The decision by Minister of Public Order Nikos Dendias to work together with with National Intelligence Agency and the police in investigating the recent fires on the island of Chios, as well as in other parts of Greece, just confirmed what intelligence agencies knew all along. That there is an imminent "asymmetrical" threat against our country from the East. Or should we say from Turkey.
Please note that this is the second time that Chios has fallen victim to the Turkish secret services in less than two weeks.
The first case involved a yacht full of Ukrainians that got stranded off of the Prasonisia islands. The islands are located between Chios and Oinousses, and within Greek territorial waters, but the Ukrainians ... surprisingly called the Turkish Coast Guard (??) to save them several days ago and our neighbors were quick to perform a search and rescue operation within FSC and on Greek soil.
Obviously a classic case of provocation.
Why do we think so... ?
This is where it becomes interesting.
Delving into the past of these so called Ukrainian tourists, officials discovered some pretty interesting things about their relations with Turkey. For instance, before the yacht got suddenly "stranded" in the middle of the Aegean, it had sailed off from (surprise. surprise) Constantinople (!!!). In other words folks, it was a staged provocation that could of evolved into an incident with unknown consequences and dimensions. In fact there were strict orders from the ministries of Foreign Affairs and Defense not to "answer to the Turkish challenges,", even if these provocations were of an extreme nature.
The fires on Chios are the second. Authorities discovered bottles with flammable material, including foil with incendiary devices all over the forests. So if you hear stories about rich land owners burring down these forests to sell-off property be on alert. This is just dust in our eyes, and an all-out myth. Besides, who would want to invest in land that has totally burned to the crisp on a mountain that is far away from the sea?
Fine the weather didn't help either, and indeed gale force winds were pounding the island for days, but it can also mean that someone had accurate meteorological data about when the first outbreaks would occur and in which areas.
That would also mean that these people knew that the CL-215 and CL-415 (fire-fighting planes) could not act in the first critical hours of the fire.
So think long and hard... Who can obtain accurate meteorological data and place sophisticated fire mechanisms all over a forest without being detected to begin once the winds started picking up?
People who want to sell-off a few hectares of land on a mountain-top... or foreign agents (interests)?
Tick tock.. tick tock...
The answer is obvious since secret services have a thorough knowledge of meteorological data and terrain topography.
And now that we have a pretty good idea about who (or what) is behind the fire on Chios, its time to assess the damage but officials really do not know from where to begin. Fires broke out all over the island, and especially within the dense forests of the central-southern region where there was a strong unit of the Greek Army.
The forests are now gone, and this island lost its natural camouflage, exposing the Greek army's artillery whose purpose was to challenge a possible threat from eastern forces. Now the army is an easy target for air strikes and the enemy's artillery. In fact a high-ranking military official told defencenet that "anyone who has studied the Turkish plan SUGA on the invasion of Oinousses (!!!), or other small islands in the area, will see that the enemy (from the East) will find it very difficult to escape from artillery firing (from the Greek side).
Obviously the arsonists knew exactly where to strike.But to understand what the military official said to defencenet it is important to understand what this plan was all about. And once we have done this, then you will see that the fires on Chios... are not by chance at all...
Interestingly after researching the subject we found quite a bit of information, most of which surprisingly was printed by the Turkish media. But as you will see further down, we chose a reference article from the Asia Times about this shocking plan because we wanted to be even more objective.
So back to our subject. We discovered that SUGA is a Turkish plan that involves the invasion of Oinousses, Fournous and Leros, with combined operations from special forces, and ultimately heavy forces. In simple terms... an all out war with Greece. "SUGA" was devised by the Turkish Navy as part of an operation called "Sledgehammer" back in 2002-2003 as part of efforts to weaken and topple the Erdogan government.
According to the reports at the time, the Turkish generals were planning to shoot one of their own aircraft and claim that it was shot by a Greek one and then put bombs in mosques and accuse Greece of doing this. The generals would shortly afterwards accuse the Turkish government for not taking active measures and would remove it from power. An invasion of Thrace would follow.
Feb 25, 2010 - 'Sledgehammer' blow for TurkeyThe plan, as well as the fires on Chios thus confirm that if Turkey decided to invade Greece then this would be via the Dodecanese. Besides, Ankara has always questioned the "Greekness" of these islands, and believes that there is legal ambiguity in their sovereignty which was determined in the 1947 Treaty of Paris.
ISTANBUL- Turkey's navy, air force and 1st Army commanders were arrested by Turkish police over seven-year-old plans that allegedly aimed to create national chaos, undermine the government and lead to a military takeover. The retired soldiers are the highest-ranking officers ever arrested by the Turkish police, with many Turks seeing this as a defining moment in the country's civilian-military relations. Many army officers have been arrested before, but none of this stature, and now even Turkey's most senior officers, whether serving or retired, must consider themselves vulnerable to civilian prosecution. The arrests, which totaled 49 people, came two weeks after 5,000 pages of documents and a number of CDs that detailed the alleged coup plan - leaked from inside the military to a journalist.
The most dramatic sections are Sledgehammer's four "action plans", including a plot by the gendarme branch of the Turkish military to bomb two major Istanbul mosques - Beyazit and Fatih - during Friday prayers. The documents describe teams of nine people - all whom are named and their military ID numbers listed - and what their roles would be, such as scouting or planting explosives.The attacks were not planned to kill people, only to wound, according to Congar. Neighborhoods were to be infiltrated after the attack to make sure a religious uprising would follow the bombings that undermined civilian rule.
An air force action plan codenamed "Oraj" (Thunderstorm) describes provoking a Greek pilot into shooting down a Turkish fighter plane; or, Turkey shooting down its own plane if the Greeks were not provoked. This plan aimed to put pressure on the government by sparking a nationalist fury that would justify a military takeover.
