‘We have run out of lobsters’

"In Turkey we say, 'Tencere yuvarlanmis kapagini bulmus.' Don't you have the same proverb?" a woman from Kusadasi on Turkey's western Aegean coast, eating at the table next to ours on the island of Agathonisi asked the waiter, making a circle with her hand. "I bet she means 'Birds of a feather flock together,'" the Greek owner of the restaurant tells us.

He was right.

This summer, in a straight line from Alexandroupoli to Kastellorizo, wherever you sit, you hear Turkish. There has been a huge influx of Turkish visitors to the eastern Aegean islands and the trend is not only due to the fast-track visa process that gives citizens of the neighboring country the right to travel to 10 Greek islands (Lemnos, Lesvos, Chios, Samos, Leros, Kos, Rhodes, Kalymnos, Symi and Kastellorizo). One of the main reasons is the rising inflation in Turkey that makes the nearby Greek...