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Mesut Hakkı Caşın, a top advisor to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said on Saturday that American troops would be dealt with in a similar way the Turks did to Greeks in Smyrna (Izmir) in 1922, the Greek City Times reports. 

“Our two battalions would invade there and teach all the Americans how to swim in Aegean waters,” Caşın said on live television, as quoted by the source. 

During the Great Fire of Smyrna towards the end of the Greco-Turkish War, forces of genocide perpetrator Mustafa Kemal Ataturk set fire to the great city, resulting in many Greek civilians desperately trying to swim to ships in the harbour and drowning. 100,000 civilians, mostly Greek, died from fire, drowning or directly by Turkish forces.

A common insult by Turkey and proud of the fact that they continued their long tradition of killing civilians, is that they “threw the Greeks into the sea” or “taught Greeks how to swim,” the source said. 

Caşın, member of the Presidential Board for Security and Foreign Policy, stated how US military bases in Turkey could be shut down.

“We can also close our [military] bases [to US troops]. Let the US take its radar [NATO radar base in Turkey’s Kürecik] away. The radar does not work for us anyway,” said the advisor. However, it was the next part of his speech that drew reference to the Smyrna Catastrophe.

“Our two battalions would invade there and teach all the Americans how to swim in Aegean waters,” he said.