The arrival of 41 military vehicles donated by the US to the disputed islands of Lesbos and Samos rekindles tensions between Athens and Ankara
Turkey and Greece, Greece and Turkey raise the tone of their dialectical war around one of the historic fronts that have opened between them: the Aegean Islands. The official Anadolu agency reported the arrival of 41 military vehicles donated by the US to Lesbos and Samos, 15 and 1.3 kilometers from the Turkish coast, and showed the images captured by their drones. Ankara lodged a formal complaint with the Americans and the foreign ministry urgently called on the Greek ambassador to ask him to end what they consider to be the violation of the agreement between the parties that states that these islands are a demilitarized area should be.
The arrival of these armored vehicles on islands that have been in dispute since World War I is another chapter in the long list of historical disagreements between Ankara and Athens, including the delimitation of airspace, maritime borders, hydrocarbon resources in the Mediterranean Sea or the division of Cyprus.
Turkey accuses the neighboring country of “occupying” some islands that are Greek territory, but where Athens cannot deploy soldiers under international law. Ankara invokes the Treaty of Lausanne of 1923 and the Treaty of Paris of 1947 to defend that there should be no military presence on the islands, so that the arrival of these armored vehicles would be banned. Greece, which leads the spending on weapons within NATO despite its financial difficulties, defends that “our borders are blue, not gray and that strengthening the armed forces is a priority”, in the words of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis. From the Hellenic side, they denounce the Turkish “illegal military maneuvers” on their borders.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan went a step further and launched the threat of a possible veiled invasion. “We can come one of these evenings,” the president said. The neighbor and ally in NATO replied that they are ready to defend their sovereignty. To the list of misunderstandings over the past month, we should add that a Greek patrol boat opened fire on a Turkish vessel in what Ankara considers international waters. From the Ministry of Defense in Athens, they denounced that Turkish fighters and drones violated their airspace 110 times only on September 14.
And amid the escalation of tensions between the two governments, the leader of the opposition in Turkey, Kemal Kiliçdaroglu, read an electoral reading of the situation, writing on Twitter that “Mitsotakis and Erdogan have one thing in common: their popularity. doesn’t stop falling. That’s why the two populists play the war card. They don’t know how else to get back!” The two leaders will be competing for their positions in the polls in the coming months, and situations like this serve to overshadow internal problems, the list of which is long in both countries.
To complicate matters further, Turkey has raised the alarm over the establishment of ten US bases on Greek soil in recent months. Washington assures that these are logistics centers to transfer weapons to Ukraine and stop any possible security threat from Moscow. Prior to Erdogan’s question about this matter, “they answer us that it is a measure against Russia, but we do not believe it,” the president said.
Speaking to Turkish broadcaster TRT, military analyst and former army officer, Ulas Pehlivan, emphasized that “although many Western analysts tend to accept Washington’s stance that expanding its presence in Greece is done to counter a possible Russian threat against and strengthen NATO solidarity, while also serving as indirect support for Greek foreign policy at odds with Turkey in the Aegean.
With the war in Ukraine in the background, this direct confrontation between neighbors in Aegean waters remains in the background, but both the European Union and NATO have rushed to calm all sides to prevent the opening of a new front.
Source: La Verdad
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