Ionian League

Greece raised the issue of Ankara's aggression during Wednesday's NATO summit of defense ministers via teleconference as Turkish fighter jets this month smashed the record of Aegean overflights. 

Five overflights over Greek airspace by Turkish military aircraft occurred in the space of 16 minutes Sunday morning, according to the National Defense General Staff.

The planes flew over the Eastern Aegean islands of Chios, Lesvos and two smaller islands between 10:14 and 10:30 am local.

Greece's coast guard followed closely a Turkish tanker, suspected of carrying migrants, Friday, before it returned to a Turkish port.

The tanker was spotted at 8.30 am local on Friday between the islands of Chios and Samos, moving between Turkish and international waters.

Police in Chios have fined two separate groups of refugees from the eastern Aegean island's migrant camp 5,000 euros each for violating social distancing rules meant to curb the coronavirus epidemic.

Police on Samos have identified four residents of the eastern Aegean island as perpetrators of acts of vandalism against vehicles and a building belonging to nongovernment organizations working with undocumented migrants on the island in the first half of this month.

Athens sees no letup in Ankara's strategy of fueling tension on land and sea, with its forces regularly firing tear gas and stun grenades over the Evros land border while on Monday its fighter jets again violated Greek airspace over the northeastern coast of the island of Chios in the eastern Aegean.

The government on Friday began transferring a total of 604 migrants from the islands of Samos, Chios and Lesvos to closed facilities on the Greek mainland.

The transfer concerns people that entered Greece iafter March 1, 2020, when the government decided to suspend the asylum procedure for all new arrivals amid an influx of arrivals from the coast of Turkey.

The migrants trying to breach Greece's land border may have failed, but, with the help of improving weather, arrivals on the islands are accelerating.

Sources have told Kathimerini that, from 7 to 11 a.m. Sunday, more than 400 migrants have arrived on the islands of Lesvos, Chios and Samos.

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Thursday chaired a meeting between government officials and local authority officials from the eastern and northern Aegean in a bid to break a deadlock over the construction of new migrant detention centers on five islands.

The distrust felt by residents of the Greek islands in the eastern Aegean is completely justified. They have borne the brunt of the refugee crisis on behalf of the rest of Europe.

However, no anger, no matter how justified, can legitimize Wednesday's violence on Chios, where a mob beat up police officers in their beds.