Turkey and Greece yesterday announced tit-for-tat expulsions of diplomats in a spy row that signals a worsening of already strained relations between the two ancient rivals.
Turkey said it had asked Athens to withdraw an administrative diplomat at the Greek consulate in Istanbul for "activities incompatible with his status", the diplomatic euphemism for spying.
Greece strongly denied the accusation and vowed to reciprocate. "The Turkish claims are false," government spokesman Mr Dimitris Reppas told reporters in Athens.
He said Athens would expel a Turkish diplomat of equal rank in the next few days.
The Turkish press accused diplomat Mr Efstratios Haralambus at the weekend of gathering information on Turkish military installations and aiding Kurdish guerrillas active in south-east Turkey.
The two countries have been at loggerheads recently about the divided island of Cyprus, military tension in the Aegean Sea and Turkey's faltering attempts to join the European Union.
Turkey has partially blamed Greece for an EU decision earlier this month to put a Turkish application for membership on indefinite hold.
The new Turkish ambassador in Athens, Mr Ali Tuygan, presented his credentials to the Greek President, Mr Costis Stephanopoulos, yesterday and expressed the hope for an improvement in relations.
Israel, Turkey and the United States will hold their first trilateral naval exercise in the Mediterranean off the Israeli coast on January 7th. The one-day seaborne portion of the exercise will involve five ships, several helicopters and search aircraft.
The Islamist mayor of the Turkish city of Kayseri, Mr Sukru Karatepe, said yesterday he would appeal to the European human rights court in a bid to have a jail sentence imposed for inciting religious hatred quashed. A state security court sentenced Mr Karatepe, a member of former prime minister Mr Necmettin Erbakan's pro-Islamic Welfare Party, to a one-year prison term last October.