Islands

A Turkish cultural association said on Aug. 5 that almost all mosques and graveyards on Greece's Kos (Istankoy) island were "ruined" and closed to worship.

An uninhabited, seemingly drab landmass some 10 kilometers from the holiday island of Naxos in the Aegean, has yielded 4,600-year-old structures that provide evidence of ancient Greece's early history being far more complex than experts once believed.

The Greek Culture Ministry's advisory body on the protection of antiquities, the Central Archaeological Council (KAS), ruled that the small, uninhabited island of Makronissos is an area of archaeological interest.

The proposal came from the Cyclades Ephorate of Antiquities which is conducting field expeditions on the island in the past few years and the decision came on July 2.

The emerging crisis in the Eastern Mediterranean over Turkey's drilling activities in Cyprus' exclusive economic zone (EEZ) raise the prospect of an open Greco-Turkish conflict to a level higher than anytime since the Imia crisis.

In the latest indication of the strengthening of the US-Greece strategic military relationship, and amidst heightened threats from Turkey in the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean, the arsenal of the Hellenic Army will be substantially bolstered operationally with the addition of 70 American OH-58D Kiowa Warrior helicopters.

Two Turkish fighter jets flew over the eastern Aegean islets of Farmakonisi, Arkii and Lipsi, the Hellenic National Defense General Staff (GEETHA) said Tuesday.

Former Prime Minister Costas Simitis has warned that given the heightened tensions in the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean, Ankara may try to set up a military clash as it did when he was PM in 1996.

Simitis succeeded a dying Andreas Papandreou after his resignation in mid-January and within days Turkey sent commandos to land on one of the two Imia islets that belong to Greece.

The danger of a "hot incident" with Turkey is ever-present, former Prime Minister Costas Simitis warns in an article in Greek Kathimerini.
Referring to the "Imia crisis" which brought Greece and Turkey to the brink of war a few days after he became Prime Minister in January 1996, Simitis says  that "it is not excluded that the present Turkish leadership has similar designs."

Straight on the heels of the political uproar over PM Alexis Tsipras' August, 2018, Ionian cruise on the yacht of the Panagopoulos shipping family, the daily Ta Nea revealed that his deputy digital policy minister Lefteris Kretsos took his own luxury cruise in the Saronic Gulf.

Officials in Athens are naturally worried by the fresh areas of tension that Turkey has opened up, in a quite an aggressive fashion, across the Eastern Mediterranean region.