludes that Greece would not be able to win a war without assistance from other forces and hence, dismisses so-called ‘provocative statements’ by Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras as being in the context of the general election campaign.

The article quotes military experts who state that Turkey has the capability of striking with missiles beyond Athens in the event of a Greek-Turkish war. Defence policy analyst Turan Oguz is quoted in the article as saying that Turkey has the potential to hit Greek targets on the Aegean islands and can even reach the Athens CBD with its SOM and BORA missiles without a single casualty suffered on the Turkish side.

The SOM cruise missile – first unveiled during a 100th anniversary celebration event of the Turkish Air Force at Cigli Air Base in Smyrna in 2011 – is a next-generation high precision cruise missile  that can be launched from land, sea and air and is designed to destroy both stationary and moving targets at a standoff distance of over 180 kilometres.  The BORA is a tactical ballistic missile that entered Turkey’s service in May 2017. The improved BORA-2 is currently under development.

Source: Yeni Safak