‘This island is a paradise’: the Greek tourist destination thrust into heart of military stand-off with Turkey

Tensions are rising in the eastern Mediterranean as neighbours and Nato allies Turkey and Greece engage in a stand-off over potentially significant oil and gas reserves in waters that Athens says are indisputably Greek. Last week, Turkey sent a seismic survey vessel accompanied by naval ships to an area just off the Greek island of Kastellorizo and says it plans to continue its search until 23 August.

Greece says this is a clear violation of its continental shelf and territorial waters, while Turkey has argued that islands cannot have continental shelves. A similar dispute was resolved in July after an intervention by the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, which lead to Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, saying that Ankara was prepared for negotiations without conditions.

Turkey’s latest move is in the wake of a deal signed at the beginning of August between Greece and Egypt to create an exclusive economic zone in an area in the eastern Mediterranean that contains oil and gas reserves. This deal conflicts with one made between Turkey and the UN-backed Libyan government at the end of last year – a deal which Greece says it does not recognise.

The relationship between Athens and Ankara has been increasingly fraught in recent months. In March, Erdogan announced he would open the borders for asylum seekers to Europe, which resulted in a large increase of refugee arrivals to Greece. In July his decision to convert the Hagia Sophia, historically significant to the Greek Orthodox religion, into a mosque was labelled “regretful” by the Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.

This time the territorial dispute between the two Nato allies has pulled in significant members of the European bloc. Last week the French president Emmanuel Macron tweeted his support in Greek and said France would increase its military presence in the area, whilst Germany has appealed for dialogue between the two countries. Matters came to a head on 12 August when a Greek and a Turkish frigate collided at sea, with images released this week showing some damage to the right side of the Turkish vessel. Greece played the incident down as an “accident”, but Erdogan called a signal of the “high price” Athens would pay for standing in Turkey’s way.

Spyridon N Litsas, a professor of international relations at the University of Macedonia, told The Independent that the reasons behind Turkey’s moves in the disputed waters were manifold. “Turkish aggression in the Aegean Sea has to do with Ankara’s maximalism. The Mavi Vatan (blue homeland) plan, which aims to transform the eastern Mediterranean into a Turkish lake,” he said. “In addition, Turkey tries to harm the fragile Greek economy by raising the tension in the Aegean Sea. It is important to underline that while Turkey asks for diplomatic dialogue over the status of the Aegean, in reality it just aims to give the impression to the western world that it is not the regional bully that everybody thinks.”

The inhabitants of the Greek island of Kastellorizo, which lies roughly a mile from the Turkish coast and has a population of around 500, have unexpectedly found themselves in the centre of a geopolitical storm.

Michele Kiosoglous, a Greek-Australian lawyer whose heritage on Kastellorizo dates back eight generations and who has been coming to the island for 25 years, told The Independent that this latest crisis was having a significant impact on the tourist industry. “Covid-19 is an issue and to add to that we’ve got the Turkish issue, which is causing a massive problem in the Mediterranean and stopping Greeks and Europeans from coming,” she said.

Island life, she said, continues as normal even in the unusual circumstances. “On the day that the Turkish F16s flew over and broke the speed of sound, everybody was still sweeping their footpaths, setting tables for the day, even though there’s not much tourism. People were still going out fishing, they were all feeding their goats and chickens.”

Kiosoglous said islanders, although temporarily disturbed by the military presence, were more unsettled by the media attention, which she blamed for curtailing tourism. There is also an anxiety about the impact of any energy reserves found nearby. “What really worries us is the issue of the environment, in our waters we have the monk seal, sea turtles who come from the Turkish coast looking for cleaner waters and we have migratory birds,” she said. “This island is a paradise, we’re untouched and we don’t want to ruin that.”

Dr Angelos Chryssogelos, a lecturer in politics and international relations at the School of Social Sciences at London Metropolitan University, said that Greece has long viewed Turkey as “an inherently expansionist or revisionist power”.

“The main source of concern here is that [while] in the old days Greece and Turkey could really reach the brink a few times, you had some pretty well respected strong outside brokers like Nato, the US or even the EU also playing a role in containing them.

“Now you basically have those brokers being part of the conflict themselves. So France seems to be supporting Greece right now and Germany is much closer to Turkey, or at least that’s the perspective in Greece. The US president, Donald Trump, supports Erdogan, but there’s many elements inside the US administration who mistrust Turkey, also because it seems to be in opposition to Israel,” he said. “The question now is who is the outside actor who has both the gravitas, the credibility and the raw power to impose a kind of a temporary understanding. Right now that seems to be missing.”

A week ago the Greek foreign minister Nikos Dendias travelled to Vienna to meet US secretary of state Mike Pompeo to discuss the issue. On Tuesday, after a meeting with his Cypriot counterpart, Dendias said that Turkey’s “aggression” was directed at the EU as a whole and that the bloc must “step up” its response.

It seems inevitable that other actors will be drawn in. A letter published in the Times this week signed by 25 notable academics, actors and authors including Stephen Fry, Louis de Bernieres and Victoria Hislop called on the British government to express its “clear support” to Greece and Cyprus over the issue. And Greece also plans to raise the matter at an informal summit of EU foreign ministers in the coming week.

In the meantime those living on the island of Kastellorizo watch and wait. For Michele Kiosoglous, one thing not up for dispute is the island’s sovereignty. “There is nothing about this island, from the cooking of the goats, to the sweets that we eat, to the flying of the blue and white flag, that isn’t Greek.”