This misspelled Patrick Somerford goes in search of Somerford Keynes, far from Patmos and Milton Keynes

An aerial view of Somerford Keynes, on the borders of Gloucestershire and Wiltshire in Jilly Cooper’s Rutshire (geograph.org.uk, CC BY-SA 2.0)

Patrick Comerford

Many years ago, while I was staying on the Greek island of Kos, I wanted to visit the neighbouring Aegean island of Patmos and the Monastery of Saint John the Theologian, with the cave where Saint John wrote the Book of Revelation.

I was travelling alone, and the arrangements were slightly complex, making sure I could the right ferries, with an early morning start but still getting back in time for dinner with the family in the evening. There could hardly have been much of a commission or profit for the travel agent, but in the best Greek tradition of philoxenia, she was attentive to all the details and worked hard for a very small task.

The tickets arrived under my hotel room door early in the morning. But when I looked at them my name was spelled Σόμερφορντ – Somerford. There is no ‘C’ in the Greek alphabet, and so had used the Σ, sigma, although I normally use Γκ in transliterations to get the hard C initial for my surname.

As I headed off for Patmos, I wondered whether Patrick Somerford would ever get on board the ferry. Even more worryingly, I wondered whether I would ever get back to Kos. The trip was 2-4 hours each way; could this turn into a 24-hour marathon?

I should never gave worried, and nothing ever came of it … I seem to fret too much about details like this when travelling, yet few people have ever checked my travel papers in Greece, probably because my looks and body language appear Greek.

But I have always let my imagination run away with itself when it comes to any misspelling of my surname – from Comfort to Somerford – to the real and acceptable variants, from Comberford and Commerford to Cumberford or even (in parts of Wexford) Comerton.

But, 25 years after that one-day pilgrimage to Patmos as Patrick Somerford, the name Somerford came to my attention again, with the death of Jilly Cooper two months ago [2 October] and Queen Camilla’s visit this week to the Bristol set of the television series Rivals.

It is going to be no surprise when I say that I have never read any one of Jilly Cooper’s romantic, horsey novels in the Rivals and Riders series. But one of the minor characters in these Rutshire Chronicles is known as Somerford Keynes.

The Manor House in Somerford Keynes, named after the Keynes family (geograph.org.uk, CC BY-SA 2.0)

I wondered whether he could be a cross between Patrick Somerford and Milton Keynes, but there is, in fact, a village called Somerford Keynes of the Upper Thames Valley, close to the boundary of Gloucestershire and Wiltshire, midway between Cirencester, Swindon and Malmesbury, but still 35 km (22 miles) from Quemerford.

Somerford Keynes is a village that stretches for about 1 km north to south along its main street. The north part of the village, taking in a length of the main street, includes a distinct cluster of buildings to the west, with All Saints’ Church, the Manor House and Somerford Keynes House, formerly the vicarage. Somerford Keynes and the neighbouring village of Shorncote have a combined population of about 550-600 people.

Somerford means a ford that can only be used in summer, while Keynes from the name of the Keynes family, originally from Cahaignes in Normandy.

Somerford Keynes is first named in any document is in a charter in the year 685 when King Ethelred’s nephew Bertwald granted land to Saint Aldhelm, first abbot of Malmesbury. All Saints’ Church is a Grade II* listed building built on Saxon foundations from ca 685, and largely rebuilt in the early 13th century. The tower was added in 1710-1713 and the church was restored in 1875 by the architect Frederick Waller.

In the Domesday Book, the village was part of the lands of the Bishop of Lisieux. William de Cahaignes, who held the manor in 1211, was a member of the Keynes family, who were lords of the manor from ca 1100 to 1300 and who give their name to Somerford Keynes. The Manor House is a Grade II listed building and probably dates from the late 15th century or the early 16th century.

Until 1897, Somerford Keynes was in Wiltshire, but it was then transferred to Gloucestershire – by 3 votes to 2.

I have no idea what sort of character Jilly Copper’s Somerford Keynes is supposed to be like. I imagine he’s nothing like me, and I know he has links either with the Comerford family, no matter how whimsically you spell or misspell my family name, or, for that matter, with Milton Keynes.

All Saints’ Church, Somerford Keynes (geograph.org.uk, CC BY-SA 2.0)

Italian-era synagogue on Greek island of Kos is restored after 80 years

The exterior of the synagogue in Kos … the building is to be rededicated next month as an active house of Jewish worship (Photograph: Elias Messinas/JHE)

Patrick Comerford

I have been to the Aegean island of Kos on a number of occasions, on family holidays and, in the 1990s, working as a journalist with The Irish Times at the height of tensions between Greece and Turkey over the tiny islet of Imia.

During those visits, I have visited the village of Platania, 2 km from Kos town, where the gates of the Jewish cemetery have been locked since the last remaining Jew of Kos was buried there many decades ago: he was the only Koan Jew to survive the transportation of the local Jewish community, along with the Jews of Rhodes, to Auschwitz in 1944.

Back in Kos town, close to the ancient Agora, I was sad that I could not visit the former synagogue at the time. It is a beautiful Art Deco building but had been disused since 1944 and it stood locked in bleak isolation in the midst of the bustle of ‘Bar Street’.

So, it was good news to read in a recent report from Jewish Heritage Europe (JHE) that the building is to be rededicated next month (May 2023) as an active house of Jewish worship.

References to Jews on Kos date back to the 3rd century BCE. Throughout the ages, Jews fleeing persecution, the Spanish Inquisition and conflicts in the Mediterranean region ended up on the.

Graves in the Jewish cemetery show a significant presence of a Jewish population until the Byzantine era. Jews continued to live on the island during era of the Knights of Saint John, although there are reports that Jews were expelled in 1502 by the Knights of Saint John and took refuge in Nice. Jews resettled in Kos when the island was captured by the Turks in 1523.

During the second half of the 19th century, there were 40 Jewish families living in Kos. Those numbers fell to 20 in 1880, to 10 in 1901 , and to three or four in 1910. In the years 1918-1923, and after the occupation of Kos by the Italians, Jews from Asia Minor and Rhodes settled on Kos and the community reached a total of 166 persons just before World War II.

During the early days of Italian rule, the Jews communities of Rhodes and Kos thrived, excelling in the textile trade, banking, including the Bank of the Alhantef Brothers, foodstuffs, haberdashery and the export of grapes and raisins to Egypt and Europe.

After the racist laws voted by Mussolini in 1938, 2,250 Jews fled the Dodecanese to the US, Palestine, South Rhodesia (Simbabwe), the Belgian Congo, and Argentina.

