Letters of friendship and smiles on the one hand questioning Greek sovereign rights on the other. Once again, the Greek side "locked" areas for exercises and the Turkish side repeated its revisionist views. In this case, Greece with NOTAM A1010/23 committed a series of areas from north to south in the Aegean for a military exercise that will take place from March 29 to 30.
Ankara reacted with its own directive to seafarers A 2119/23 in which it states that Greece with the NOTAM it issued violates the Treaty of Lausanne and Paris which stipulate that the islands of Thassos, Ai Stratis, Lesvos, Ikaria and Karpathos are demilitarized.
Turkey is the only country that invokes and demands the demilitarization of the "Eastern Aegean Islands".
As far as militarization is concerned, the status of the Greek islands of the Upper Aegean is governed by international treaties. Particularly:
• the status of the islands of Lemnos and Samothrace is governed by the Lausanne Convention on the Straits of 1923, which was replaced by the Montreux Convention of 1936,
• the status of the islands of Mytilene, Chios, Samos and Ikaria is governed by the Lausanne Peace Treaty of 1923 and
• the status of the Dodecanese is governed by the Paris Peace Treaty of 1947.
Beyond the threat of war, Turkey:
• Invaded Cyprus in 1974, in violation of the provisions of the Treaty of Guarantee for Cyprus, to which Greece is a party, and, despite numerous resolutions to the contrary by the Security Council and the United Nations General Assembly, continues to maintain a significant military power in occupied territories.
• It systematically violates the Greek national airspace and flies over with military aircraft, often armed, Greek islands of the Aegean and even inhabited ones, which is of particular importance in terms of security issues.
• During the last decades, it maintains significant military units with aerial means and landing craft in areas of the coast of Asia Minor, located opposite the Greek islands, which constitutes a serious threat against Greece.
The aforementioned state of affairs, combined with the threat of war (casus belli) and Turkey's more general revisionist tendency regarding the territorial and legal status of the Greek islands as defined by international treaties and international law in general, obliges and legitimizes Greece to proceed with necessary defense preparation that will allow it to exercise, if necessary, the right of self-defense, which is provided for by Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, and to protect the Greek islands.
