The sanctity of the homeland...

We don't know if they thought, 'While we're here, let's stop by A101, buy two loaves of bread and half a kilo of that discounted low-salt cheese,' but if they had found it easy enough, they would have almost taken down the Turkish flag in Turgut Reis and hoisted the Greek flag in its place.

If it hadn't surfaced on social media a few days ago, probably no one would have known about it, except for a few vacationers.

A Greek coast guard boat, chasing a small zodiac belonging to human smugglers, had come all the way to the bay of Akçabük Site in Bodrum's Akyarlar neighborhood, waving its arms as it pleased. It approached the shore right in front of the residents, to the point where people could almost wade in and wave, saying, 'Look, my feet touched it.' After loitering and showing off for three or four minutes, it hit the gas and returned.

Moreover, it wasn't the crack of dawn.

It wasn't a situation where they had to go and come back before anyone on the other shore had even gotten out of bed, or before the birds had even chirped.

It was broad daylight, at a time when people had finished their breakfast and were starting to clear the table.

They had come right under our noses, in plain sight.

We hadn't even recovered from the shock of that when images of another Greek coast guard boat appearing near Datça fell onto social media.

The Greek coast guard boat was coming right up to the shore, even pulling up to the land.

Then, a masked person stepped onto the beach, pulled the zodiac found there into the sea, tied it to their own boat, and then they returned together.

The claim is that the incident happened about a week ago. That is, a day or two before the one in Akçabük.

Yet, in 1995, Turkey had risked an all-out war with Greece, which had dared to claim rights over the Kardak islets, located 3.8 miles from Gümüşlük, right next to Akyarlar.

When the government in Athens landed soldiers on one of the islets as part of a policy to confine Turkey to the Anatolian coast, Ankara responded extremely harshly, showing that, unlike today, it would not hesitate to back diplomacy with military force when the supreme interests of the country were at stake.

As winds of war blew between the two countries, Turkish SAT commandos infiltrated through the Greek navy surrounding Kardak and landed on the western islet; Greece, stunned by this move from Turkey, was forced to take a step back.

The crisis shook Athens badly; Chief of General Staff Christos Limberis, whom Prime Minister Simitis accused of incompetence, resigned.

Yet now, Greek coast guard boats, after leaving Kos or Symi, cross international waters, enter Turkish territorial waters, and can almost drop anchor on the Turkish coast with the ease of a fisherman out for sea bass, without our coast guard even knowing it.

It was unbelievable.

Under normal circumstances, Turkey should have turned everything upside down.

Otherwise, in a sensitive geography like the Aegean, where two coastal countries have been at odds for years, an image could emerge that Turkey is now incapable of defending its rights and laws.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which immediately issues statements when the issue is Gaza or Hamas, this time took on the silence of the lambs. It fell to the Ministry of Interior to say a few words to Greece. Ali Yerlikaya grabbed the phone, called Greek Minister of Maritime Affairs and Insular Policy Christos Stylianides, and, just for show, expressed his discomfort over the Greek coast guard boats violating our territorial waters, saying that such violations could not be accepted for the sake of maintaining good neighborly relations, and so on...

The Greek minister, as if joking or mocking our intelligence, calmed our side down with three or four sentences to the effect of, 'By God, the incident has no political aspect, don't worry, we won't do it again.'

They had scored the goal, and we were already content with 1-0; there was no point in pushing for a draw and risking conceding more goals in the current state of affairs.

Thus, we closed the matter from our perspective without making too much noise.

Naturally, this situation did not sit well with those who, until yesterday, were aligning patriotic dissenters behind them by talking about the 'Blue Homeland' and such; those who accused anyone saying, 'First, protect our rights and interests in the Aegean, and do not sacrifice the issue of the exclusive economic zone in the Eastern Mediterranean to rhetoric, do not use this as material for domestic politics,' of treason.

Except for the meeting announced by the Ministry of Interior on social media and the bizarre statement from the Coast Guard Command, the ruling wing preferred to remain silent so that the other side wouldn't stir up the issue further and keep it on the agenda. Otherwise, God forbid, it might have been understood that the homeland, nation, religion, faith, and 'infidel Greek' rhetoric they cling to when in a tight spot is nothing but a fairy tale.

Anyway, apart from Namık Tan, who has a diplomatic background, and former naval officer Cihat Yaycı, not many people showed any sensitivity.

But social media users on the other side of the Aegean, with the inferiority complex of having been beaten by Turkey for years, were desperate to extract a victory from this.

The Greek Ministry of Maritime Affairs, with the air of a footballer jokingly shushing the fans cheering for the goal they scored, issued a statement saying, 'The Port Authorities of Kos and Symi have been warned to be more careful and meticulous in this regard.'

The excuse given was that the human smuggler fleeing toward Bodrum had not stopped despite verbal warnings. Allegedly, they couldn't open fire because of the tourist boats in the area, and that's why the chase continued all the way to the Bodrum coast.

Of course, it's a 'stuffed peppers in the fridge' situation—if you believe it...

These should not be seen as a simple chain of violations.

Because it is not just Turkey's territorial waters that are being violated; there is also an encroachment on its internal waters and coasts.

Tomorrow or the next day, they might say, 'We are turning a blind eye to hot pursuit in order to prevent human smuggling,' in an attempt to save face.

But then, what excuse will you find for a Greek soldier with a mask on his face setting foot on Turkish soil without asking anyone for permission?

There is no acceptable side to this.

To those who might comment, 'It's a small matter, don't exaggerate, should we go to war just because two Greek soldiers were insolent?', we advise them to look at how Greece expanded and grew, first against the Ottomans and then against Turkey, through small concessions given after 1829.

Especially in the Aegean, every step back means Turkey is more confined to the Anatolian mainland, and over time, it will not even have enough water left to float a fishing boat.

In short, we knew that the country's eastern borders were already like a sieve, and had turned into a thoroughfare, especially after 2011, but frankly, we didn't expect Greece to be able to act so recklessly in the Aegean.

It is very clear from whom and how they get this courage.

Let us ask what the current mentality can do against those who attempt to violate the sanctity of the homeland with a foreign policy that is spineless, sectarian, and self-serving to perpetuate its own power, and leave the answer to the reader's discernment as we put a period to our article.