Greek politicians reacted angrily on Monday following the admission by former Turkish Prime Minister Mesut Yilmaz that Turkish secret agents intentionally started forest fires in Greece in the 1990s as part of state-sponsored sabotage.
According to Yilmaz, who served as premier three times in the 1990s, agents of the Turkish secret service set fire to Greek forests during the leadership of his archrival Tansu Ciller, from 1995 to 1998. During that period major forest fires caused huge damage on the islands of the eastern Aegean and in Macedonia.
The news sparked political outrage Greece on Monday. Foreign Ministry spokesman Grigoris Delavekouras said the claims were serious and must be investigated, adding that Athens was awaiting a briefing from Ankara.
Conservative New Democracys shadow foreign minister Panos Panayiotopoulos said the revelations cast heavy shadows over Greek-Turkish relations and called on Turkey recompense Greece for losses incurred.
Giorgos Karatzaferis, the leader of the right-wing Popular Orthodox Rally (LAOS), was indignant and triumphant, noting that he had been accused of extremism when as an MP he had accused Turkish secret agents of arson in Greece. Now, from the lips of former Turkish premier, we have an admission to the crime, he said.
#1
I remember getting stuck in a bar sitting next to a Greek officer, when a grinning Brit asked him a leading question about Turkey. I had been set up.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
