A flurry of diplomatic and military activity coupled with increasingly belligerent rhetoric from Turkish officials suggests secret planning has been underway in the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to create a pretext to possibly invade the eastern Greek islands in the Aegean Sea close to the Turkish mainland.
Some of the road markers indicating that a campaign to make a case for such an invasion is already well underway have been noticed in recent communications and remarks of Turkish government officials as well as military activity in the Aegean. The targets include islands close to Turkey such as Mytilene, Chios, Samos and Icaria, Lemnos, and Samothrace.
“These islands were given to Greece with the 1923 Lausanne Treaty and the 1947 Paris Peace Treaties on the condition that it not arm them. But Greece started to violate that in the ’60s. …. These islands were ceded conditionally. If Greece does not stop, the sovereignty of these islands will be questioned. … If necessary, we will issue a final warning,” Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said on state broadcaster TRT on February 10, 2022.
more at nordicmonitor.com
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