After the deadly 6.7 magnitude earthquake that “struck” Samos last Friday afternoon, Yayci made statements, according to which the “geophysical reality met again with the law of the sea”.
Avoiding calling the Greek islands “Aegean islands”, launching the term “Sea of Islands”, the former deputy commander of the Turkish Navy, provocatively claimed that: “This painful earthquake in the ‘Sea of Islands’ confirmed again that Greek islands such as Samos, located near the Turkish coast, belong to the Turkish continental shelf. The proof is that mainland Greece was not affected by the earthquake, on the contrary, Izmir, the 3rd largest city in Turkey, suffered serious damage”.
He reiterated the Turkish position that the Greek islands near the Turkish coast are “a natural extension of the continental shelf of the mainland”.
Yayci is considered the main inspirer of Ankara’s extreme claims in the Aegean Sea and the Eastern Mediterranean, succeeding in his extreme theories being fully adopted by Ankara in the context of the neo-Ottoman dreams of a “Blue Homeland”.
