TURKEY ESCALATES IN AEGEAN, SEEKS CONFLICT TO VALIDATE CLAIM

TURKEY ESCALATES IN AEGEAN, SEEKS CONFLICT TO VALIDATE CLAIMS
Συντάκτης: Γιάννης Νομικός, μέλος του ΔΣ/Δ21-

By Special Correspondent
Copyright: www.rieas.gr
Thirteen years ago this month, during a freezing, stormy night at the end of
January 1996, Turkey sent its commandos to occupy one of the Imia rocks near
the Greek Dodecanese island of Kalymnos.
Imia, a pair of uninhabited rocky outcrops like so many other similar ones in
the Aegean clustering around larger Greek islands, had been chosen by the
Turkish military establishment as the testing ground of Greek reactions in
Ankara’s Aegean play of threats of the use of force, ongoing and unbroken since
the invasion of Cyprus in 1974.
The Imia crisis had been carefully choreographed; the commando landings came
last in a string of actions that included the refusal of a stranded Turkish
merchant captain to accept Greek SAR assistance, thus demonstrating the Turkish
non-recognition of Greek SAR jurisdiction nearer the Asia Minor coast, and the
arrival of Turkish heliborne “reporters” on Imia to hoist a Turkish flag, which
was pulled down by the Greek military.

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