The Imia crisis
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Asked in April 2024 whether Greece and Turkey might come to blows, John Kiriakou said he thought there was "no chance of a conflict", while conceding that the language was alarming. "There''s very disturbing rhetoric going back and forth. When the Turkish defence minister says that Turkey has a plan to take all of Greece''s Aegean islands in 48 hours, or that Turkey has a strategic plan to launch ballistic missiles on Athens, which of course is a population centre, you have to take those kinds of threats seriously. But the Turks always talk like that, and very rarely do they come close to actual shooting."

The last near miss

"The last time they came close to the actual exchange of gunfire was during the Clinton administration, and it was over an islet called Imia which doesn''t even have people on it, it has only a herd of goats. It''s a Greek island, but the Turks put the Turkish flag [there], then the Greek Coast Guard went, they took it down, they put a Greek flag [up], and then their ships went, and Bill Clinton had to call both sides and tell them to cut it out."

What he considers the more serious source of friction between the two countries is not territorial but economic: the gas discovered off Cyprus.

See also

- The Eastern Mediterranean gas field
- Kiriakou's Greek citizenship
- The Green Line in Nicosia
- Israel, Turkey, and NATO Article 5
- Bill Clinton
