Why Turkey-Greece islands confrontation is more than it seems
Turkey sees a chance to offset its withering hope of being invited to join the European Union by working on relationships elsewhere.
This week's revival, after two decades, of the Kardak rivalry between Turkey and Greece is less about those countries' relationship and more about Turkey thumbing its nose at the European Union.
Turkish citizens younger than 20 or even 30 years of age don't have a clue what Kardak is. But middle-aged and older Turks know that Kardak was the last serious crisis that almost brought Turkey and Greece to the brink of war. That was at the end of January 1996.
Kardak is the Turkish word for a pair of tiny islets in the Aegean Sea. In Greece, they are known as Imia. Except for a few goats, in 1996 no life had been detected on the islets, which lie between the Greek island Kalymnos and Turkey’s Bodrum Peninsula on one of the most beautiful parts of the Aegean. To Greece, the islets are Greek territory; for Turkey, they are in “gray zones” — meaning “undetermined sovereignty by Turkey” — and therefore Greece cannot claim them. The Turkish population believes Kardak is part of Turkish territory and thus has to be under Turkish sovereignty.
Having a total of only 10 acres of surface, the Kardak islets naturally have no strategic value at all.
