Athens lodges demarche with Ankara over Evros dispute
Athens has lodged a demarche with Ankara over its presentation of a section of Greek territory in the southern Evros border region as Turkish, diplomatic sources said on Friday.
The decision was taken by Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias.
The area in question, Melissokomeio, is near the southern part of the Evros River. It is located at a point that floods every year after the autumn and, on maps of 1923 according to which the borders were drawn, is shown as belonging to Greece.
However, members of Turkey’s police special forces have had a steady presence in the area in recent weeks and are blocking the preparatory work of the Hellenic Army’s geographical service in view of the expansion of a border fence to the southern section of the Evros River to avoid a repeat of the scenes in March when thousands of migrants amassed at the Evros border region trying to cross into Greece from Turkey.
The surge at the border occurred after Ankara said it would not stop migrants from crossing into Europe if they wanted to, sparking tensions with Athens and Brussels.
The dispute is not new and has arisen because the riverbed of the Evros has moved and in its place now is a swamp, which dries up in summer and floods in winter, creating an islet there. Turkey has exploited the change in the riverbed’s location to claim an area of about 1.6 hectares.
On a practical level, Athens cites the maps with which the borders with Turkey were drawn in 1923 and since then some parts of it have been reaffirmed, precisely because of the need to calculate the changes that have taken place due to the change of the river flow in some places.
