The Turks set up "Nea Imia" in the Aegean

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"New Imia" - but in the North Aegean - dream of the "pasades" of Ankara, taking advantage of the weakness of Greece. The target of the provocative Turks, as the magazine "Epikaira" writes, this time is the Greek rocky islet of Zourafa or Ladoxera in the Thracian Sea, which is located right on the Greek-Turkish border, at a strategically important point. 

The last provocation of the Turks in Zourafa took place on April 7, 2012. On that day, about twenty Turkish fishing vessels, accompanied by a Turkish coastguard, entered Greek territorial waters illegally and approached the rocky islet of Zourafa, in the Thracian Sea.

The "fishing fleet" of the Turks is provocatively starting the fishing, five Greek trawlers located in the area inform the Samothrace Sub-Port Authority. Immediately, three patrols of the Greek Coast Guard rush to the islet, watching closely the movements of the Turks.

A little while later, both Turkish and Greek ships leave without causing an accident.
Such incidents have tended to become routine in recent years, with Greek fishermen now taking on the role of regional guard, as the Coast Guard's incomplete port in the Thracian Sea makes our country powerless to deal with the ongoing and provocative Turkish violations in Zourafa. . Just on March 21, 2012, a Turkish patrol car approached the islet and began photographing the lighthouse on it, at the same time that two Turkish fishing boats were fishing three miles from Zourafa.

Of course, one must be naive, according to the "News", to believe that the Turks are "cut" so much for the fish of Zourafa or that the Turkish staff is busy all day with the course of the Greek fishermen. Their goal is clearly to create a "regime" in the region, which at the right time will use it to their advantage.

The strategic importance of the island of Zourafa

Zourafa, an island just one acre in the Thracian Sea, northeast of Samothrace, is the easternmost land border between Greece and therefore Europe. With a coastline of only 32 meters, its national significance is inversely proportional to its size, since this small rock and lighthouse on it play a strategic role in the Greek-Turkish maritime border, extending our maritime dominance in its sensitive area. Aegean.

Forgotten for decades, abandoned to the mercy of natural decay, the low-lying Zourafa is literally in danger of disappearing due to erosion and turning into a reef, which may alter its important role in Greek territorial waters and our continental shelf.

And if for the Greek State Zourafa is just a rock that at some point will sink and be lost, the same is not true for the Turks, who, realizing its strategic importance, try to exploit it in every way. An article in a Turkish newspaper is highly revealing about what may be hidden behind the challenges of Turkish fishermen!

"Turkish landing will start in Zourafa"

In January 2011, amid memoranda, economic crisis and misery of the Greek people, the Turkish newspaper Yeni Safak published on its front page details about the "Variopoula" coup plan.

Known for its relations with Turkey's extremist Islamists, the newspaper revealed that documents of the Kemalist conspirators who took part in the coup and, among other things, organized the creation of an "artificial" military crisis with Greece had been discovered at the Golczuk naval base. as part of the "Suga" project, which was the naval department of "Variopoula".

According to the publication (23/1/2011), the ultimate goal of the coup plotters was the Turkish landing in Oinousses or Leros, through the provocation of a military crisis of the Imia type on one of our rocky islets in the Aegean. To this end, in early 2002, committees were set up with the participation of Turkish Navy officers, who were looking for the islets or islets that would be ideal targets. At a meeting in December 2002, the "working groups", as they were called, proposed "the use of the friction that arises between Turkish and Greek fishermen around the island of Zourafa."

This would be followed by an escalation of tensions and an extensive operation by naval and air forces targeting three Greek islands. The selection of the islands would be based on the principle that "they did not have strong military forces, the transfer of aid was extremely difficult and their small population would not be able to help the Greek defense effort".

As can be seen from the above, the Turks have realized that in the case of Zourafa, they can use their fishermen, just as they did with the journalists in the Imia crisis, to cause a hot episode.

Greece's easternmost border; sinking!

In 2000, the then ND MEP, Stavros Xarchakos, had for the first time issued an SOS on the fate of this important islet, with an urgent question to the European Parliament. With this, he asked to know if the Greek authorities had ever informed the competent European services that Zourafa is not an accidental islet, but is the extreme limit of the Greek and Community territory. At the same time, he informed about the immediate danger of its disappearance, emphasizing that, according to the official records of the Greek Navy, the island until 1955 belonged to a wider complex of islands that were then lost below sea level, which with mathematical precision. It will also happen with Zourafa.

Since then, no one has dealt with Zourafa, taking care to include it in a community program to protect sensitive areas, but, on the contrary, all Greek governments have left it at the mercy of time. It is estimated that the island has lost most of its territory in the last fifty years, and it is striking that there are records of the Navy's Hydrographic Service stating that Zourafa occupied an area of ​​9 acres compared to 1 remaining today!

Source: Newsbeast.gr