Islands Without Troops And Air Sovereignty

BY COSKUN KIRCA
AKSAM- This issue was set out under the Treaty of Lausanne and other treaties. Under Lausanne, the Aegean islands belong to Greece, but Greek troops had to vacate them. Turkey benefits from this situation. Although Turkey also signed the Italian Treaty, it benefits from this status of the ‘Twelve Islands’ from which troops were withdrawn under this agreement. In international law, vacating troops from an area means that the country in question can establish neither military units nor fortifications in an area so vacated. However, this doesn’t mean that if the country which owns that area is attacked, it can’t defend itself militarily. But Greek is openly violating the vacated status of these islands. The pretext given by Athens is that these islands are threatened by Turkey. There is no other country or international institution which supports this claim. The military fortifications on these islands were put there by NATO. However, Greece is not the only state that can request use of these. Even Turkey can do so. In such a situation, Greece should end these violations. Turkey can request that NATO deploy military units belonging to Greece or other NATO member countries if it decides alliance interests are at stake.
A Flight Information Region (FIR) is an airspace of defined dimension within which flight information service and alerting service are provided. The UN International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) gave these duties to the Athens Air Traffic Control Center for a region which also covers Istanbul. Authority deriving from this duty has no right of sovereignty, but is rather purely administrative. There is no responsibility to report flight plans for military aircraft in this area to the responsible center. However, Greece is invoking those administrative rights as sovereignty rights in order to prevent Turkish military flights. Turkey has objected. There is a mechanism within the ICAO for conflict resolution on issues within its sphere of authority. So such disagreements should be brought there.