Turkey and Greece, both members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), have been engaged for months in a dispute that is among the most intense between them over energy resources in the eastern Mediterranean, but this is not the first time that tension between the two neighboring countries has flared up.

The following is an overview of some of the points of tension and conflict between the two neighboring countries:

 Cyprus
Cyprus is a small island in which Turkey and Greece have historically contested its identity and dependence. On its territory, a political struggle rages between the two main components of the island's population, the Greek-Cypriots and the Turkish-Cypriots.

The Cyprus issue is one of the oldest issues before the United Nations, and one of the biggest issues of historical conflicts between Turkey and Greece. The Mediterranean island was divided in 1974 when the then Turkish Prime Minister, Bulent Ecevit, ordered the army to intervene militarily in Cyprus, in response to a coup against President-elect Makarios by Greek Cypriot nationalists at the order of Athens with the aim of annexing it to Greece.

The Cyprus island currently consists of two independent states, one of which is recognized and a member of the United Nations and the European Union, which is the Republic of Cyprus and its capital is Nicosia, and is based on 65% of the island’s area. % Of the rest of the island’s area and its capital, Lefkosa.

The United Nations peacekeeping force in Cyprus, which is among the oldest UN peacekeepers, patrols along the "green line" separating the two halves.

Turkey insists that it is ready to negotiate with any country, including Greece, with the exception of the Republic of Cyprus, which it does not recognize.

Borders The
conflict over Cyprus broadened to encompass several other issues, including rights to disputed bodies of water, as well as airspace.

Greece insists that international law grants it the right to expand its maritime areas to 12 nautical miles in exchange for the six nautical miles it is now enjoying, but Turkey fears that this may deny it access to the continental shelf in the Aegean Sea and to oil and natural gas.

The Aegean Sea is characterized by a complex geography with a network of more than two thousand islands, most of them Greek.

The two countries were almost involved in a war in the nineties of the last century over the two islands of "Imia" known as "Kardak", which are uninhabited, but these differences were set aside through what was called "earthquake diplomacy" in 1999, when Greece responded to a devastating earthquake that shook Turkey.

Migrants
The Syrian war has led to an influx of refugees, especially to Turkey, which is a transit point for many people seeking to reach the wealthy European Union. Today, Turkey hosts about four million refugees, most of them Syrians, and more than a million refugees arrived in the European Union in 2015.

A year later, Ankara signed a landmark deal with the European Union providing for an end to the flow of migrants in exchange for incentives, including financial aid.

And in February, Turkey allowed refugees to cross into Greece, which resulted in border skirmishes.

Churches
The disagreement over the handling of the Byzantine heritage in Turkey brought the historical division between the two countries back to the fore.

The concern deepened after Turkey re-converted the Hagia Sophia last month into a mosque after it had been a museum since the 1930s as part of the Turkish Republic's efforts to adopt a more secular path.

Greece condemned Ankara's move to reopen the site, which is inscribed on the World Heritage List of the United Nations Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization (UNESCO), as a mosque in a move that Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis considered revealing Turkey's "weakness", but Turkey considers this reopening of Hagia Sophia as a mosque, an internal issue. No external party has the right to interfere with it.

Minorities
accuse Turkey of Greece of failing to respect the rights of members of the Muslim minority in the Western Thrace region in central Greece, including their right to education.

Erdogan has long accused Greece of mistreating Muslim and Turkish-speaking minorities on its soil, noting that Athens is the only European capital that does not host an official mosque.

In turn, Athens is pressing Turkey to open a school for the Orthodox clergy on an island off Istanbul, and Ankara does not recognize the powers of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in Istanbul.

The failed coup,
the flight of Turkish soldiers after the 2016 attempted coup against Erdogan's government turned into another source of tension between the two parties.

In 2017, a Greek court rejected Turkey's demands to hand over eight former Turkish army officers.

The eight fled to Greece on board a military helicopter on the night of the failed coup, which Ankara accuses of the US-based preacher Fethullah Gulen of planning.