Kasos

Conservationists are facing a setback after an endangered white scavenger vulture named Ionas disappeared during his first migratory journey.

Expectations are low ahead of Tuesday's meeting between Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. 

Indicative of the difficulties is a reminder by Turkey's energy minister, Alparslan Bayraktar, of Ankara's firm positions on Eastern Mediterranean issues.

This year's Medusa 24 exercise, which will take place throughout the area surrounding Crete, reaching as far as Kasos and Karpathos, highlights Greece and Egypt's extremely close relationship, as well as cooperation with key players in the EU and the wider region of the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East.

Speaking a day after his meeting in Brussels with his Turkish counterpart Hakan Fidan, Greek Foreign Minister George Gerapetritis dismissed speculation that Athens made concessions to Ankara during the incident near the eastern Aegean island of Kasos in July when an Italian ship conducted cable-laying research for the Greece-Cyprus electricity interconnection.

Greek-Turkish relations have been in a state of calm for some two years now, with no Aegean overflights and, more importantly, hardly any unauthorized flights into the Athens Flight Information Region (FIR).

Turkey's interest was again piqued on Monday by the conduct of surveys for the laying of electrical interconnection cables by the Italian-flagged research vessel Ievoli Relume south of Kasos and Karpathos in the southeast Aegean.

A Turkish drone that was flying for hours inside the Athens flight information region (FIR) in the southeast Aegean region for a few days has turned into a "permanent" visitor.

Athens is closely observing Ankara's plans to enhance its fleet for hydrocarbon exploration and extraction. 

Ankara has made the Black Sea the focus of its efforts to explore for gas and oil. The Black Sea is where almost all of its floating drilling vessels are currently active, the latest being the seventh-generation Abdulhamid Han.

The positive climate that has been established in the last year between Greece and Turkey is on a collision course with the recurring rhetoric from Ankara about the expansionist doctrine of the so-called "Blue Homeland," which envisages Turkish influence over vast areas that extend from the Black Sea, to the Aegean and the Mediterranean.

The incident in July near Kasos in the southern Aegean which saw a Turkish naval mobilization was not not random, according to officials of the Turkish government who are loudly reiterating the rhetoric of the "Blue Homeland" - which envisages Turkish influence over vast swaths of the Eastern Mediterranean.