The tension between Turkey and Greece over territorial waters, continental shelf and other maritime rights, is escalating in the absence of a diplomatic breakthrough. The conflicting views are fast taking a militaristic turn in the wake of growing tensions over gas exploration efforts in the eastern Mediterranean.
Despite Turkey’s firm stance and warnings, Athens appears to militarise an island, Kastellorizo also known as Meis, which is one of the closest Greek-held islands to Turkey’s southern coast in the eastern Mediterranean, triggering a Turkish backlash.
“Pointing guns toward Turkey’s coasts is foolishness,” said Omer Celik, the governing AK Party spokesman, blaming Greece with “a new style of piracy” on Monday.
According to the 1947 Paris Peace Treaty, the island of Meis should be kept in a demilitarised status.
“Italy hereby cedes to Greece in full sovereignty the Dodecanese Islands indicated hereafter, namely Stampalia (Astropalia), Rhodes (Rhodos), Calki (Kharki), Scarpanto, Casos (Casso) , Piscopis (Tilos), Misiros (Nisyros), Calimnos (Kalymnos), Leros, Patmos, Lipsos (Lipso), Simi (Symi), Cos (Kos) and Castellorizo (Kastellorizo), as well as the adjacent islets,” the treaty reads.
“These islands shall be and shall remain demilitarised,” it asserts in Article 14, which concerns Greece-Italy borders and relations. he Turkish foreign ministry has already reacted to Greece’s attempts to militarise the island via strong words at the weekend.
“We reject the illegitimate attempts of changes on the status of the island. We also underline that Turkey will not allow such a provocation immediately across her coasts to attain its goal,” the foreign ministry statement said.
Kastellorizo is just 2 km away from Turkey’s Mediterranean coast while it has a distance of 600 kilometres (370 miles) from the Greek mainland.
“Such provocative actions will prove useless for Greece. Should Greece continue to take tension-increasing steps in the region, she will be the one suffering from it,” the statement added.
The troubled status of islands
During the Lausanne negotiations, some historians including Sukru Hanioglu, a Turkish professor in Foreign Affairs and in the Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University, believed that the Turkish delegation led by the then-foreign minister Ismet Inonu, did not come up with an effective strategy to hold on to crucial islands (except for Imbros and Tenedos), primarily, the island of Kastellorizo, which were key to the country’s security.