28 years have passed since the dramatic events of the Imia Crisis, which began with the grounding of a ship on the rocky islets of Imia, with Turkey disputing Greek maritime sovereignty in the area.
Greece and Turkey have come to the brink of conflict.
Kostas Simitis was Prime Minister of Greece, Theodoros Pangalos was Foreign Minister, G. Arsenis and Admiral H. Lymperis.
The Prime Minister of Turkey was Tansu Çiller and the Foreign Minister was Deniz Baikal.
Three Greek officers of the Greek Navy died on 31 January 1996, when the helicopter they were in crashed into the sea. The official version is that the helicopter crashed due to bad weather and the pilot's loss of orientation.
The chronicle
It all started on 25 December 1995, when the Turkish cargo ship Figen Akat ran aground in shallow waters near Mikri Imia (East) and sent out a distress signal. The Port Authority of Kalymnos - the nearest to the area - provided a tugboat to detach the Turkish ship, but the captain refused, claiming that it was in Turkish territory, therefore the Greek side was incompetent and the Turkish side should take over.
On 28 December, two Greek tugboats finally detached the Turkish truck and took it to the port of Kiouluk in Turkey. On 29 December the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs served a notice to the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs stating that the rocky islets in question are registered in the Mugla land register of Bodrum (Halicarnassus) prefecture and belong to Turkey.
On 25 January 1996, the then mayor of Kalymnos Dimitris Diakomichalis, accompanied by the police director of Kalymnos, G. Riolas, and two residents of the island, raised the Greek flag on Mikri Imia, while the next day the flag was raised on the other rocky islet.
Turkish TV channels broadcast images of the Greek flag flying at Imia, which caused a stir in Turkish public opinion. Two journalists from the Hurriyet newspaper in Izmir took a helicopter on 27 January to Little Imia, lowered the Greek flag and raised the Turkish flag. The whole operation was filmed and broadcast by the TV channel owned by Houriet. This event took on considerable dimensions.
On January 28, 1996 the navy patrol boat Antoniou lowered the Turkish flag and raised the Greek flag in violation of the political order which was only to lower the Turkish flag. In the evening Greek frogmen landed at Mikri Imia from the patrol boat Pyrpolitis in order to guard the flag during the night hours and return to their boat before sunrise. At noon on Monday the plan changed and it was decided to keep the flag flying at all times, so they returned to the islet.
On Monday afternoon, 29 January, Costas Simitis (who had just taken over as Prime Minister, following Papandreou's resignation 15 days earlier), in his programmatic statements in Parliament, sent a message to Turkey that Greece would react immediately and dynamically to any provocation.
On Tuesday, January 30, Turkish Prime Minister Tansu Çiller stated categorically in the Turkish National Assembly that the next day the Greek flag and the Greek army will be removed from Imia.
On 31 January at 01:40, Turkish special forces landed at Megali Imia (West). At 05:30 of the same day, the helicopter “PN 21” of type Agusta Bell 212 of the Greek Navy was launched from the frigate Navarinon to ascertain the information of the presence of Turks on the rocky islet. The helicopter crashed on its return to the frigate and the three crew members, Lieutenant Christodoulos Karathanasis, Lieutenant Panagiotis Vlachakos and Chief Petty Officer Hector Yialopsos, were killed.
The US intervention and the «thank you» that provoked reactions
Under pressure from NATO and the US, under the presidency of Bill Clinton, the crisis was defused. Costas Simitis publicly thanked Washington for its mediation, which caused a major reaction within Greece.
Imia (Kardak in Turkish) are two small uninhabited rocky islets between the island complex of the Dodecanese and the southwestern coast of Turkey. They are 3.8 nautical miles from Bodrum (Halicarnassus) in Turkey, 5.5 nautical miles from Kalymnos and 2.5 nautical miles from the nearest Greek territory, the rocky islet of Kalolimnos.
Imia belonged to Italy, but was ceded to Greece by Italy in 1947 with the Treaty of Paris, following the incorporation of the Dodecanese islands after the end of World War II. The Turkish state had accepted Greece's suzerainty over these islands.
The crisis actually gave Turkey the opportunity to raise the issue of grey zones, challenging Greece's sovereignty over several islands.
With information from Wikipedia
