Aegean sea & islands

In News: Turkish President Greece to demilitarise islands in the Aegean Sea

• Turkey says Greece has been building a military presence in violation of treaties that guarantee the unarmed status of the Aegean islands
• It argues the islands were ceded to Greece on the condition they remained demilitarised.
• Greece and Turkey are NATO allies, but the neighboring countries have a history of disputes over a range of issues, including mineral exploration in the eastern Mediterranean and rival claims in the Aegean Sea.
• Greece maintains Turkey has deliberately misinterpreted the treaties and says it has legal grounds to defend itself following hostile actions by Ankara, including a long-standing threat of war if Greece extended its territorial waters.

Aegean Sea

• It is an elongated embayment of the Mediterranean Sea between Europe and Asia.
• It is located between the Balkans and Anatolia, and covers an area of some 215,000 square kilometres.
• In the north, the Aegean is connected to the Marmara Sea and the Black Sea by the straits of the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus.
• The Aegean Islands are located within the sea and some bound it on its southern periphery

Aegean Islands

• The Aegean Islands are the group of islands in the Aegean Sea, with mainland Greece to the west and north and Turkey to the east; the island of Crete delimits the sea to the south, those of Rhodes, Karpathos and Kasos to the southeast.
• The vast majority of the Aegean Islands belong to Greece, being split among nine administrative regions.
• The only sizable possessions of Turkey in the Aegean Sea are Imbros and Tenedos in the northeastern part of the Sea. Various smaller islets off Turkey’s western coast are also under Turkish sovereignty.

The Aegean Islands are traditionally subdivided into seven groups, from north to south:

• Northeastern Aegean Islands
• Euboea
• Sporades (Northern Sporades)
• Cyclades
• Saronic Islands
• Dodecanese (Southern Sporades)
• Crete

Previous Year Questions

Q.1) Consider the following pairs: Sea-Bordering Country

1. Adriatic Sea – Albania
2. Black Sea – Croatia
3. Caspian Sea – Kazakhstan
4. Mediterranean Sea- Morocco
5. Red Sea – Syria

Which of the pairs given above are correctly matched?

1. 1, 2 and 4 only
2. 1, 3 and 4 only
3. 2 and 5 only
4. 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5

Source: The Hindu