ABSTRACT
In December 1995 a Turkish ship ran aground on the shoals of a pair of uninhabited rocky islets, known together as Imia in Greek and Kardak in Turkish, situated in the eastern Aegean Sea near the Greek islands of Chios and Kalymnos, and the Turkish coastal village of Gumu~luk. An initially undisclosed diplomatic dispute over responsibility for the ship's rescue and recovery was 'leaked' to the news and triggered a series of Greek and Turkish 'expeditions' to the islets to assert sovereignty. First the Greek mayor of neighbouring Kalymnos Island together with some local islanders put up a Greek flag on the islet's hill. When this made news in the Turkish press, a team of journalists from the best-selling daily Hiirriyet landed in a helicopter to replace the flag with a Turkish one. The 'flag war' became headline news in all mainstream media, stimulating the intervention of political leaderships who escalated the tension further by claiming, in bold tones, sovereignty over the islets.
