The Prime Ministers of Greece and Turkey took diplomatic relations to a new level of transparency when they engaged in a heated exchange over foreign policy on Twitter on Sunday.
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras began the discussion by sending tweets criticising Turkey’s downing of a Russian jet and the country’s apparent violation of Greek airspace.
The tweets, which have now been deleted from the English version of the Greek Prime Minister’s account were, of course, screen grabbed by avid social media users, including the below from AFP journalist Danny Kemp.
Addressing Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu directly, Mr Tsipras said: “Fortunately our pilots are not as mercurial as yours against the Russians.”
He continued to call the events in the Aegean sea “outrageous and unbelievable”.
Last week, the Greek news outlet Ekathimerini reported six Turkish planes violated the country’s airspace, which the next tweet seemingly referred to.
“We’re spending billions on weapons. You – to violate our airspace, we – to intercept you.”
Mr Tsipras then highlighted the hypocrisy of the amount of money both countries are spending on weaponry, saying they instead should focus on saving those caught up in the refugee crisis.
Mr Davutoğlu did not take the tweets lying down and responded only to the initial tweet saying: “Comments on pilots by @atsipras seem hardly in tune with the spirit of the day. Alexis: let us focus on our positive agenda.”
Prior to the exchange both politicians attended the EU-Turkey summit on refugees in Brussels. It is not known whether Mr Tsipras’ tweets were as a result of discussions that took place at the summit.
The majority of Twitter users were taken aback by the extremely public exchange but nevertheless were divided in opinion.
Some praised Mr Tsipras for his diplomacy:
While others questioned his “trolling” of another leader and “adolescent” tweeting and deleting spree.
