Turkey and Greece flex their muscles over rocks in the Aegean

TURKEY’S chief of the general staff made the first show of force by sailing near the contested islets in a warship. The Greek defence minister responded hours later by dropping a wreath into nearby waters from a helicopter, commemorating three Greek soldiers killed in a skirmish two decades ago. Over the following day, Turkish fighter jets breached Greek airspace a record 138 times, according to the government in Athens. Very quickly, a frozen conflict over a few uninhabited rocks in the Aegean sea, known as the Kardak islands in Turkish and Imia in Greek, started to heat up.

The row began on January 26th after a Greek court refused to extradite eight Turkish soldiers accused of taking part in last summer’s failed coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The court ruled that the men, who fled to Greece by helicopter, could not be assured a fair trial and might be tortured back home. Turkey denounced the...Continue reading

Souce: Europe http://ift.tt/2lst2Yo

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