Foreign Minister Heiko Maas cancelling his planned official visit to Ankara, and along with France, warning Turkey with consequences, Greece's Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias declaring that "the Turkish leadership has shown it is not a credible interlocutor. Its calls for dialogue are only a pretext. The international community must judge [Ankara] on the basis of actions, not words. We must all face reality before it is too late", the United States "deploring" Ankara for its moves, which the State Department described as "calculated provocations", Austria's Chancellor Sebastian Kurz condemning Oruc Reis' redeployment and warning Turkey of sanctions, Egypt's Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry rejecting Turkey's gunboat diplomacy and policy of territorial expansion in the region, Sweden's Foreign Minister Ann Linde warning that the Oruç Reis' redeployment is leading to new tensions instead of contributing to de-escalation, Israel expressing its concerns over Turkey's destabilizing role in the East Med, and Russia backing Greece's right to expand its territorial waters to 12 nautical miles and reaffirming that the UNCLOS is a "cornerstone" of the international law and applies to the Mediterranean Sea. Manfred Weber of the EPP reiterated his call for EU sanctions against Turkey, stating that these initial de-escalation moves by Erdogan were purposeful only, with the aim of avoiding sanctions against his country at the recent European Council. Turkey however rebuffed international criticism of its research vessel's redeployment, insisting that the Oruç Reis is operating in what it claims as "Turkish waters". On 17 October, Turkey passed a law expanding its search and rescue (SAR) area to cover all the new territories it claims in the Aegean and Mediterranean seas as part of its Blue Homeland theory. Greece condemned this extension of Turkish SAR as illegal under international law which does not permit any deliberate expansions of SAR areas without prior agreements with the relevant neighboring states, and protested strongly due to this expansion overlapping with Greece's Athens SAR and the sovereign rights of Greek islands and their surrounding waters. The Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs filed a complaint against it at the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and the International Maritime Organization (IMO). Turkey described the Greek protests as "groundless", insisting that the expansion was done "to ensure the safety of the activities" within the Greek continental shelf which Ankara claims as "Turkish". ICAO's Secretary General Fang Liu, however, responded by rejecting Turkey's unilateral expansion of SAR and reaffirming the