2024-03-19 03:06:40
Tension occurred at noon on Friday (15/3) in Imia between a Coast Guard vessel and a Turkish offshore vessel.
It all happened when a Turkish cruiser that usually moves near western Imia entered Greek territorial waters. Then, according to competent sources at enikos.gr, a vessel of the Greek Coast Guard appeared from Kalymnos and transmitted via radio, a standardized recorded message, approved by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in order to remove the drifter.
But the Turkish boat did not move away. Instead, he moved closer to Imia, resulting in tension. For about 10 minutes there was an informal chase, until finally the boat left the territorial waters of Greece. It is noted that there was not the slightest phone call between Greece and Turkey at a central level, as foreseen by the crisis prevention mechanism, as Coast Guard sources emphasize on enikos.gr.
The Turkish publication
Of course, the Turkish website Sozcu presents a completely different version of the incident, as it states that the Turkish coast guard pursued a Greek vessel. Specifically, he said that a Greek coast guard vessel, which set off from Kalymnos at around 13:52, entered “Turkish territorial waters” and tried to reach Imia.
In the 10 minutes of tension, according to the Sozcu website, the Greek vessel “tried 4-5 times to approach Imia”, and then moved away from the area with the “intervention of the Turkish vessel”.
The episode ended, according to the Turkish newspaper, when the Greek boat moved away towards the island of Kalymnos. After the incident, two coast guard vessels from the ports of Halicarnassus and Yalıkavak were sent to the area of Imia, the publication concludes.
Coast Guard sources emphasize that the video published in Sozcu is old and does not come from today’s incident.
Source enikos.gr
Christos Mazanitis