Turkish provocations continue into late afternoon, hours after demarche

Hours after Turkey’s ambassador to Athens was summoned to the Greek foreign ministry and handed a demarche for airspace violations recorded the same day, Ankara ramped up its provocations by sending warplanes over the Imia isles in the far eastern Aegean.

The over-flights of the two Imia rock islets is the first by Turkish fighter planes since 1996, when a dispute over their sovereignty nearly led to an armed conflict between Greece and Turkey.

Overall on Wednesday, 16 Turkish F-16s were recorded as making 31 over-flights of Greek isles and islets, a development considered as an unprecedented provocation over recent years, even compared the tensions generated by an increasingly belligerent and saber-rattling Erdogan government over the last couple of years in the eastern Mediterranean.

Following the demarche, moreover, rare night flights of Turkish warplanes were reported, with violations occurring around and over the Imia islets, populated Kalymnos, Kalolymnos, Leipsoi, Arkoi and Agathonisi.

The lowest altitude for the late afternoon violations was 23,000 feet.