by Aggelos Skordas
Since the 1996 Imia Crisis that brought Greece and Turkey to the brink of war, Ankara has been steadily following the policy of “grey zones” in the Aegean. Within the last few months the Turkish leadership has repeatedly questioned the validity of the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne and the 1947 Treaty of Paris, the two international agreements that settled the borders between Greece and Turkey. Moreover, with a series of provocative remarks, top level state officials -including President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim and Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu- have questioned Greece’s sovereignty on a number of islands.
The latest act in a series of episodes was played out on Monday, when the Turkish Premier claimed his country’s Coast Guard removed the Greek flag from the islet Mikros Anthropofas, which has been denied by new footage showing that the flag is still flying.
The Turkish side has even set up its own list, codenamed EGAYDAAK (Egemenligi Anlasmalarla Yunanistan’a Devredilmemis Ada Adacıkve Kayaliklar), meaning islands, islets and rocky islets the sovereignty of which was not granted to Greece under international agreements and treaties. The above list consists of Ankara’s agenda in the Aegean and disputes the sovereignty of no less than 152 Greek islands and islets, some of them located as far as the Cretan Sea!
The acronym appears in the official Turkish bibliography, but after the Imia Crisis it is also included in a handbook distributed by the neighbouring country's military authorities to War Academies students. Most of the islands and islets included in the list belong to formations in the central and southern Aegean Sea.
Turkey argues that in the Treaty of Lausanne, which endorsed the Greek sovereignty of the eastern Aegean islands that had been liberated during the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913, as well as the Paris Peace Treaty with which the defeated Italy granted the sovereignty of the Dodecanese to Greece, there are islands, islets and rocky islands with a controversial status, since they are not named in the above documents.
For instance, though, the two Anthropofas islets are located between Ikaria and Samos therefore they are included in Article 12 of the Treaty of Lausanne which indicates that the above islands are part of Greece. Among others, the EGAYDAAK list includes inhabited islands such as the Oinousses (and the surrounding islets complex) in the Northern Aegean, Fournoi (and the surrounding islets complex) in the Eastern Aegean, Agathonisi and Farmakonisi in the Dodecanese as well as numerous uninhabited islets and rocky islands such as Kinaros, Imia, Stroggyli, Gyali, Dias etc, stretching from the Northern Aegean to the Sea of Crete and the Libyan Sea.
