Imia/Kardak

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu has said that the country's differences with Greece over the Aegean Sea will be put to the National Security Council for discussion, indicating that there is "another option" for the government besides diplomacy for resolving the dispute.

Greek fishermen on the Dodecanese chain of islands in the southeastern Aegean say they are being harassed by Turkish Coast Guard vessels escorting Turkish fishing boats into Greek territorial waters.

A great European leader - and a true friend of Greece - once said that Greeks were a great nation, but their state is a mess.

With Greece featuring prominently in Turkey's election campaigning, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu raised the tension a notch again Thursday, warning that not even a bird will fly over the Aegean without Ankara's permission.

Turkey has "come close" to overstepping Greece's "red lines," Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias told Skai in an interview aired on Tuesday night, providing the example of an incident last February when a Turkish coast guard vessel rammed a Greek coast guard patrol boat off the Imia islets in the Aegean Sea. 

Greece's "calm and composed" manner has possibly averted unpleasant developments in Greek-Turkish relations, Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias has said.

Greece is provoking Turkey by claiming sovereignty over islets and rocky formations in the Aegean Sea, Turkey's ambassador to the EU, Faruk Kaymakc, has told the Euractiv news website in an interview published Friday.

The Eastern Mediterranean has entered a worrisome period. The strategic environment is more uncertain and conflict-prone than at any point since the Imia crisis in 1996 over the islets Turkey calls Kardak. Today, the sources of risk are, if anything, more profound and widespread than in previous decades.

Amid rising tensions between Greece and Turkey in the Aegean, Wednesday's decision by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to call snap elections for June 24 intensified concerns for bilateral ties against a backdrop of growing nationalist fervor in Turkey, Ekathimerini reports.

As Turkey disputed Greece's territorial integrity over the eastern Aegean Imia islets, President Prokopis Pavlopoulos Wednesday warned that Ankara's behavior was putting the country's European Union membership ambitions at stake.