Kardak versus Imia: Oh! Not again

On the 21st anniversary of the Kardak/Imia crisis, at the end of last month, there was a marked tension between Turkey and Greece. 

It started when the Chief of Turkish General Staff Gen. Hulusi Akar chose to pay a surprise visit near the Kardak/Imia islets on the Aegean Sea on Jan. 29, accompanied by his army, navy and air force commanders. Depending on which side of the Aegean you are on, the visit was seen as a tour of peace or as a tour de force. It created hot debate on whether it was necessary and generated a war of words between the politicians of the two countries who have been enjoying a generally peaceful period for just over two decades. 

But also, worst of all, it allowed the media of both countries to revert to all their stereotypes and hate speech about each other's country, which we had hoped to be a habit of the past. 

I was one of the journalists who happened to be in Turkey during the original Kardak/Imia crisis and I remember the efforts done by many of us, from both countries, to draw a lesson from the detrimental effect the media played during the dangerous incident that almost brought both countries to war. With horror, we had experienced how media was capable of rapidly stirring nationalist feelings through inflammatory headlines, negative stereotypes, and even "fake news" in order to push their ratings up. When the crisis was over, we organized several conferences and debates on how to improve the quality of our coverage on Greek-Turkish affairs, how to clean up our news narratives and to see things as they are and not through the eyes of our politicians. Several eminent Greek and Turkish journalists from the previous generation had joined the efforts as they had foreseen rightly that "embedded journalism" eventually...

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