On Christmas Day, which fell on a Sunday this year and is a day when Turkish fighter jets very rarely take off, three Turkish F-16s proceeded with 11 violations against Greece's national airspace.
In the last few weeks, Turkey has proceeded with a barrage of overflights, including over Greek islands, while they also continue the long-hour flights of unmanned UAVs, which are no longer limited to moving near the Turkish coasts but also in many cases reach the heart of the Aegean.
Closing 2022, the data shows an unprecedented record of Turkish violations against Greece's airspace, by both fighter jets and UAVs. Over 11,000 violations have been counted this year.
It is enough to consider that in 2020, the year of the great crisis when Greece and Turkey came close to conflict in the Aegean, "only" 4,605 violations were recorded, not even half compared to this year's unprecedented situation.
While about a decade ago, in 2013, the violations were only 577. This increased to 1783 in 2019 when Ankara first unveiled the "Blue Homeland" vision.
Ankara's increasing use of Bayraktar and Anka UAVs in recent years has been a huge contributor as they provide cheap options. They fly for many hours over the Aegean either between or even over Greek islands, making overflights.
And when Turkey wants to raise the tension even more, it also takes off fighter jets, as it did in the last few days in exactly the same role.
A total of 2,713 Turkish aircraft, either F-16 and F-4 fighters, or CN-235 and ATR-72 naval cooperation-intelligence, or Anka and Bayraktar UAVs, have flown over the Aegean in 2022.
Every time the Greek radar detects an unknown trace to violate the Athens Flight Information Region, and also the National Airspace within 10 miles of the Greek coasts, the Air Force is forced to take off.
Calculations show that the financial cost to the Air Force is huge since the cost for one hour of flight of an F-16 or Mirage 2000-5 fighter is now more than 10,000 euros and as long as the energy crisis lasts it is constantly increasing.
Greece needs to either shoot them down or stop crying about it.