Erdogan

The issue to be decided in elections in Turkish-occupied Cyprus is whether dialogue and negotiations will proceed or whether Ankara’s provocative stance and the political fatigue of the Turkish-Cypriots will result in deeper impasses.

For a year-and-a-half Vartholomeos has been the target of an intensive propaganda campaign by both the Kremlin and the Moscow Patriarchate, which in both the Soviet era and under Putin has been the long arm of Russian soft (and often not so soft) power.

The press saw the Greece-Italy EEZ agreement as one that secures the right of islands, but it has three distinct parameters that must be assessed.

In such difficult times the government, state institutions, and society must transcend themselves, and that is a one-way street as there is no other way.

'Greece does what it does at its borders on behalf of the West,” he declared of Athens’ decision to entirely close its border with Turkey,' Erdogan declared.

Moscow is now a major player in the region and its influence is inversely proportional to that of other strong players such as the US and the EU.

The reinforcements and equipment το guard the Greek-Turkish borders are welcome and are the product of the cognisance of the fact that this is not a problem between Greece and Turkey but rather between the EU and Turkey.

Greece is aising to the highest level the measures to guard the country’s eastern land and sea borders by security forces and the Greek armed forces to fend off illegal entry into the country.

Erdogan has established an authoritarian regime which as all such regimes is afraid of its own shadow and the political system remains deeply divided.

The captain of the Greek frigate “Nikiforos Fokas” repeatedly warned the Turkish captain that the vessel was in the area of the Greek continental shelf and that it must leave

Crete’s continental shelf has already been disputed by the Turkey-Libya EEZ delimitation MOU which was rejected by both the US and EU.

Ankara continues to provoke with inconceivable actions such as twelve over-flights over the islands of Panagia, Inouses, all within a half an hour.

Following his talks with Tayyip Erdogan, PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis reminded us that with Turkey 'there were, are, and always will be difficulties'.

It took over a century for the superpower that is the US to join the countries that fulfiled their duty toward historical memory and decided without the cynicism of realpolitik.

The abandonment of plans for a Cyprus settlement combined with the fact that Turkey is distancing itself from the EU with Erdogan's tougher stance are swiftly moving toward a final divorce that will not be smooth.

Kammenos has been replaced as defence minister by Admiral Evangelos Apostolakis, until now Greece’s Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Athens views Ankara’s increasingly hostile stance toward Cyprus, Greece, and Israel as an expression of Ankara deep consternation over the rapidly developing military, strategic alliance between those three countries.

Why on earth did you want to step into that trap, Jamal? Did you perhaps figure that your friendship with Erdogan would protect you?  Did you calculate – rightly – that if they kidnapped you, not to mention murdered you, that that would harm the Saudi Arabian regime more than it would benefit it?

Meetings have been arranged with executives of the Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, and Morgan Stanley, as well as with representatives of large investment groups and capital management funds.

The two Greek officers were arbitrarily arrested, unjustly imprisoned, used in vain as a negotiating chip, and freed when they were no longer useful for the regime in Ankara.

Their unconditional release was ordered by a Turkish court, but there have been feverish diplomatic efforts in the last five-and-a-half months – with the EU, Nato, the US and other allies - by the Greek government to pressure Ankara for their release.

At this critical hour, with instability in Turkey becoming explosive, what is required of the Greek government is calm and prudence.