D. Kairidis: “We agreed to provide the Turks with visas to visit 10 islands in the eastern Aegean Sea”

Immigration Minister Dimitris Kairidis admitted in a radio interview on Thursday morning (7/12) that an agreement will be signed during the visit of Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the Turkish delegation to Athens issuing visas to Turkish citizens to visit ten Greek islands in the eastern Aegean Sea.

According to him, we are talking about the islands of Lemnos, Lesbos, Chios, Samos, Leros, Kalymnos, Kos, Rhodes, Symi and Kastellorizo! This is a rather controversial agreement, according to which Turkish citizens will be able to come to these islands whenever they want, leave whenever they want, and stay there as long as they want.

Apparently the government does not understand that Turkey is a country with 85 million inhabitants, which will become 100 million in the near future, and Greece, on the contrary, is a country with 8 million ethnic Greeks (there are about 10.5 million Greek citizens, but not all of them have Greek ethnicity origin).

Meanwhile, the islands that the minister mentioned play a key role in the defense of the country! And against the backdrop of secretly carried out demilitarization, this decision could lead to serious problems in the future, including the annexation of the islands.

“This is a measure that brings two peoples closer together. This is what our Greek people, who bear most of the burden of managing migration, really want.”said the Minister of Immigration, speaking on the First Program 91.6 and 105.8, adding that this is an agreement that is concluded under the auspices of the European Commission.

“Greece is a Schengen country and requests a derogation from Schengen so that Turkish citizens can freely visit the islands in the eastern Aegean Sea. Thanks to very good cooperation with the European Commission, after the problems we encountered due to Pylos (…) , we had to solve them and deepen this cooperation, which also translates into an increase in the number of European employees here at Frontex, the European Asylum Service (…) and additional funding, and of course on the visa issue.”

Let me remind you that the Eastern Aegean Islands will be the only exception to the Schengen area, there is no such thing anywhere else. This is what the Turks really want, and, of course, our islanders really want it (!?)”Mr. Kairidis said. “This opportunity will not only be valid during the summer season, for the first time it will be valid throughout the year.”the minister noted.

“This applies to islands that do not have such tourism as Rhodes. Rhodes will also be included, but islands that have no charters, no international flights, only little family tourism in August, such as Lesbos for example, have a lot to gain.”– said Kairidis, naming the islands covered by the agreement.

Greece assured the Greek police of the correct application of this measure, since, as he explained, visas will still be issued, checks will still be carried out, only locally, on the Greek islands.

PS Against the backdrop of the project announced by Turkey “Blue Motherland” This decision by the Greek authorities sounds very ambiguous.

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