When the Germans moved into Kos, the Jews are relentlessly persecuted and their houses were ransacked and looted. On 23 July 1944, all the Jews of Kos were assembled with their meagre possessions in the courtroom facing the Lotzia Square. Due to the intervention of the Turkish Consul in Rhodes, 39 Turkish citizens from Rhodes and 13 from Kos were released. But the Germans confiscated all the belongings of the remaining Jews and sent them through Athens to Auschwitz.

Of the 1,767 Jews who were seized, only 163 survived: 151 from Rhodes and 12 from Kos. Another 10 Jews from Kos who were not present in Kos when the population was assembled and sent to Auschwitz also managed to survive.

After the Italian surrender on 8 September 1943, British troops landed on Kos on 3 October 1943.

The new ark and bimah in the synagogue in Kos (Photograph: Elias Messinas/JHE)

The synagogue was built during the Italian occupation of Kos (1912-1943). An older synagogue was destroyed in an earthquake in April 1933, and it was replaced by a newer synagogue built in the mid-1930s.

The Jewish community in Kos at the time numbered about 120 people. But the Jewish community in Kos was almost totally wiped out during the Holocaust and the synagogue was abandoned in the immediate aftermath of World War II.

The synagogue was bought by the Kos Municipality around 1984 and it was used for some years as a local cultural centre. But the local municipality and the Greek Central Board of Jewish Communities agreed last year (2022) to bring the synagogue back to its original use and to serve the growing number of Israeli and other Jewish tourists in Kos.

A new Ark and Bimah and other interior furnishings have been installed in the synagogue and it is to be rededicated next month as an active house of Jewish worship.

Elias Messinas, the architect who oversaw the project, is the leading expert on Greek synagogues. For decades he has been involved in the survey, study and restoration of synagogues in Greece.

‘Given that there was no evidence of the pre-World War II state of the synagogue, the design is based on historic examples in Italy and also on the reuse of older furniture in order to raise their sanctity and to address the principles of circular economy,’ he told JHE.

‘The budget is quite limited,’ Elias Messinas said last year. ‘We have been searching in several directions, first to secure reused older furnishings from Israel, Italy, Turkey or Greece, but without success.’ The search was then extended to the US and Europe.

Because the synagogue was built during the Italian occupation of Kos, the project was looking for an Italian tradition synagogue.

The furniture modification was designed by Manos Tsiaousi in Serres and the project was co-ordinated by Dimitris Geroukalis, director of Ippokratis, responsible for the upkeep of the historic synagogue.

Elias Messinas said the restored synagogue will be used as a synagogue mainly in the summer months, but it will also continue to serve as a local cultural centre throughout most of the year.

Shabbat Shalom

An artist’s impression of the interior of the synagogue in Kos (Courtesy Elias Messinas)

Is Turkey voting this Christmas for a new Aegean conflict with Greece?

Ephesus, a major Greek classical site, is at the heart of a new Turkish tourism campaign for the Aegean (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

The phrase about ‘Turkeys voting for Christmas’ is often used to describe a situation when a choice is made that is clearly against one’s self-interest. The phrase is not easily explained outside these islands, because while turkeys are commonly associated with (non-vegetarian) Christmas dinners here, in the US they are associated with Thanksgiving, which falls on the fourth Thursday in November.

‘Turkeys voting for Christmas’ is an idiom with a very recent history. It seems the first time that phrase was used in 1977 by the Liberal politician David Penhaligon, when he said Liberal MPs voting the proposed ‘Lib-Lab’ pact between the Liberals and the Labour party was ‘like a turkey voting for Christmas.’

The phrase was used again in 1979 when the Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan said Scottish Nationalists voting alongside Conservative MPs against the Labour government was ‘the first time in recorded history that turkeys have been known to vote for an early Christmas.’

Sunset in the Aegean at Kusadasi … a popular destination for Irish tourists (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

* * *

The ‘Avian Flu’ epidemic has created a shortage of turkeys in many places this year. And since earlier this year there has been no Turkey at the United Nations either.

Turkey is now known officially as Türkiye at the UN, following a formal request from Ankara. Several international bodies are being asked to make the name change too as part of a rebranding campaign launched a year ago by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

‘Türkiye is the best representation and expression of the Turkish people’s culture, civilisation, and values,’ he said last December.

Although most Turks know their country as Türkiye, the anglicised form Turkey is widely used, even within Turkey. The Anglicised forms of the names of many countries are commonly used in the English language – think not only of Ireland, but also Germany, Spain and Greece. Indeed, Erdoğan has no problems about using the name Yunanistan for neighbouring Greece when he is speaking Turkish.

The Turkish state television channel TRT explained the reason for the image rebrand, saying Ergdogan was unhappy of the association of his country’s name with the Christmas, New Year or Thanksgiving bird. TRT also pointed out that the word is also used in some dictionaries as a synonym for ‘something that fails badly’ or ‘a stupid or silly person.’

Turkish and Greek flags fly side-by-side on a ferry between Samos and Kusadasi (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Tension rooted
in old wounds

For the past year, tension has been growing between Greece and Turkey, rooted in old wounds, stoked by insults and causing frayed nerves. Hardly a day has gone by this year without shots being fired between the two armies. On national news channels, military and diplomatic experts daily debate the risks of conflict.

A visit to Istanbul in March by the Greek Prime Minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis was expected to lead to attempts to bridge the gap between both sides. But Erdoğan is known for his outbursts, anger and insults. In recent months, his insults have been directed in particular at the Greek government and Mitsotakis.

At the G20 meeting in Bali last month, Erdoğan issued new threats to Greece, warning Greeks that the Turks may ‘overnight come suddenly.’ Speaking at a press conference, Erdoğan was defiant as he took the advantage of a unique international to repeat the threat that ‘one night we will come suddenly.’

He was repeating the words of an old Turkish song that says: ‘I can come suddenly one night.’ The same song was regularly broadcast on Turkish radio during the Turkish invasion of Cyprus almost half a century ago in 1974.

He said: ‘I insist on one night we will come suddenly. This statement is important to me. Greece must know its borders and the terms of the neighbourhood ... If they read the past, they will see what has happened. What I said is not a question of power, it is a question of the heart.’

At the same time, Erdoğan told a Turkish television station: ‘What I’ve been saying for ever, that we can come suddenly one night, this is a basic principle. To me, this is a phrase that cannot be taken back … So, we can suddenly get there again.’

But he has been saying the same throughout the year. On the eve of the European Summit in Prague in October, the Greek prime minister left the official dinner during a speech in which Erdoğan once again threatened Greece with the words of that old Turkish song, ‘I can come suddenly one night.’

