the international community as the need to maintain a military presence on its islands for deterrence against Turkey is now fully justifiable. On 11 December, Erdogan also stated that the Turkish-manufactured Tayfun missiles "will hit Athens", Greece's capital city, if the Greek islands continue to be armed up. Further developments On 10 January 2023, the Court of Appeals of Tripoli suspended an energy exploration deal signed a few months earlier, on 3 October 2022, between Turkey and Libya's Government of National Unity (GNU) which is based at Tripoli. The agreement had included scope for oil and gas exploitation in waters that Ankara and Tripoli have claimed as their own through the 2019 Turkey–GNA maritime agreement, which partially overlaps with waters claimed by Egypt and Greece as part of their 2020 EEZ agreement. In February 2023, south-central Turkey was hit by devastating earthquakes, to which Greece responded by sending quake-relief aid. The newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung noted that the Greek aid came despite severe diplomatic tensions in recent months, and Erdoğan's repeated threats to militarily invade Greece's islands. According to Deutsche Welle, these developments marked the revival of the Greek–Turkish earthquake diplomacy of 1999 between the two countries, once again. Status of islands There have been a number of disputes related to the territories of the Greek islands themselves. These have related to the demilitarized status of some of the main islands in the area; to Turkish concerns over alleged endeavours by Greece to artificially expand settlements to previously uninhabited islets; and to the existence of alleged "grey zones", an undetermined number of small islands of undetermined sovereignty. Demilitarized status The question of the demilitarized status of some major Greek islands is complicated by a number of facts. Several of the Greek islands in the eastern Aegean as well as the Turkish straits region were placed under various regimes of demilitarization in different international treaties. The regimes developed over time, resulting in difficulties of treaty-interpretation. However, the military status of the islands in question did not constitute a serious problem in the bilateral relations until the Cyprus crisis of 1974, after which both Greece and Turkey re-interpreted the stipulations of the treaties. Greece, claiming an inalienable right to defend itself against Turkish aggression, reinforced its military and National Guard forces in the region. Furthermore, Greece maintains the position that it has the right to militarize its islands in the same context as