evidence: During classical antiquity, the entire Aegean Sea area was incorporated into the Greek and Hellenistic cultural sphere. Great Ionian cities such as Ephesus, Miletus, Smyrna, or Halicarnassus, all of them in Asia Minor, speak of the cultural unity prevailing in antiquity in this wide geographical contour, which was maintained for several centuries thanks to Byzantium. [...] During World War I, the Ottoman Empire, an ally of the Axis Powers, suffered a significant defeat and would eventually collapse in 1922. After the war, the Treaty of Sèvres (1920) established new borders for the Ottoman territory. In the context of the dispute in the Aegean Sea, the treaty granted Greece certain rights and sovereignty over several islands (Imbros, Lemnos and Tenedos), as well as over Eastern Thrace, the Smyrna region and the west coast of Anatolia. [...] A particularly sensitive moment occurred in Imia in 1995. Imia-Kardak are two uninhabited islets whose control is disputed by both countries. After a series of secret landings by the armies of both sides, tensions around the two islands came close to triggering an armed conflict, which was averted thanks to NATO's diplomatic intervention. The same decade also saw the infiltration of numerous Turkish secret agents into Greece, who set off a series of large-scale fires. In response to these actions, some Greek citizens set fires in forested areas located in Turkish territory.