‘For me, no one named Mitsotakis will exist any longer from now on,’ Erdoğan said at the end of May. ‘I will never accept [seeing] him again,’ he added, accusing the Greek Prime Minister of being ‘dishonest.’

‘Warehouse: Greek Shop’ … a Greek sign seen in the Bazaar in Kuşadasi, once known to Greeks as Neopolis (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

* * *

Communications through normal diplomatic channels have all but broken down, and Turkish air patrols over Greek territory have never been so frequent as today.

Greek Ministry of Defence records show that between January and October this year there were 8,880 violations of Greek airspace by Turkish planes and drones, compared with 2,744 in 2021 and barely a few hundred in previous years.

A maritime and gas deal signed by Turkey and Libya earlier this year has been seen as an attempt by Turkey to expand its influence in the East Mediterranean. In response, the Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias called off the first leg of a visit to Libya, and refused to get off his plane in Tripoli.

Greece and Turkey are both NATO members, but they came close to armed conflict in 1996 and again in 2020. Periklis Zorzovilis of the Greek Institute for Security and Defence Analysis points out, ‘When so many fighter jets fly over such a small area, the possibility of an accident is very real.’

Windmills in the harbour in Rhodes … a narrow strait separates Rhodes from the thin peninsulas of Anatolian Turkey (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Aegean tensions on
identity and tourism

The tensions between Turkey and Greece are not only political and military, they have also become conflicts over culture, heritage identity and tourism. Turkey recently launched a campaign to lure tourists with a ‘TurkAegean’ promotional campaign – against a backdrop of historic Greek sites and the sound of bouzouki music.

Turkey’s west coast faces the Aegean Sea, and Turkey claims the time has come to stop associating the region exclusively with Greece. But the campaign has caused anger and embarrassment in Athens. The ancient Greek name is derived from Aegeus, the father of the mythical king Theseus who founded Athens, and the Aegean’s Hellenic heritage has rarely been disputed.

Turkey filed a request with the EU a year ago to trademark the term ‘TurkAegean.’ Angry Greek politicians and officials were caught off guard and accused Turkey of usurping Greek culture. ‘Obviously the [Greek] government will exhaust every legal possibility to deal with this development,’ Prime Minister Mitsotakis said. Margaritis Schinas, the Greek vice-president of the European Commission, demanded a review of the decision.

The TurkAegean slogan is being used in advertising and promoting what Turkey is labelling its ‘coastline of happiness’ with ‘idyllic beaches to soak up the beaming sun.’ The classical and historical sites in the area include ancient Troy, Ephesus, once the most important Greek port in the Mediterranean, and sites dating back to the second century BCE.

‘It is not just an innocent advert but another argument that is being used to ultimately question our sovereignty over Greek islands in the Aegean,’ the former foreign minister and Syriza MP, George Katrougalos, was quoted as saying. ‘… the term implies, as a corollary of their propaganda, that all, or most, of the Aegean is Turkish and that is clearly wrong.’

Analysts do not rule out these tensions escalating into a military clash, either deliberately or by accident. ‘There has been a very aggressive, almost apocalyptic upgrading of Turkish claims in the Aegean,’ Professor Constantinos Filis of the American College of Greece has warned. ‘It is like Turkey is preparing the international audience for what could possibly lie ahead.’

Fishing boats and tourist boats by night in the harbour in Fethiye, south-west Turkey (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

* * *

For many decades, Turkey accepted the maritime boundaries in the Aegean, defined by treaties and agreements with the Italians in 1923 and 1932, and ratified by the Treaty of Paris in 1947. The boundaries were never challenged until 1996, when Turkish journalists from the daily Hurriyet landed on the tiny Imia islets, tore down the blue and white Greek flag and hoisted the red and white star and crescent of Turkey.

As the crisis deepened, I was sent as a journalist to Rhodes and Kos to look at the potential of war. Two years later, I wrote in The Irish Times how, looking across the narrow strait that separates Rhodes from the thin, finger-like peninsulas that jut out from Anatolian Turkey, it is easy to understand why local people talk in terms of ‘when the Turks come,’ and rarely ‘if …’

This year marks the centenary of the Greek-Turkish war of 1919-1922 and its culmination in the massacre of Smyrna and the military defeat for Greece. Erdoğan repeatedly invokes that war, saying that, 100 years on, Greece should not be bristling for a fight that it would once again ‘regret’.

Canon Patrick Comerford blogs daily at www.patrickcomerford.com. This feature was originally prepared for the ‘Church Review’ (Dublin and Glendalough)

Brexit slogans and mantras become meaningless in the face of tourist crises

Thomas Cook’s collapse left 50,000 British tourists stranded in Greece this week (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

It has been said this week that it would have cost the British government the same amount of money to rescue Thomas Cook as is being spent on the operation to rescue stranded tourists in Greece, Spain and Turkey — Thomas Cook’s most popular summer destinations.

Thomas Cook’s bankruptcy could strike a devastating blow to communities that are economically reliant on package tourism. Greek commentators say the Greek economy is facing a disaster, and early estimates this week spoke of losses of at least €300 million.

Thomas Cook was the biggest UK holiday operator in Greece. It sent 3 million visitors a year to the islands, employed 1,000 people on the ground, and almost 50 Greek hotels had franchise agreements with Thomas Cook.

About 50,000 tourists were left stranded in Greece this week, with about 20,000 in Crete alone. The tourists, mainly British, were also on the islands of Corfu, Kos, Rhodes, Skiathos and Zakynthos, according to a Greek tourism ministry official quoted in the Athens daily newspaper Kathimerini.

Tourism officials likened the company’s collapse to a massive earthquake that would reverberate through the Greek economy.

‘It’s a seven-richter earthquake and we are expecting a tsunami,’ said Michalis Vlatakis, president of Crete’s travel bureaux and travel agents. ‘It’s not only the contracts of the visitors who have come and are now lost, it’s all those contracts that won’t materialise because people who were expected to come up until 10 November simply won’t travel.’

Manolis Tsakalakis, a hotelier in Rethymnon and president of a local owners’ association in Crete, told the Financial Times that hotel owners in Crete had not received any payments from Thomas Cook for the past two months.

‘Thomas Cook is one of the biggest tourism operators in Crete,’ he added. ‘He explained how most hotels in Crete have accumulated considerable debt to suppliers — ‘a million or two euros at a big resort, for example, or half a million at a smaller hotel.’

Scores of hotels and operators on Corfu, Kos, Rhodes and Zakynthos are owed money, and it is not clear whether will get it back. Two hoteliers told the Financial Times that the Atol protection scheme funded by the British travel industry would cover the bills for guests who were staying with them at the time of the liquidation announcement, but not for those who had already checked out.

