TURKEY ESCALATES IN AEGEAN, SEEKS CONFLICT TO VALIDATE CLAIMSThirteen 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.
more see: http://www.rieas.gr/images/AEGEAN.pdf
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