Uneasy Borders

A sweet church on a high peak on Leros decorated with the Greek flag and a shell from the Battle of Leros in November 1943 when German paratroopers displaced a Commonwealth division that had occupied Leros after the Italian capitulation.  This island has seen a lot of tumult only recently!

Since entering the Eastern Mediterranean, we have been struck by the signs, both old and recent, of geopolitical unease along borders.  Ruins of castles, watch towers, fortresses and walls perch on peaks or sit at harbour mouths everywhere. Land was aggressively taken by religious zealot crusaders and caliphs and by land greedy kings and sultans protecting trade routes.  Stories of barbarism and cruelty abound on all sides, both internally and toward the obvious 'enemy'.

It is the recent and often current animosity and suspicion that is so astounding to see though.  There is Albania's relatively recent border phobia/protection marked by hundreds of bunkers.  And a sense of no-love-lost between Montenegro and Croatia, obvious when sitting in a bar in Montenegro dominated by foreign clientele, the locals reaction to Croatia's participation in the World Cup was surprisingly muted, even nonexistent.  Then there is Israel's simmering and often boiling over defensiveness with each country on it's border and vice versa.  As well, Cyprus with a recent Turkish invasion bringing turmoil to the island and, as a result, increased animosity and suspicion between Turkey and Greece. On our Turkish road trip, yet to be blogged, we were very close to the Syrian border and saw huge blooms of smoke, later to learn that the towns just south of the border had been bombed that day.  A little to close for comfort! To top it off many of these countries have compulsory military service.

Bunkers on the south coast of Simi are, or at least look, defunct.  Those on another beautiful Greek island, Kastelorizo, are disguised with rock and brush.  No photos are allowed of the military area.  None in Kas either with huge guns pointed toward Bodrum, Turkey.

Cruising along the Dodecanese Islands, sometimes only a handful of watery miles and almost always within sight, Turkey and Greece each announce their territory with huge painted flags on the mountain slopes directed pointedly toward the other.  On the Greek islands, there are bunkers camouflaged with rocks and brush at strategic points, road's edges and harbour entrances.  There are also very large guns pointed across waterways.  We often see navy vessels which never announce themselves with AIS but travel in stealth mode.  Today while crossing on rollicking seas from Patmos to Mykonos, we heard a repeated, very assertive message on VHF from the Turkish navy, commanding repeatedly - it was not a request - a Greek Coast Guard boat to leave Turkish waters immediately.

(Interestingly, Easter Sunday is celebrated with dynamite fireworks in Greece. They are set off sporadically all weekend - very loud bangs.  There is a competition to see which town can be the loudest at midnight on Saturday as Sunday breaks. We were told that the noise symbolizes the rising of Christ from the earth, from death to life.  But for us, wakened at midnight by at least 30 minutes of continuous blasts sounding very much like gunfire, it seemed a strange love for a country so soon after aggression and so nervous of future aggression.)

A bit of fun? target practice with water filled balloons off the Finike beach.  Participants shoot air guns at the festive targets.

This is occurring in nations we think of as "First World" - civilized, developed, free.  It makes us very grateful to have grown up and brought our children up in Canada.