Thomas Cook had 48 own-brand hotels in Greece and employed 1,000 to 1,200 people in Greece through a combination of in-destination customer support teams, quality management, contracting and hotel employees. Kos, Rhodes, Corfu and Crete were Thomas Cook’s most popular islands in Greece.

The company was regarded as one of the best employers in the tourist industry in Crete, where its hotels were part of a chain with hundreds of suppliers and small-scale tourist businesses.

Undoubtedly, bad management and failures to manage and control company indebtedness contributed to the collapse of Thomas Cook. But would it have been allowed to go so suddenly, causing a disaster for so many workers and holidaymakers by a British government that was no obsessed with ‘Brexit’ and all the shibboleths and mantras that go with that, including controlling borders, leaving Europe and the much-abused ‘Dunkirk Spirit.’

It is certainly not a government that is listening to the people rather than the privileged.

A choice of passports is becoming important for holidaymakers (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

But if a ‘no-deal Brexit’ goes through, I can imagine more nightmares unfolding, many with the most bizarre consequences.

The tourist season in southern Europe and the Mediterranean now continues into the first week or two in November. So, I imagine a scene like this after a ‘no-deal Brexit’ and after 1 November:

Now young, newly qualified policemen draw the short straw for the roster at the passport control kiosks at an airport serving many hotels and resorts. It may be on a Greek island … but equally it might be in Spain, Turkey or Italy.

They draw the short straws because it is the weekend, and find they are working the night shifts on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, while their older colleagues enjoy the weekend.

A late-night flight from Stansted is late. When it finally lands, it is obvious most of the passengers have been drinking … after all, their departure was delayed, and it is the beginning of their holiday.

Some are in their sleeveless T-shirts as they get off the plane and line up at one of the two kiosks where our lonely pair are ready to check the passports. Needless to say, there is no-one among the women wearing a spider brooch.

They are about to present themselves at the one kiosk that says ‘EU/EEA passports,’ each shifting with just a little anxiety from one foot to the other. No-one is queuing at the other kiosk, ‘Other Passports.’

The first on the queue presents his passport. A few seconds elapses. It is inspected quizzically. It is put through a small scanner that refuses to read it and pushes it back out again.

A few minutes elapse.

The two young, sorely-pressed policemen look knowingly at each other.

Was that a suppressed smile or a grimace? Two heads nod back in the shortest and almost unnoticeable of reverse gestures.

‘Sorry sir, this passport says you are an EU citizen.’

‘Yes.’

‘But you are not.’

‘But this is my passport.’

‘Other queue.’

He shifts across, but is the first at the other kiosk.

‘Sorry sir, this passport says you are an EU citizen.’

‘Yes.’

‘But you are not.’

‘I am British.’

‘Do you have a visa?’

‘No.’

More fidgeting, more murmuring.

Finally a rubber stamp is taken out: ‘ADMISSION REFUSED.’

And so the process continues, slowly, for the next hour or two.

Nine people get through: two families who are Polish – and who faced racist taunts by some of the hooligans on the flight who kept calling out the names of Farage and Johnson; and the couple who had the foresight to apply for Irish passports earlier this year.

But over 200 people are left crammed into a small corridor, without air conditioning, and without any vending machines selling water.

The humour is lost when a call goes out: ‘Far queue.’

Meanwhile, inside the airport, their bags are rolling round and round the carousel with the clothes and packed water they so desperately need and thirst for.

And, inside the airport, another 200 people whose flight was delayed know their plane has landed, but cannot understand why they are not allowed to board their flight home.

It’s 2 or 3 in the morning, and 400 people now realise a British passport has become as useful as a passport from Abkhazia, Northern Cyprus, Somaliland or South Ossetia.

The situation is tense. Temperatures are rising. The two young police recruits at the kiosk decide to call their colleagues in. There is a situation that is about to get out of control.

The older police who manipulated the weekend roster have been taught a bitter lesson.

And the ‘Leave’ voters on both sides of the airport begin to realise what it means when another country decides to take control of its borders without caring about the impact on European friends and neighbours.

Valuing the freedom of land, sea and air 20 years after a crisis that threatened war

Peaceful afternoons on the beach near Rethymnon are seldom interrupted by sonic booms and overflights, unlike 20 years ago (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Patrick Comerford

I have been coming to this part of Greece since the 1980s. Today, Rethymnon is a relatively quiet area for holidays. With the long sandy stretch for sand that continues for miles east of the town, it is a family-friendly place.

There are no signs offering cheap beer to lager louts, as I have seen at bars further east in places such as Hersonissos and Malia, and the resort areas east of Rethymnon are even quieter at the moment because school holidays have yet to start in Britain.

It is easy to fall asleep on the beach and to be undisturbed in the sunshine.

It was not always so peaceful. Not because of loud lager louts, not because Crete was attracting the wrong sort of tourists, and certainly not because of bad management on anyone’s part. But because of the threat of war.

An afternoon’s snooze on the beach was regularly interrupted in the 1980s and the 1990s by the sonic booms of overflying Greek air force jets, preparing or returning from buzzing their Turkish counterparts over the blue waters of the Aegean and the Mediterranean seas.

It almost came to a full-scale war between Greece and Turkey 20 years ago, and all because of a dispute over who owned the two tiny uninhabited rocky islets of Imia. I was flown into the middle of it all in 1996, and ended up as a part of a press posse that was threatened with coming under fire from the Turkish navy.

The dispute back in 1996 cost the lives of three crew members of a Greek Navy helicopter who died during a mission, and 20 years later, despite improved relations between Athens and Ankara in the intervening decades, many Greeks have not forgotten this tense time in modern Greek history.

The crisis had international leaders scrambling to urge bot sides not to come to blows over what was derided as a pile of rocks. But Greece insisted they were “Greek rocks,” and Athens refused to back down as Ankara tried to assert Turkish sovereignty. Greeks were reminded all too easily of the Turkish invasion of Cyprus over 20 years earlier on 20 July 1974.

Windmills at the entrance to the harbour in Rhodes (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Imia is part of the Dodesanese islands, which are dripping with history and oozing with culture: Kos, where Hippocrates formulated the foundations of modern medicine; Patmos, where Saint John the Divine wrote the Book of Revelation; Kalymnos, Leros and Simi, with their neo-classical mansions; and Rhodes, where the giant Colossus once straddled the harbour of Mandhraki, holding aloft the flame of freedom that inspired the Statue of Liberty.

