Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias has strongly criticized the flights of Turkish fighter jets over Greek islands in the Aegean Sea. The fighter-bomber’s numerous overflights are a flagrant violation of international law and inconsistent with recent efforts to ease tensions between Athens and Ankara, the minister said in an interview on Sunday.
According to Dendias to the Athenian newspaper “Kathimerini”, Turkish fighter jets violated Greek airspace more than 200 times from Monday to Holy Saturday and flew over Greek islands in the Aegean Sea at least 30 times.
On Monday, Turkish fighter jets flew over the island of Chios, inhabited by some 52,000 people. On Tuesday, the Greek state broadcaster ERT, citing the general staff, reported two planes that had flown at an altitude of just 457 meters above the island of Panagia, on which a unit of the Greek National Guard is stationed. Two other jets flew over the Inousses archipelago at an altitude of about 6,000 meters.
violation of sovereignty
Such overflights are considered a serious violation of a country’s sovereignty and contradict the meeting between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis in Istanbul four weeks ago. There, after a long ice age, both NATO countries announced that they wanted to ease tensions in the region so as not to put additional pressure on NATO’s southeast flank in light of the war in Ukraine.
Dispute over militarized islands
Ankara denies Greece’s sovereignty over some islands in the eastern Aegean Sea because they are militarized. Turkey has already sent corresponding notifications to the United Nations in recent months. Turkey argues that militarization of the islands is inconsistent with the Lausanne (1923) and Paris (1947) treaties.
Athens, on the other hand, points to the numerous landing craft on the west coast of Turkey, which threatened the islands and therefore had to be prepared for defense. From the Greek government’s point of view, the United Nations Charter justifies these defensive measures.
Source: Krone
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