Violations of Greek airspace and the root of the problem

The first Turkish violations of Greek airspace took place in May 1964 and were related to the tension over Cyprus at the time. They were followed by a hiatus of a couple of years and resumed from September to November of 1967, coming in the aftermath of a failed summit meeting in the Greek border region of Evros between the Greek military government and the Turkish political leadership. It was before the deadly clashes in the town of Kofinou in Cyprus and the Turks wanted to gauge the limits of Greek tolerance.

In April 1975, Turkey called on Greece to limit its national airspace to 6 nautical miles, in line with the delimitation of its continental shelf. Ever since, it has actively challenged Greece's airspace within a range of 6 to 10 nautical miles, though only sporadically at first. The systematic violations began in the 1980s and became an almost daily occurrence in the...