Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has threatened reprisals if anyone attacks the ship surveying disputed waters in the Mediterranean for oil and gas, after two French jets flew nearby during an exercise with the Greek fleet.

“We said that if you attack our Oruc Reis you will pay a high price, and they got their first answer today,” Erdogan said on Thursday in a speech in Ankara, without offering any details as to what might have happened.

The vessel, named after a 16th-century Ottoman pirate, started survey work earlier this week near the island of Kastellorizo, which belongs to Greece but is located near the southern coast of Turkey’s Antalya province.

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