The Alternate Minister of National Defence Fotis Kouvelis, during an interview given on Monday, 21 May 2018, on Alpha 989 Radio Station with the  journalists Dimos Verikios and Spyros Lambrou, stated the following:

Replying to a question about the country’s memoranda exiting process, he stated:

Let us begin from what is about to happen after exiting the memoranda. The country will acquire anautonomy of political moves. Ahead of us is a long period called just growth, contrasts balancing, limiting of social differences and a series of other arrangements, which can counterbalance all facts recorded as memoranda’s unfavourable inconsistencies in the country. Every issue has of course its subcategories. On the top and most important of these is the financial, just growth.
 
When asked if the government has the time to implement the specific plan, he pointed out:

Elections will occur after a whole year. During this year, a lot of these issues can be dealt with.
Regarding the political developments and the possibility of convergences, he stated:

The possibilities exist, despite the way through which some parties of the minor opposition express themselves. The behavior is not uniform, even in the interior of these parties. From then on, there are the Greek people, the citizens who are able and must form the progressive pole, and when the Greek people, the social levels shape such choices, I believe and I am certain that they also define the political behaviors and choices on the level of the political system as well. Of course, the powers belonging to the Center, Center-Left, the Social Democrats, must decide whether to agree or not with the neo-liberal policy. This is both requested and contested.

Regarding the progress of the issue of the two detained Greek Officers, he stated:

There is no progress, however, there is lots of pressure exerted in multiple levels and with the initiative of the Greek government. We are constantly in action towards pressing Turkey to release our two Army Officers.

Regarding the possibility of the issue been exploited by the Turkish President, in the light of elections:

Undoubtedly, this is a fact. Following yesterday’s statements, you should have realized that the issue of the so called violation, on behalf of our two army members, has been incorporated by Erdogan in the policy of tension, having as a result the illegal detention of our two Army members. I choose this wording with emphasis and tension. I choose the word ‘illegal’, because basically there is no penal offence in the sense of a specific charge, and because the Turkish Justice is manipulated and otherwise defined by Erdogan’s despotic behavior and not only his behavior. The result is that we reached a point where a lot of time has been wasted, since the capture of our two Army Officers.

Regarding the initiative of the Greek side to incorporate the two military members into the Greek diplomatic mission in Ankara’s Greek embassy:

Let me remind you that in the many petitions submitted to lift detention under remand, the Greek consulate was the stated residence in case of release. A fact that made the independent Greek Justice consider the Turkish consulate as a residence place and released the two Turkish citizens in the Kyllini area.

Estimating the situation regarding Greek-Turkish relations and the perspectives of the relations’ smoothing out between the two countries, he stated:

I do not believe it will happen and I support my statement based on what  both Erdogan himself and Akar, the Chief of the Turkish General Staff, stated, with the latter talking about ‘duty performance’ in relation to all those, clearly the Greeks, who consider the Aegean as Greek. It is an escalation of the rhetoric tension. If you ask, why this tension, I will make an estimation: Erdogan wants to keep on the fore any differences, claims and ‘gray zones’ in the Aegean, in his effort to shape, as he innocently believes, a negotiations framework, with the goal, on behalf of Turkey, to be present in the wider area of the Cyprus Exclusive Economic Zone. This is what keeps them occupied, this is what concerns them.