ATHENS/ANKARA: Greece complained to Turkey on Tuesday that a Turkish vessel had collided with a Greek coast guard boat off disputed islets in the Aegean Sea, but Turkey denied the Turkish ship was at fault.
The Greek coast guard said in a statement that the incident took place off Imia, known as Kardak in Turkish, at about midnight on Monday.
A Turkish patrol vessel “made some risky maneuvers” striking the left side of the Greek coast guard vessel patrolling the area, and damaging it. There were no injuries, the coast guard said.
Turkey and Greece, NATO allies, have been at odds over a host of issues from ethnically split Cyprus to sovereignty over airspace and overflights.
They came to the brink of war in 1996 in a sovereignty dispute over the islets, but tensions have eased since.
“Dangerous incidents, such as this one, which put human lives in danger, are the result of the escalating and provocative behavior shown increasingly by Turkey in recent days,” the ministry said in a statement.
“Turkey must end the violations of international law and acts that do not contribute in the development of the two countries’ relations.”
Turkey’s ambassador to Athens was also called at the foreign ministry, it said in the statement.
Turkey’s Foreign Ministry denied the Turkish vessel was at fault. It said the Greek statement misled Greece’s own public and that it distorted the truth “as always.”
It said Ankara had in fact contacted Athens regarding the “dangerous maneuvers” by the Greek coast guard, and informed them that Turkey “would not tolerate continuing hostile behavior by the Greek armed forces.”
Tensions between the two countries have been on the rise since a Greek court blocked the extradition of eight Turkish soldiers Ankara accuses of involvement in a failed coup against President Tayyip Erdogan in 2016.
Greece protests to Turkey over boat incident, Ankara denies fault
Greece protests to Turkey over boat incident, Ankara denies fault
French court slashes jails term for trio over 2020 teacher beheading
- Brahim Chnina, the Moroccan father of a girl who falsely claimed that Paty had asked Muslim students to leave his classroom before showing the caricatures, had his 13-year sentence reduced to 10 years
PARIS, France: A French court on Monday reduced on appeal the jail sentences of three men convicted over the 2020 terrorist beheading of a teacher who showed a class cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
Samuel Paty, 47, was murdered in October 2020 by an 18-year-old radical Islamist of Chechen origin in an act that horrified France.
His attacker, Abdoullakh Anzorov, was killed in a shootout with police.
Two friends of Anzorov, French national Naim Boudaoud and Azim Epsirkhanov, a Russian of Chechen origin, had their sentences of 16 years in prison reduced to six and seven years respectively by a Paris court of appeal.
Both were accused of having driven Anzorov and helping him to procure weapons before the beheading.
Brahim Chnina, the Moroccan father of a girl who falsely claimed that Paty had asked Muslim students to leave his classroom before showing the caricatures, had his 13-year sentence reduced to 10 years.
His daughter, then aged 13, was not actually in the classroom at the time and during the first trial apologized to the teacher’s family.
The court however left the 15-year term for French-Moroccan Islamist activist Abdelhakim Sefrioui untouched.
The quartet were among the seven men and one woman found guilty in 2024 of contributing to the climate of hatred that led to the beheading of the history and geography teacher in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, west of Paris.
Paty, who has become a free-speech icon, used the cartoons as part of an ethics class to discuss freedom of expression laws in France.
