Tranquillity of Aegean shaken as Greece and Turkey jostle for right to islands
STRAY cats doze in the sun, children race down alleyways on bikes and a fisherman cuts up a freshly caught octopus on the deck of his boat.
This picture of tranquillity is the essence of Greek island life, as hoteliers and taverna owners gear up for the start of the summer tourist season.
But the remote Aegean island of Fourni has found itself caught up in an increasingly dangerous confrontation between Greece and Turkey.
A series of incidents have plunged relations between Athens and Ankara to their lowest point since 1996, when they nearly went to war over a disputed islet.
Last month, three Greek men from Fourni took a boat and planted the blue and white Greek flag on an uninhabited rocky island a few miles away.
Turkey, which disputes ownership of a string of islands in the Aegean, was incensed and claimed to have sent a coastguard vessel to rip down the flag, a claim dismissed by the Greeks.
The incident would have been farcical were it not for the fact that the potential consequences were so serious.
“Fourni is 20 miles from the Turkish coast,” said Angelos Chryssogelos, an expert on Greece at Chatham House in London. “If Greek citizens can’t set up a flag in that part of the Aegean without protests from Turkey, that means there’s a lot of the Aegean that Turkey considers disputed. That’s an escalation.”
It was just one of several altercations that have dramatically worsened the relationship between the regional rivals. Last month, Greek soldiers fired warning shots at a Turkish helicopter when it approached the island of Ro, a few miles off the Turkish coast, and a Greek fighter pilot died when his F16 crashed into the sea following a mock dogfight with Turkish fighters. Tension was ratcheted up further on Friday when a Greek warship and a Turkish cargo ship collided in waters south-east of the island of Lesbos.
The Greek navy said the Turkishflagged Karmate put on speed and made off into Turkish waters after the pre-dawn incident, ignoring radio messages from the Armatolos gunboat to stop. Greek fighter jets are scrambled on an almost daily basis to confront Turkish planes intruding into what Greece claims is its air space.
“People here are worried,” said Stamatoula Achladis, a pharmacist and hotel owner in Fourni’s main village, Fourni Korseon.
“We have no issue with the Turkish people – lots of them come here during the summer on holiday and we like them very much,” she said, as Greek soldiers in camouflage fatigues piled into a truck on their way to a military outpost.
Like many Greek islands in the Aegean, Fourni has a strong military presence. A road that leads from Fourni Korseon along the coast abruptly ends after less than a mile at a roadblock made of barbed wire and oil drums guarding a Greek base.
In the distance, another military bunker is tucked at the base of a cliff, well positioned to defend the surrounding bay from attack. Tourists may not think of the Aegean as being militarised, but concrete bunkers and gun emplacements are scattered across the islands that face the Turkish coast.
Greece is stepping up its military readiness in the Aegean, with half of the freshly deployed 7,000 troops heading for the islands.
Tension in the Aegean reflects the fraught relationship between the two Nato allies. Athens has refused to extradite eight Turkish servicemen who fled to Greece after the attempted coup against the government in 2016, and Turkey is refusing to hand over two Greek soldiers it arrested on the northern land border after they strayed across the frontier in March. Relations are so bad that one false move could lead to a dangerous escalation and, potentially, military confrontation. “What if the other Greek planes thought the F16 had been shot down? They would have shot down the Turkish planes. That’s all it takes,” said Yiannis Baboulias, an analyst and journalist in Athens.
Tensions have simmered between the neighbours for decades, but Turkey’s position has become more provocative under the increasingly authoritarian leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the president. The nationalist posturing from Ankara for domestic political reasons is likely to increase as the country heads towards a snap election on June 24.
Mr Erdogan has suggested that the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, which established the current borders between the two countries, should be revised – an outrageous provocation in Athens.
There are also strategic factors involved. Turkey is keen to grab a slice of any gas or oil that is found in the Aegean, as it has been around Cyprus. There is no shortage of fiery rhetoric on the Greek side also, particularly from Panos Kammenos, the country’s pugnacious defence minister, who has described Mr Erdogan as a “mad man” who behaves like a sultan.
The minister last month threatened to “crush” any Turkish incursion, announcing the deployment of 7,000 soldiers to border areas.
Any military altercation could have a devastating effect on tourism on both sides of the Aegean. “What American or European tourist would want to spend their vacation on a Greek island or in a Turkish coastal resort, instead of at a destination in Italy or Spain, after seeing images of falling fighter jets or sinking gunboats?” Kathimerini,a leading Greek daily, asked in an editorial.
As Turkish and Greek fighters engage in mock dogfights in the azure skies of the Aegean, life on islands like Fourni carries on. “The Turkish people are just like us – they like to drink ouzo and they like to eat,” said Vassilis, a 50-year-old fisherman mending his nets in the harbour. “It’s the politicians playing games who are creating the trouble.”
‘The Turkish people are like us – they like to drink ouzo and eat. It’s the politicians who are creating the trouble’