Category Archives: Greece

Turkey Targeting Greece – Again

Turkey has been harassing Greece consistently. Most recently, this week, on April 17, two Turkish fighter aircraft harassed the helicopter carrying Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and the Greek Armed Forces Chief Admiral Evangelos Apostolakis as they were flying from the islet of Ro to Rhodes.

With the illegal seizures and occupation of northern Cyprus in 1974 and the Syrian city of Afrin this March — with virtually no global response — Turkey apparently feels unchallenged and eager to continue; this time, it seems, with the oil-and-gas rich islands of Greece.

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Why Turkey Wants to Invade the Greek Islands

There is one issue on which Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its main opposition, the Republican People’s Party (CHP), are in complete agreement: The conviction that the Greek islands are occupied Turkish territory and must be reconquered. So strong is this determination that the leaders of both parties have openly threatened to invade the Aegean.

The only conflict on this issue between the two parties is in competing to prove which is more powerful and patriotic, and which possesses the courage to carry out the threat against Greece. While the CHP is accusing President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s AKP party of enabling Greece to occupy Turkish lands, the AKP is attacking the CHP, Turkey’s founding party, for allowing Greece to take the islands through the 1924 Treaty of Lausanne, the 1932 Turkish-Italian Agreements, and the 1947 Paris Treaty, which recognized the islands of the Aegean as Greek territory.

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Turkey Threatens to Invade Greece

In an incident that took place less than two weeks after the Greek Defense Ministry announced that Turkey had violated Greek airspace 138 times in a single day, a Turkish coast guard patrol boat on February 13 rammed a Greek coast guard vesseloff the shore of Imia, one of many Greek islands over which Turkey claims sovereignty.

Most of the areas within modern Greece’s current borders were under the occupation of the Ottoman Empire from the mid-15th century until the Greek War of Independence in 1821 and the establishment of the modern Greek state in 1832. The islands, however, like the rest of Greece, are legally and historically Greek, as their names indicate.

Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), however, and even much of the opposition seem intent on, if not obsessed with, invading and conquering these Greek islands, on the grounds that they are actually Turkish territory.

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Afghan migrants receive 400 euros of “free money” every month in Greece

The EU is supporting Greece with hundreds of millions of euros in emergency aid. How is this money being spent?

One of our reporters did some research and talked with a group of Afghans withdrawing money from a Greek bank. According to them they all receive 400 euros monthly, to use without regulation.

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Greece’s “Robin Hood” Terrorists

The radical leftist Greek organization, the Group of People’s Fighters (OLA), which claimed responsibility for the December 22 bombing of the Athens Court of Appeal, has been committing terrorist attacks on governmental targets since 2013, when the country entered its serious debt crisis. According to the Greek authorities the OLA has ties with the terrorist organization “Revolutionary Struggle” (EA), and attacked at the past the offices of New Democracy political party, a Bank, the Greek Industrialists Association and the German Ambassador’s home in Athens.

The OLA boasted of this and other attacks on the “bourgeois, imperialist and capitalist” government institutions, the media and businesses in a 4,500-word manifesto published on the anarchist website Indymedia. Among the declarations in its lengthy rant is a message of

“solidarity to the Palestinian people who accept the raging attack of American imperialism and Zionism, after Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. In this context, it is our imperative international duty to sabotage by any means the reactionary axis of Greece-Cyprus-Israel-Egypt, as well as all kinds of Greece’s cooperation with reactionary regimes such as that of Saudi Arabia. The weapons of the Palestinian Resistance organizations, the stones, the knives and the Molotov cocktails of Intifada will win!”

On Christmas, three days after the Court of Appeal bombing, members of Rouvikonas, an anarchist group, sprayed the entrance to the Israeli Embassy in Athens with paint. In an online video claiming responsibility for the vandalism, the group also expressed solidarity with the Palestinians, to whom it referred as “the people who for decades has been the victim of oppression… [and] ethnic cleansing at a low intensity level.”

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Greece to limit Sharia law after European Court challenge

ATHENS, GREECE — Lawmakers in Greece are set to limit the powers of Islamic courts operating in a border region that is home to a 100,000-strong Muslim minority.

Backed by parliament’s largest political parties, the draft law is set to be voted on later Tuesday. The proposal aims to scrap rules dating back more than 90 years ago and which refer many civil cases involving members of the Muslim community to Sharia law courts. The new legislation will give Greek courts priority in all cases.

The changes — considered long overdue by many Greek legal experts — follow a complaint to the Council of Europe’s Court of Human Rights over an inheritance dispute by a Muslim woman who lives in the northeastern Greek city of Komotini.

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Greece: Football fans attack Muslims celebrating Prophet’s birthday

Riot police in Athens had to intervene in clashes between Greek soccer club fans heading for a game and the Pakistani community celebrating a religious holiday marking the Prophet Mohammed’s birthday. Tear gas and stun grenades have been deployed.

Brief but ferocious clashes happened in the center of the Greek capital on Sunday, AP reported. While there have been no serious injuries or arrests, law enforcement had to use tough anti-riot methods to stop the violence. A video from the scene shows utter mayhem in the street as hooligans trampled on Islamic flags, while Pakistanis try to defend themselves, with some fighting back.

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Greek island on strike in protest against becoming migrant ‘prison’

Residents on the Greek island of Lesbos went on strike on Monday to protest against European policies they say have turned it into a “prison” for migrants and refugees.

Islanders shut businesses, shops, municipal offices, nurseries and pharmacies and dozens rallied on a central square, calling on the government to transfer asylum-seekers to the mainland.

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Greece: Muslim refugees terrifying and driving out Christians

Several clashes have broken out in recent days at Lesbos Island’s Moria Camp for refugees, with Greek authorities arresting 35 Muslim rioters who threw large rocks at police officers and set fire to tents both inside and outside the bounds of the camp. A disabled Christian was nearly burnt alive while sleeping in one of the shelters, reports Pakistan Christian Post.

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Earthquake in Greece

Terrible:

At least two people have been killed and more than 120 injured on the Greek island of Kos after a strong earthquake hit the region.

The 6.5 magnitude quake struck on Thursday night with an epicentre approximately 6.4 miles (10.3km) south of Bodrum, Turkey, and 10 miles (16.2km) east of Kos.

Two male tourists from Turkey and Sweden died after the walls of a bar in Kos broke apart and crashed down on revellers.

Dozens of aftershocks have been reported, while the quake also caused small tsunamis in Kos and Gumbet, a Turkish coastal town.

In the Turkish resort of Bodrum, around 70 people were taken to hospital, having been injured as they tried to escape the quake.

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