At the crossroads of three continents, this island chain was once ruled by Alexander the Great and Ptolemy; it has been occupied by the Romans, the Crusaders, the Venetians, the Knights of Saint John, the Turks, the Italians and Nazi Germany. Only with the end of World War II was it finally handed over by Britain and incorporated into the Greek state in 1947.

Today, only 26 of the Dodecanese islands are inhabited: the largest, Rhodes, has about 100,000 people, but most have only a few hundred residents or less, and there are only 79 people left on Pserimos.

The large Turkish minorities in Rhodes and Kos and the mosques and minarets still dotting the skylines of many islands are ever-present reminders that Turkey occupied the Dodecanese for almost 400 years, from 1522 to 1912. Turkey is Greece’s nearest neighbour, and on many islands you can feel it is almost possible to touch the Turkish coast with its harbours and towns, houses and hotels.

On 29 December 1995, Turkey said the Imia islets were Turkish territory, registered in the prefecture of Bodrum. The dispute began when a Turkish cargo ship, Figen Akat ran ashore on the islets and had to be salvaged. It turned out that maps of were showing conflicting claims of the islets by Greece and Turkey, and there was a conflict between the Turkish captain and the Greek authorities over who was responsible for the salvage operation.

For more than 60 years, Turkey had accepted the maritime boundaries in the Aegean, defined by treaties and agreements with the Italians in 1923 and 1932, and ratified by the Treaty of Paris in 1947. The boundaries were never challenged by Ankara until that December. But as Turkey faced a major political crisis with the unexpected electoral success of the Islamic Welfare Party, the Foreign Ministry in Ankara claimed for the first time that Imia was part of the Turkish province of Mugla.

The official response of Greece came on 9 January 1996. The then-Greek Foreign Minister, Theodoros Pangalos, sent a reply to Turkey claiming an indisputable Greek sovereignty over the islets. The dispute was escalated when the Mayor of the Greek island of Kalymnos and a priest landed on the islets on 26 January and raised a Greek flag on the rocky outcrop.

Tensions escalated, and on 27 January Turkish journalists from the daily Hurriyet landed on the largest of the two Imia islets, tore down the blue and white Greek flag and hoisted the red and white star and crescent of Turkey.

Four days later, Turkish troops landed on the smaller rocky outcrop. Tensions heightened as Greek, Turkish and NATO forces sailed to the islets. At dawn on 31 January, a Greek navy helicopter flying over Imia said reported that Turkish troops had landed on the islets. The helicopter then crashed in mysterious circumstances. The crash was blamed on bad weather conditions, but some reports said the weather reports amounted to a mutual cover-up to hide that it was shot down by Turkish fire.

Both Athens and Ankara were accused of concealing what really happened to prevent war. The two countries had been on the brink of war when President Clinton intervened and the Turkish troops withdrew.

At the time, I was the Foreign Desk Editor of The Irish Times and I found myself in the middle of this crisis. I flew to Athens to interview the new Greek Prime Minister, Costas Simitis, his Foreign Minister, Theodoros Pangalos, and other Greek cabinet ministers.

A few days later I was one among a small group of about two dozen journalists who travelled from Athens and boarded the NV Nissos in Kos Harbour, close to the Plane Tree of Hippocrates and the Mosque of Hatzi Hassan.

At the time, the NV Nissos offered day trips to Turkey on Saturdays and Sundays, leaving Kos at 9 a.m. and returning at 5 p.m. But this was to be no pleasure cruise. We were reminded of an ever-present fear of an invasion from Anatolia, 5 km across the stretch of water. The local people were talking in terms of “when the Turks come”, not “if”.

With blue skies and blue seas, it could have been an idyllic summer trip. Apart from goat herds and environmentalists, few people ever bothered to visit the more remote rocks off the coast of Kos, Kalymnos, Kalolymnos and Pserimos. The crew took down the sign reading “Turkey” as we sailed off for the islets of Imia or Limnia, two flat pancakes less than two miles from Kalolymnos, almost 2½ miles from the Turkish island of Cavus, and over three miles from the western-most Turkish coast on the peninsula of Bodrum.

The Greek naval frigate HS Limnos, which had taken part in operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, was fresh back from the Adriatic and had offered to take us out to look at the rocks. But before we left, Turkey protested and summoned the Greek Ambassador in Ankara, Dimitrios Nezeritis, to warn against the media trip.

It was no idle warning: two days earlier, a Greek coastguard vessel and a Turkish patrol boat had collided in Greek waters, a mile south of Imia.

As we sailed out of Kos, the military tension was palpable and visible. Greek and Turkish jets buzzed overhead sporadically, a Greek coastguard vessel and a navy ship were within sight and, in the distance, we could catch a glimpse of a ship with Turkish naval markings.

Costas Bikas, the Foreign Ministry spokesman from Athens on board the Nissos, insisted there was nothing out of the ordinary about the cruise and that it was none of Ankara’s business. But the Turks made it their business. As the Greek and Turkish jet fighters swooped low over the area, the Turkish foreign ministry took a group of foreign and local journalists out from Bodrum. Once again, there were new Turkish claims to the islets known to the Turks as Kardak – by Defence Minister Oltan Sunguklu and by naval spokesman Ali Kurunahmut, who told cruising journalists: “Kardak is a Turkish islet and we are in Turkish waters.”

Trailing both groups were reporters and camera crews from the Greek and Turkish press and television. The crisis had moved from territorial claims and counter claims to cruise and counter cruise for journalists in the Aegean. As Imia faded out of sight, we followed past Pserimos, Kalolymnos, Leros and Kalymnos, through the straits separating Kalymnos and Telendhos, into Pothia, the port harbour of Kalymnos – names that once tripped off the tongues of backpackers in the 1970s.

As we disembarked at the dockside in Pothia, the microphones and cameras crowded into our faces: the foreign media had become the message.

The rocky island of Kalymnos is famous for its traditional sponge fishing; its fame in the past rested on Homer’s reference in the Iliad to the ships from the “Kalyndian Islands” taking part in the Trojan wars. That day, we felt war remained an ever-present threat to the peace of the islanders and their sponge fishers.

The Nissos returned to Kos to prepare for Sunday’s day trippers to Bodrum, and a launch from the Hellenic Coast Guard took us out from the harbour to the navy frigate Limnos, with its crew waiting to take us on to Rhodes. For four hours, we watched the crew tracking Turkish moves in the Aegean sea and skies, before our odyssey came to an end and Rhodes came into sight with its mediaeval castles and palaces, mosques and minarets and three harbours.

