After the sailing of Turkey's mini aircraft carrier Anadolu in the Ionian Sea at the end of April, formally in the framework of the NATO exercise Neptune Strike 24, but in reality to demonstrate its power with a joint landing exercise with the Albanian Armed Forces in Greece's backyard, Ankara proceeded on Monday afternoon with another move that was clearly intended to demonstrate its power.
After several months, an ATR72 naval cooperation and intelligence gathering aircraft took off from the military airport of Dalaman, opposite Rhodes, and after entering the Athens FIR without filing a flight plan and thus endangering passenger flights, it flew along the axis of the illegal Turkish-Libyan Memorandum, southeast of Crete, then south of the Greek island and then turned west, reaching the Gulf of Sirte in Libya. He stayed there for some time and then returned by the same route. It was intercepted by Greek fighters. It should be noted that Libyan soldiers participated in the recent Turkish EFES exercise and took part in the landing part of the exercise opposite Chios.
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At the same time, Turkey with the illegal NOTAM A5217/24 blocked 5 areas in the Aegean Sea from north to south and very close to the 25th meridian for a Search and Rescue and Environmental Protection exercise from June 7 to July 9, while at the same time with the equally illegal NOTAM A5234/24 Turkey raised the issue of the demilitarization of Agios Stratis on the occasion of a Greek exercise.
Meanwhile, according to what ERT reported, Greek Foreign Minister George Gerapetritis and his Turkish counterpart Hakan Fidan have written to the OSCE stating that Greece supports Turkish Ambassador and former Deputy Foreign Minister Ferintun Sinirioğlu for the post of OSCE Secretary General and the candidacy of Mania Telalian for the post of Director of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODHIR).
However, Greece's support for Sinirioğlu is a cause for concern as the Turkish diplomat, experienced and powerful in the Turkish deep state, was the one who, as his country's Permanent Representative to the UN, signed a series of letters to the UN challenging Greek sovereignty. Among them, the letter of 18 March 2020 (A/74/757) which proclaimed and included the map of the "Blue Homeland" and the letter of 13 July 2021 (A/75/961-S/2021/651) in which Turkey for the first time invoked the violation of the alleged obligation to demilitarize the islands, extended the "grey zones" by contesting Greek sovereignty over all the islands of the East Aegean and the Dodecanese.
