The Minister of National Defense, Nikos Panagiotopoulos, announced on his Facebook account that three new naval ships are named after the martyrs of Imia.
"In August, the Navy received the sixth ship built by Greek hands at the Elefsina Shipyards. The name of this 'Karathanasis'," he said.
"The seventh ship that will be delivered in 2021 will be named 'Vlahakos.' The next ship of this range will be named 'Gialopsos'," he revealed.
"All three Navy ships will sail in the Aegean one day defending the sovereign rights of the country, as the three heroes of Imia would like," the Minister of National Defense said in his post.
Imia is a cluster of Greek islets that Turkey is attempting to steal.
At the height of the 1996 Imia crisis, three Greek officers were martyred when their helicopter was crashed - some speculate by a Turkish attack.
Christodoulos Karathanasis, Panagiotis Vlahakos, and Ektoras Gialopsos were killed in the resulting crash.
Turkey continues to claim that the Imia islets are under their sovereignty despite their own historical maps clearly marking the islets as Greek.