Two deer stand at each end of Mandhrki where the Colossus once straddled the entrance to the harbour, with ships passing through its towering legs. A small tug, the Herakles, took us ashore, reminding us of the apt inscription that once graced Colossus, praising the lovely gift of unlettered freedom. “For to those who spring from the race of Herakles, dominion is a heritage both on land and sea.”

The crisis was a temporary boost at home to Turkey’s Tansu Ciller as she searched (in vain) for a coalition partner to keep her in power. But it threatened to bring down Costas Simitis, Theodoros Pangalos and their Pasok government in Athens. Both sides agreed to withdraw their forces from the area around Imia and return to the status quo ante, although Ms Ciller continued to press Turkey’s claims to 3,000 Aegean islands – the sum total of all islands in Greek waters.

After intense pressure from the US, Greek and Turkish government removed their military forces from Imia. The territorial issue has remained unresolved since then. Imia and other islets in the Aegean are considered as “grey zones” of undetermined sovereignty by Turkey.

When I returned to Crete a few weeks later, my interviews with the Greek media and my appearances on Greek television became a topic of conversation over lunch with Greek friends on the island. Overhead, the sonic booms of fighter jets continued to break the peace of afternoon naps by the pool or on the beach.

When I returned a second time from Greece, The Irish Times published a major feature on my adventures on this day 20 years ago, 6 July 1996. I think the headline ‘Dropping Ankara in Rhodes,’ with its intended pun, was written by the then Design Editor, Andy Barclay.

The casual freedom of land and sea, to hop from one island to the next, is part of the lure of a holiday in the sun in many parts of Greece. But it is a freedom that comes with a price, a freedom that is valued by the local Greeks, and a freedom that is denied 20 years later to many refugees who come in search of it as they make the difficult passage from the coast of Turkey to the islands of the Dodecanese.

Praying for a rainbow of hope for refugees on Greek islands

‘Summer Wine’ … a promise of summer sunshine and a reminder of the Mediterranean in Dún Laoghaire late this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Patrick Comerford
Between the showers of hail and rain this afternoon, there were snatches of sunshine, tastes of summer wine and promises of Mediterranean sun and sea.

As afternoon was turning into evening I went for a coffee in Dún Laoghaire and then for a stroll along the sea front behind the Royal Saint George Yacht Club.

The yachts moored safely in the harbour were like a tantalising promise of sunnier days ahead. And that the same time it was difficult not to think of the humanitarian crises on the seas in the Mediterranean, off the coasts of Italy and Greece.

Earlier in the afternoon, I had lunch in Corfu, the Greek restaurant in Parliament Street, Dublin, with a television producer who was interested in discussion his ideas for a new series.

Evzones guarding the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Athens … an image in Corfu in Parliament Street, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

The walls around us were decorated with images of Greece, including Greek music, Greek movies, Greek poetry and photographs of the the Evzones (Εύζωνες, Εύζωνοι), the elite light infantry units who provide the Presidential Guard and the ceremonial units that guard the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier (Μνημείο του Άγνωστου Στρατιώτη), the Presidential Mansion (Προεδρικό Μέγαρο) and the gate of the Evzones camp in Athens.

These may have a predominantly ceremonial role, and are known for their uniform with the kilt-like fustanella. But they are a reminder too of the valour and bravery of the klephts, Cretans and Pontic fighters who struggled for Greek freedom and democracy in the 19th century.

Greek freedom and democracy are facing their toughest demands at present, and Greek valour is being grossly undervalued by many Europeans today, from German politicians to British tourists.

Greek freedom and democracy have come at a price … an image in Corfu in Parliament Street, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

In a scaremongering feature earlier this week, the Daily Mail claimed British tourists on the Greek island of Kos are complaining about asylum seekers ruining their holidays and turning the island into a “disgusting hellhole.”

The Mail claimed “penniless refugees have set up camp, sleeping on rubbish-strewn cardboard boxes. Summer break [is] a ‘nightmare’ for British holidaymakers, who won’t be coming back if it's a refugee camp next year.”

This is nothing less than callous display of disdain and a lack of compassion for people fleeing horrific conditions. The Daily Mail, Britain’s second most read paper, is stoking up fear and xenophobia when it should be displaying compassion and empathy.

Eva Cossé, who has just returned Kos, challenged the values of the Daily Mail and those tourists in a report for Human Rights Watch this week. In Kos, she met asylum seekers who had crossed by boat from Turkey to Greece, and she tells the stories of their own “disgusting hellholes.”

She interviewed men, women, and children fleeing war in Syria and pervasive violence and persecution in Afghanistan.

Nour, a young Palestinian from Syria, fled for fear of ISIS. He told her: “They kill people, cut heads, harm us psychologically. Once, I was walking at night and I stepped on something, grabbed it to see what it was, and felt some kind of hair. It was a head. That’s why we left.”

Mubarek left northern Afghanistan with his wife and three young sons because of the threat of the Taliban: “Every day the Taliban take people and children for suicide bombings. I was worried about my sons.”

Eva Crossé also heard about the grim conditions on Kos. There is no reception facility, so police take migrants and asylum seekers to an abandoned hotel with makeshift beds, limited running water, and no electricity. Others sleep in tents provided by Médecins Sans Frontières / Doctors Without Borders (MSF) , while still others are left on the streets.

“Believe me,” she said, “migrants and asylum seekers want to leave every bit as much as the intolerant British holidaymakers want to see them go.”

Earlier this week, she came across 1,000 migrants and asylum seekers waiting for police processing to get the necessary documents to travel on to Athens.

Nour, the young Palestinian, told her how a restaurant owner sprayed pesticide on him and his brother to force them to move away. As she was interviewing a group of Syrians near the police station, a shop owner came and shouted: “Go away, you are bothering the view of my tourists. Go back to your countries.”

She points out there is a lot Greece needs to do to set up a functioning reception system on the Aegean islands. She suggests the EU should support Greece more to ensure adequate shelter, food, and basic healthcare to those arriving at Europe’s door.

But then, of course, there is so much that the EU needs to do for Greece right now.

Eva Crossé concludes: “Yes, the reality of refugee suffering can dampen holiday fun. But these refugees have fled from one hellhole to another, and tourists should gain some perspective on – and hopefully show compassion for – these people who aren’t on the move seeking rest and relaxation, but rather to find refuge.”

Colourful hand-made kilins from Afghanistan Blue Door in Monkstown (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Between Corfu and Dún Laoghaire this afternoon, I was in the Blue Door in Monkstown buying a birthday present. But I was completely distracted by the colourful, distinctive handmade kilins from Afghanistan.