A naval action plan codenamed "SUGA"was signed off by Ozden Ornek, a former navy commander. Ornek's diaries, which detail another coup plot, were published in a magazine in 2007. The magazine was subsequently shut down, and Ornek's diaries now serve as part of the "Ergenekon" indictment against an alleged ultra-nationalist group of conspirators within the state structure. Ornek was also detained.
The main Sledgehammer document called for a veiled discussion of the plans among the Turkish military's top commanders. And in March 2003, 160 officers attended a seminar convened in the Selimiye army barracks in Istanbul. Congar and her team have tape recordings from the seminar as well as the files of presentations delivered there. Congar said that on the recordings one can hear Cetin Dogan criticizing the AKP; she also said that the PowerPoint presentations were not about "normal security situations".
The Sledgehammer documents also include pages and pages of civil servant "ratings". Turkish bureaucrats from the judiciary, the Foreign Ministry, the State Planning Department, the Foreign Trade Department and other departments and ministries are named and given a "plus" or "minus", that is, allegedly a score of "with us or against us". These ratings also included "notes" on the person: whether the person was religious, or an Alevi (Turkey's main religious minority), or, for example, an alcoholic or a womanizer.
Many people argue that the Sledgehammer action plans are simply scenarios, but Congar says the personnel lists indicate that Sledgehammer was not simply an abstract "war-game" as some members of the military have called it.
"Once you start making lists of the people who are going to be arrested when there's a coup, and writing about their personal life, that's already a form of implementation. That goes beyond planning," she said. One list named the bureaucrats, officials and even other military officers who would be arrested, removed or replaced following an army takeover.
Read more - ASIA TIMES
More specifically, the Dodecanese islands eventually came under Greek sovereignty with the Treaty of Paris of February 10, 1947 between Italy and the Allied powers in the Second World War. By virtue of this Treaty Italy ceded all territorial claims to the Dodecanese islands, including "...Kalymnos...as well as the adjacent islets" to Greece. Thus Greece became the successor of all the territory previously controlled by Italy in the Dodecanese area, including, of course, the islets Imia which had been clearly fixed as being Italian territory in the Italian-Turkish Proces Verbal of December 28, 1932. The acquisition of the Dodecanese was sanctioned in Greece by Law 547/1948 which includes a list of the islets and rocks of the region allocated to various administrative regions. The Imia islets (called in the Law: Limnia) were allotted to the District of Kalymnos.
(Incidentally... From 1947 till December 1995 Turkey never questioned the territorial status of Imia. Now its a "grey area" ... now why is that...??)
Reports at the time had said that the officials at the meetings decided to exploit the friction that sometimes occurs between Greek and Turkish fisherman fish around the island of Zourafa.
Basically the overall purpose of this plan was to carry out an extensive operation to the island of Leros, which would involve naval and air forces and would provoke a reaction from Greece. In fact a report written after the December 2002 meeting and signed by Commander Denise Tzora claimed that the preparation of an extensive operation against Leros, would cause a change "in the alert status of Greece”.
In another report, and under the plan “SUGA”, these (war-mongering) committees even named the islands which Turkey would invade. They said that “Oinousses controls the north channel of Cesme and the east channel of Chios and will therefore offer an important advantage over Greece.”
Another note signed by former navy commander Erntin Inal, and which was drafted in January 2003, stated that until the unit was set up for business on these islands, an amphibious commando group would take part in the project for offensive action and then would proceed with destroying the island's infrastructure while it would also attack key command centers!
The Turkish airforce would then be brought in and Super Puma helicopters would go on a rampage followed by UH-60. Following the invasion of the islands, residents would be gathered in military bases and then be sent off to continental Greece.
(Simple thought here - WTF?)
As shocking as this all sounds, the "SUGA" plan is just one matter on a long list of issues that also need our attention. Matters that have to do with our national pride, our dignity as a people and for God sakes... good old fashioned "filotimo". We have featured a plethora of articles here on hellasfrappe about how remote areas of Greece are subjected to massive Turkish propaganda, and how this has poisoned local officials. Today these very same people -all Greek nationals- are not only openly -and without an ounce of decency)- vying for the other side, but they are also blasting people for being patriots!
What we are trying to say here is that the wave of fires on Chios (and maybe in other areas of the country) are only one piece of a grand puzzle in game that we as citizens rarely know anything about. Obviously things are far too complex for us to understand and Lord knows what their next move will be. The problem for us is that all this involves intelligence sources. Greek sources will concentrate on the "they were going to invade us" bit (which is understandable), while Turkish sources will say that its all just B.S. and cooked up by Erdogan's cronies to seize more power for "Islamists". We will never find out the truth, and don't expect the European media to help either... they are always cautious before reporting because they are always so damned "politically correct". Fortunately there are still some sites on the Internet that give out good information and we would like to thank defencenet for this.
Editor's Note - The future of Greece is in our hands, and when our country is threatened, we are obligated to defend it. PERIOD. Filter the information you hear, and certainly do your own research and always remember that being a patriot to your country does not mean that you are an extremist, or a radical, it just means that you respect the blood that flows in your veins! Do not allow anyone to stick a label on you because when we play in the Euroleague we come together as a people to cheer over Greece -or the blue and white- we do not come together as the conservatives, the socialists, the communists, the Stalinist,s the Marxists or the extremists. We only come together as Greeks and we cheer the Greek team on TOGETHER. We do not need a national crisis to realize this, the time to come to grips with this is NOW, before its too late.
References
http://www.defencenet.gr/defence/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=51358&Itemid=139
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/default.aspx?pageid=438&n=one-nation-under-8216sledgehammer8217-2010-01-24
http://www.defencenet.gr/defence/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=17028&Itemid=139
Posts
