Greece on Saturday issued two new Navtex covering a wide range of territory, including Turkey's area of responsibility, triggering new tensions between the two countries.
As Turkey continues to make the necessary efforts to resolve issues in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean via dialogue, Greece issued navigational alerts about military exercises.
Shortly after Greece's move, Turkey's Antalya Navtex station issued an alert restating that the area is in fact Turkey's area of responsibility.
Navtex, or Navigational Telex, is a maritime communications system that allows ships to inform other vessels about their presence in an area, as well as other information.
The provocation from Greece came at a time when steps are being taken to resolve the problems in the Eastern Mediterranean through dialogue.
In a statement made by the Antalya Navtex station, an unauthorized station transmitted an announcement regarding an area within the Turkish Navtex service, prompting Ankara to reissue its message for its area of responsibility.
The Turkish declaration also noted military shooting drills would be held in the mentioned zones in the Eastern Mediterranean on Oct. 6 and Oct. 8.
Security sources, speaking on the condition of anonymity due to media restrictions, stressed that the Navtexs issued by Greece via an unauthorized station in a wide area in the Eastern Mediterranean for the purpose of military training does not solve any problems and only increases tensions in the region.
Underscoring that Turkey prefers solutions in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean within the scope of international law, dialogue and good neighborly relations, the sources said Ankara is taking a number of steps in those directions.
They said Turkey considered reducing the scope of some military exercises and even delaying others in order to contribute to the solution.
Despite all of these well-intentioned steps taken by Ankara, sources stressed that Athens' response aims to disrupt talks.
Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay had recently said that arguments put forward by Greece and the Greek Cypriot administration are baseless according to international law. "The world will eventually recognize Turkey's rightness," he said in an interview published in Turkish Kriter magazine on Friday.
Mentioning the recent tensions in the Eastern Mediterranean, "Greece, the Greek Cypriot administration and France, an imperialist country with no coast in the region, aims to utilize the European Union for their own agenda under the pretext of ‘solidarity of the Union,'" Oktay remarked.
Oktay noted that the present state of affairs in Turkey-EU relations are affected by the fact that some member states are using the bloc for their political interests and agenda, consequently stalling cooperation between Ankara and Brussels.
"Under these circumstances, the rational option for the EU is to assume the facilitator role by acting unbiased and just," he added.