Hand-made kilins from Afghanistan are fashionable in northern Europe, and are beautiful to look at. But when those who make them seek refuge on our shores or in our holiday resorts, they are accused by the gutter press and tourists of turning our places of refuge into “disgusting hellholes.”

These double standards need to be exposed for precisely what they are.

Thinking of the Mediterranean in a quiet moment at the harbour in Dún Laoghaire this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

As I walked back from the harbour at Dún Laighaire, I passed a collection of irises in a green patch beside Saint Michael’s Church. The Iris takes its name from the Greek word for a rainbow (Ἶρις). Perhaps a rainbow of hope will soon shine in dark clouds for the refugees who take great risks in the Mediterranean in their search for safety a future for their children.

A bed of irises in Dun Laoghaire … who can offer a rainbow of hope to refugees in the Mediterranean (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Easing tension in Aegean brings hope to Greek Muslims

Letter
from Kos
Patrick
Comerford

The new rapprochement between Turkey and Greece has been drawing the two neighbours closer to each other in a way that has surprised Greeks and Turks in equal measure.

As a consequence of generous mutual responses to last year’s earthquakes, Greece is advising Turkey about its application for EU membership; Athens and Ankara are now talking about co-operation in a wide range of fields that go beyond trade and tourism; travel between the two countries is becoming much easier; and for the first time in decades Turkish troops landed on Greek sovereign territory this summer to take part in a joint military exercise.

The unexpected outbreak of goodwill has brought hope to the hard-pressed Greek minority in Turkey and to the mainly Muslim Greeks of Turkish origin. Greece is in the midst of a bruising national debate about official identity cards, with church-organised street demonstrations in support of the demands of Archbishop Christodoulos of Athens, who is close to identifying Greek nationality and membership of the Greek Orthodox Church.

But in recent years the government has become more sensitive to the needs of Greece's minorities, and is supporting plans to build a new mosque in Athens, the first since Greek independence in 1821.

Traditionally, Jews have had an easier time in Greece than the Muslim minority. Thessaloniki was long a centre of Ladino or Sephardic Greek culture, and despite the decimation of the Jewish population during the Nazi occupation of Greece, there are important Jewish museums on a number of islands.

But, until recently, Muslims found it difficult to gain acceptance for their contribution to culture and society. Now the thaw in relations in the Aegean is bringing hope to Muslim communities throughout Greece.

The island of Kos in the northern Dodecanese lies a few short miles off the Bodrum peninsula of Turkey: Turkish towns and houses are clearly visible, and in recent months, an increasing number of yachts with Turkish flags have been docked along the marina in Kos harbour, beneath the walls of the medieval Crusader castle. Kos has always had a sizeable Turkish population, and because the island only reunited with the rest of Greece after the second World War, the Muslim minority mercifully escaped the cruel exchanges of Muslims and Christians between Turkey and Greece in the first few decades of the 20th century.

Today the island has about 2,500 Muslims, many of them living in Platania. The village lies 2km from Kos town, on the slopes up to the Asklepion, the temple of Asklepios, the Greek god of medicine, founded just after the death of Hippocrates.

For generations the village was known as Kermetes, or Germe in Turkish. But in the wake of Greek-Turkish conflict in Cyprus, its name was changed to Platania in 1964 and the Turkish school became a Greek national school.

And yet the village has lost none of its Oriental charm and mystique. Many of the houses look like houses in once-Turkish villages in Crete, and the square, with its working Ottoman fountain, is surrounded by tavernas run by local Turks, serving traditional Turkish fare, including Arap, Moustafa and Neriman, Gin’s Corner and Serif.

Ali Karavezer (35), who helps run Serif, his father’s restaurant on the square, recalls more difficult times. After uncles and aunts migrated to Bodrum, Kusadasi and Smyrna (Izmir), his father considered sending the young Ali to Turkey, and later as an 18-year-old conscript he was sent to the farthest corners of Greece. His fellow islanders, who were Greek Orthodox, were allowed to stay closer to home.

“Now I don’t think we have many problems,” he says, as we watch army trucks on manoeuvre making their way through the narrow streets. “Things are getting better. This year was really good,” he says, and gives the credit for many of the changes to the Prime Minister, Costas Simitis. In recent months, his aunt was able to return from Bodrum to Platania to visit her 92-year-old mother for the first time in 12 years.

He says his family has lived on Kos for 1,000 years. Today his many Greek friends no longer see him as a Turk and “few people from Kos see us as second-category people”. A banner for Galatasaray hangs in the house, but Ali supports the Greek team Panathanaikos – the only point of disagreement with his closest friend, Niko, a Greek Orthodox who supports Olympiakos.

In a side street, the parish priest of Aghios Athanasios sits outside his church in the summer sun while the imam climbs the minaret of the mosque to call out the mid-afternoon prayers.

Down the hill, on the way back into Kos, the Muslim cemetery is an oasis of quiet, with neat graves shaded by strong plane trees. The older, Ottoman-era graves are marked by traditional, tall, slender gravestones, leaning in rows against each other, carved with inscriptions in the traditional Arabic-style Turkic script and capped with turbans, dated according to the Islamic calendar.

But the newer graves have surprisingly modern stones, with their names carved, surprisingly, in neither Ottoman nor Greek letters, but in the modern Roman alphabet, and the dates following the Western calendar.

Dotted among the graves are a few unexpected symbols: the star and crescent which serves as both a Muslim and Turkish symbol; or a photograph of the deceased (an unthinkable grave decoration in many Muslim societies).

A few fields farther down, the gates of the Jewish cemetery are locked. The last remaining Jew of Kos was buried here about 10 years ago. He was the only Koan Jew to survive the transportation of the local community, along with the Jews of Rhodes, to Auschwitz in 1944.

Back in Kos, close to the ancient Agora, the former synagogue is a beautiful Art Deco building, but it has been disused since 1944 and stands locked in bleak isolation in the midst of the bustle of “Bar Street”. The prospect for future generations of Muslims on Kos looks more promising.

This news feature was first published in ‘The Irish Times’ on 18 July 2000.

Dropping Ankara in Rhodes

By Patrick Comerford

Early summer is the time to go island hopping in the Aegean. The harbours of Greek islands such as Rhodes, Kos and Kalimnos are lined with small ferries, fishing boats and caiques offering day trips to neighbouring islands in the Dodecanese, and to Greece's nearest neighbour, Turkey.

From Agathonissi in the north to Kastellorizo in the far south east, the Dodecanese is a chain of over 1,000 islands, islets and rocky outcrops at the end of the eastern Mediterranean, strung out like a necklace along the west and south-west coast of Asia Minor.

