NATO’s Standing Naval Mediterranean Force SNMG2 officially launched its patrols in the Aegean Sea on Tuesday morning. News agencies report that the flagship of the naval force German FRG-BONN received the diplomatic permission by Ankara on Monday evening to enter Turkish territorial waters. FRG BONN is patrolling North-Est of the island of Lesvos in Turkish territorial waters.
Turkish frigate «TCG-Barbaros» (F-244) is between the islands of Kos and Astypalea, Greek frigate “Salamis” near the islands of Agios Efstratios,
British tanker “Mount1 Bay” is in the central Aegean between Andros and Chios, awaiting the orders of the regular commander.
Some more British ships and one French frigate are due to join the NATO operation in the Aegean Sea, while the Canadian and Italian ships -currently in Italy – are expected to return to the operation area.
The NATO mission aims to do surveillance and monitoring and interrupt the sea lines used by traffickers to carry refugees and migrants to Greece.
Video from HS Salamis
This is how the NATO will collect information on refugee boats
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The NATO cameras will ‘capture’ the refugees boats on the radar screens and NATO officials will inform the Turkish coast guard to push-back the boats to the Turkish coats and the Greek coast guard to pick up the refugees.
THe NATO mission has been launched with delay as the Turkish military was raising a list of objections, among others, forbidding FRG BONN to sail into Turkish territorial waters and raising claims in Greek territorial waters and islands.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg apparently solved the issue with a sharp knife on Sunday, before the EU-Turkey Summit in Brussels.
“NATO took swift decisions to deploy ships to the Aegean Sea to support our Allies Greece and Turkey, as well as the EU’s border agency FRONTEX, in their efforts to tackle the migrant and refugee crisis. NATO ships are already collecting information and conducting monitoring in the Aegean Sea. Their activity will now be expanded to take place also in territorial waters. ” (NATO press release, Mar 6/2016)
I assume Ankara gave the Green light in the context of a bargain as the next day, during a meeting with NATO SG, PM Davutoglu asked to stronger NATO presence at its border with Syria.
NATO picture
PS I suppose the NATO will send some AWACS aircraft as soon as possible?
The WWF will block this bullshit to save the last monk-seals, the Aegean is already fucked and now gets fucked even more with even more tar out of NATO-arses; to protect from or get refugees out of the water pedal-boats are strong enough btw, no need for bullshit.
HMS Mount’s Bay is an Auxiliary Landing Ship, not a tanker. SHe carries landing craft and has lots of space for storing tanks and other vehicles. She is ideally suited to the job of intercepting migrant boats.
thanks. i was wondering of her being a ‘tanker’ although it did not look like one !
So if the ship would be in the hands of humans it could as easily be used like a ferry taking in buses from Turkish shores instead of hunting small boats, sounds more ideally suited