The announcement of early double elections in Turkey last week sent loud alarm calls to Athens, where government circles fear that increasing tensions between Turkey and Greece could become part of campaigning across the Aegean. But there are already more than enough reasons to worry about relations between Athens and Ankara.
My knowledge of football is next to nothing. Occasionally I find myself being carried away for more than a few minutes on the screen when I accidently zap to a football match.
The two Greek soldiers jailed in the Edirne High Security Prison for “illegally entering a Turkish military zone” on the land border near the river of Evros/Meriç received a special visit April 8. It was by the Metropolitan Amphilochios of Adrianopolis (western border province of Edirne), who travelled from Istanbul with a special permission granted by Turkish authorities.
This was supposed to be a better year for Greece. True, many did not believe in the over-optimistic words of Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras that things would get better by August when Greece finally frees itself after eight years of crisis and three bail-out agreements.
“I saw people who had been washed up on the rocks. Then I saw a drowned pregnant woman floating and next to her a child. They were all wearing lifejackets! I carried ten people with my boat to the coast guard vessel, which had arrived at the spot. 16 were drowned, maybe two missing.”
Today, the families of two Greek soldiers will again make the trip to the northwestern Turkish city of Edirne, on the border with Greece and Bulgaria, to visit their sons jailed in an F-type prison.
In the last few weeks tension between Turkey and Greece has flared over a number of incidents that have caused uneasiness and anger on both sides. In mid-February, Greek and Turkish patrol vessels narrowly avoided a full-scale crash around the uninhabited Imia/Kardak islets over issues of sovereignty. Since then a number of other incidents have further exacerbated the tension. The question of what comes next is now being asked with increasing frequency, as the pendulum between these two NATO allies and “friends” has swung between peace and war on several occasions in their history.
Sometimes my little habit of checking dates and making silly comparisons pays back. Take today. What happened on this day, a few decades or perhaps a century ago? In Turkey, in Greece, in Istanbul, in Athens. How were things then? How are things now?
Just a week ago hundreds of thousands of Greeks, mainly opponents of the government, gathered in front of the Greek Parliament in Athens, waved their national flags and listened to the leftist composer Mikis Theodorakis admonish them that they should stand firm against anybody challenging the Greekness of their “Macedonia.”
