IZMIR, Turkey — The volatile waters of the Aegean Sea heated up again as Athens and Ankara sent dueling letters to the United Nations, the European Union and NATO, accusing each other of aggression, military threats and blatant violation of international law. 

The most recent spat in the long chain of clashes was when Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused Athens of violating Turkish airspace and undermining international agreements by unlawfully militarizing the Greek islands close to the Turkish coastline.  

“Your occupation of the islands does not bind us. However, when the time comes, we will do what’s necessary,” he said at Teknofest, the country’s largest technology event in the northern city of Samsun. “We can come suddenly one night.” 

“Coming suddenly one night” is, ironically, a line from a famous love poem. Written by romantic poet Umit Yasar Oguzcan, it was composed into a popular song by Rustu Sardag and sung by Emel Sayın. It became part of the Turkish political rhetoric in 1974 when radio commentators and columnists used it to refer to Turkey’s overnight military intervention in Cyprus following a coup ordered by the military junta in Greece. Turkey’s iron-fisted president, who has a soft spot for poetry, is fond of using the one-liner as he did during the Turkish military operation in Syria in 2016. He used it again a year later to warn Iraqi Kurds before a referendum for an independent state.