These are islands dripping with history and oozing with culture: Kos, where Hippocrates formulated the foundations of modern medicine; Patmos, where St John the Divine wrote the Book of Revelation; Kalimnos, Leros and Simi, with their neo-classical mansions; and Rhodes, where the giant Colossus once straddled the harbour of Mandhraki, holding aloft the flame of freedom that inspired the Statue of Liberty.

The casual freedom of land and sea, to hop from one island to the next, is part of the lure of a holiday in the sun in this part of Greece. But it’s a freedom that comes with a price, and a freedom valued by the local Greeks. At the crossroads of three continents, this island chain was once ruled by Alexander the Great and Ptolemy; it has been occupied by the Romans, the Crusaders, the Venetians, the Knights of St John, the Turks, the Italians and Nazi Germany. Only with the end of the second World War was it finally handed over by Britain and incorporated into the Greek state in 1947.

Today, only 26 of the Dodecanese islands are inhabited: the largest, Rhodes, has about 100,000 people, but most have only a few hundred residents or less, and there are only 79 people left on Pserimos.

The large Turkish minorities in Rhodes and Kos and the mosques and minarets still dotting the skylines of many islands are ever present reminders that Turkey occupied the Dodecanese for almost 400 years, from 1522 to 1912. Turkey is Greece’s nearest neighbour, and from many islands you can feel it’s almost possible to touch the Turkish coast with its harbours and towns, houses and hotels.

The fishermen and ferry operators supplement their income during these months with day trips from Rhodes to Marmaris, from Simi to Data, and from Kos to Bodrum, site of the ancient world’s Hallicarnassus and its Mausoleum.

On Saturdays and Sundays, the NV Nissos offers day trips to Turkey, leaving Kos at 9 a.m. and returning at 5 p.m. But as a small group of not more than two dozen journalists boarded the Nissos in Kos Harbour, close to the Plane Tree of Hippocrates and the Mosque of Hatzi Hassan, we were reminded of the ever-present fear of an invasion from Anatolia, five kilometres across the stretch of water: local people talk in terms of “when the Turks come”, not “if”.

With blue skies and blue seas, it could have been an idyllic summer trip. Apart from goat herds and environmentalists, few people ever bother to visit the more remote rocks off the coast of Kos, Kalimnos, Kalolimnos and Pserimos. The crew took down the sign reading “Turkey” as we sailed off for the islets of Imia or Limnia, two flat pancakes less than two miles from Kalolimnos, almost 2½ miles from the Turkish island of Cavus, and over three miles from the western-most Turkish coast on the peninsula of Bodrum.

The Greek naval frigate HS Limnos, which had taken part in operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, was fresh back from the Adriatic and had offered to take us out to look at the rocks. But before we left, Turkey protested and summoned the Greek ambassador in Ankara, Dimitrios Nezeritis, to warn against the media trip.

It was no idle warning – two days earlier, a Greek coastguard vessel and a Turkish patrol boat had collided in Greek waters, a mile south of Imia.

For more than 60 years, Turkey had accepted the maritime boundaries in the Aegean, defined by treaties and agreements with the Italians in 1923 and 1932, and ratified by the Treaty of Paris in 1947. The boundaries were never challenged by Ankara until last December.

But as Turkey faced a major political crisis with the unexpected electoral success of the Islamic Welfare Party, the Foreign Ministry in Ankara claimed for the first time that Imia was part of the Turkish province of Mugla. Tension began to escalate and on January 27th Turkish journalists from the daily Hurriyet landed on the largest of the two Imia islets, tore down the blue and white Greek flag and hoisted the red and white star and crescent of Turkey.

Four days later, Turkish troops landed on the smaller rocky outcrop. The two countries were on the brink of war when President Clinton intervened and the Turkish troops withdrew.

The crisis was a temporary boost at home to Turkey’s Tansu Ciller as she searched (in vain) for a coalition partner to keep her in power. But it threatened to bring down the new Greek Prime Minister, Costas Simitis; his Foreign Minister, Theodoros Pangalos; and the Pasok government in Athens. Both sides agreed to withdraw their forces from the area around Imia and return to the status quo ante, although Ms Ciller continued to press Turkey’s claims to 3,000 Aegean islands – the sum total of all islands in Greek waters.

As we sailed out of Kos, the military tension was palpable and visible. Greek and Turkish jets buzzed overhead sporadically, a Greek coastguard vessel and a navy ship were within sight and, in the distance, we could catch a glimpse of a ship with Turkish naval markings.

Costas Bikas, the Foreign Ministry spokesman from Athens on board the Nissos, insisted there was nothing out of the ordinary about the cruise and it was none of Ankara’s business. But the Turks made it their business. As the Greek and Turkish jet fighters swooped low over the area, the Turkish foreign ministry took a group of foreign and local journalists out from Bodrum. Once again, there were new Turkish claims to the islets known to the Turks as Kardak – by Defence Minister Oltan Sunguklu and by naval spokesman Ali Kurunahmut, who told cruising journalists: “Kardak is a Turkish islet and we are in Turkish waters.”

Trailing both groups were reporters and camera crews from the Greek and Turkish press and television. The crisis had moved from territorial claims and counter claims to cruise and counter cruise for journalists in the Aegean. As Imia faded out of sight, we followed past Psenmos, Kalolimnos, Leros and Kalimnos, through the straits separating Kalimnos and Telendhos, into Pothia, the port harbour of Kalimnos – names that once tripped off the tongues of backpackers in the 1970s.

As we disembarked at the dockside in Pothia, the microphones and cameras crowded into our faces: the foreign media had become the message.

The rocky island of Kalimnos is famous for its traditional sponge fishing; its fame in the past rested on Homer’s reference in the Iliad to the ships from the “Kalyndian Islands” taking part in the Trojan wars. Today, war remains an ever-present threat to the peace of the islanders and their sponge fishers.

The Nissos returned to Kos to prepare for Sunday’s day trippers to Bodrum, and a launch from the Hellenic coastguard took us out from the harbour to the navy frigate Timnos, with its crew waiting to take us on to Rhodes. For four hours we watched the crew tracking Turkish moves in the Aegean sea and skies, before our odyssey came to an end and Rhodes came into sight with its medieval castles and palaces, mosques and minarets and three harbours.

Two deer stand at each end of Mandhrki where the Colossus once straddled the entrance to the harbour, with ships passing through its towering legs. A small tug, the Herakles, took us ashore, reminding us of the apt inscription that once graced Colossus, praising the lovely gift of unlettered freedom. “For to those who spring from the race of Herakles, dominion is a heritage both on land and sea.”

This feature was published in ‘The Irish Times’ on Saturday 6 July 1996