The Greek government on Monday evening issued a navigational telex, or navtex, from a regional station on the island of Crete, in response to an advisory issued earlier in the day by Turkey.
Official Ankara extended its illegal seismic surveys in the eastern Mediterranean, part of an increasingly belligerent and jingoist stance by the country’s Islamist government over the recent period.
The Greek advisory stresses that Turkey’s navtex is illegal, as it concerns an area that is within Greece’s continental shelf.
In a later announcement just after midnight on Tuesday, the Greek Foreign Ministry charged that Turkey “…continues to faithfully live up to its role as a troublemaker and an element of instability in the region…Greece will not be blackmailed. Relying exclusively on international law, the Law of the Sea and the rules of good neighborly relations, it will continue to seek maritime zone delimitation agreements with every country in the region.”