GREECE has the right to take “all defensive measures” to protect its easternmost islands amid Turkish threats that dispute Greek sovereignty rights and raise the spectre of war, the Greek defence minister said on Saturday.

Speaking after Cyprus’s independence day military parade, minister Nikolaos Panagiotopoulos said Turkey’s “revisionist and destabilising behaviour” also undermines security in the wider eastern Mediterranean region.

Mr Panagiotopoulos dismissed Turkey’s demands to demilitarise the islands “as if they’re not being threatened and as if we don’t have the right to take all defensive measures for them” as “baseless and unacceptable.”

Earlier this week, Turkey summoned the Greek ambassador to protest against the alleged deployment of dozens of US-made armoured vehicles to the Aegean islands of Samos and Lesbos, which Ankara says should remain demilitarised in line with international treaties.

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan also warned that his country wouldn’t hold back on defending its rights and interests against Nato ally Greece, further ratcheting up tensions between the historic rivals.

Prompted by a coup aimed at union with Greece, Turkey’s invasion of Cyprus in 1974 split the east Mediterranean island along ethnic lines.

Numerous UN-mediated efforts at reunification failed.

Turkey is now calling for the recognition of the island’s breakaway Turkish Cypriot north that the European Union and others say is contrary to established UN parameters for a peace deal.

Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades said even though the island’s National Guard is being bolstered with new equipment, the government won’t be drawn into actions to furnish Turkey the excuse to further bolster its 40,000 troops in the north.