50s: Starting with a storage ring

Chapter 897 The Greek Island Owner of the Sinkhole

Last year, China's annual steel production reached 5205 million tons, and it has maintained its position as the world's largest producer for the past seven years.

Thinking that he couldn't delay the construction of his home, Sun Zhiwei decided to turn his attention back to the Cleveland fleet.

He had just sent Laun Fisher to head the shipping company, and he didn't know if he could handle the job.

After resting in Beijing for a week, Sun Zhiwei finally recovered. The tropical rainforest is really not a place for a normal person to stay.

He believed he had taken the best possible precautions during his trip in the rainforest, but just in case, he still went to the hospital for a full-body checkup.

Surprisingly, several parasitic diseases unique to South America were found, and it's unclear when they had somehow invaded the body.

Fortunately, the medical facilities in Beijing are quite good, and the doctor prescribed enough medicine for a few days to treat this minor problem.

The most important thing next is to go and see the three islands we just acquired from Christie's.

The three islands are Oyars Island in the Greek Aegean Sea in the Mediterranean; Bulawa Island in Cape Verde in the Atlantic Ocean; and Weddell Island in the Falkland Islands in South America.

The Greek island has the least disputed sovereignty, but the work is also the most complicated.

Because Greece rarely sells its islands, the buyer, Sun Zhiwei, needs to register a lot of information and sign many agreements.

So, after spending a few days in Beijing, Sun Zhiwei went to Hong Kong Island and flew to Athens.

On the plane, he took out a copy of the Greek map he had obtained from the ministry and studied it with great interest.

One particularly striking feature on the map is the extent of Greece's territory, which encompasses the entire Aegean Sea, effectively making it its own inland sea.

Moreover, they occupy almost all the islands in the Aegean Sea, and many Greek islands are only a few kilometers away from the Turkish coast, forming a unique pattern in which the Greek border is very close to Turkey.

This kind of stifling national border was not formed by chance, but is the result of the combined effects of treaty systems, geopolitical games, and legal frameworks.

After the Balkan Wars in 1913, the defeated Ottoman Empire was forced to cede most of the Aegean islands to Greece and Italy through the Treaty of London and the Treaty of Athens.

The 1923 Treaty of Lausanne further clarified that, except for a few islands such as Imrods and Tenedos that are related to the security of the straits and belong to Turkey, all islands more than 3 miles (about 4.8 kilometers) from the coast of Asia Minor are under Greek sovereignty.

After World War II, the Treaty of Paris transferred the Dodecanese Islands, which originally belonged to Italy, to Greece.

This created a chain of island control for Greece, extending from Thassos in the north to Crete in the south, forming a strategic barrier across the Aegean Sea.

Greece, with its "eleven-dash line" design, extends its coastline directly to the vicinity of Türkiye, leaving only a small beach area for Türkiye.

The border system established by this series of treaties was essentially a redistribution of the Ottoman Empire's legacy by the victorious powers after World War I, and it also became the core legal basis for Greece's claim to sovereignty.

For Turkey, these treaties are a mark of the empire's decline, yet they are difficult to shake due to their widespread international recognition.

In other words, as long as Türkiye still recognizes the post-World War II international system, it will have to acknowledge the legitimacy of this series of border agreement terms.

Sun Zhiwei put himself in Türkiye and imagined ways to break through this blockade.

However, it turned out that unless a third world war broke out now, and Turkey ultimately emerged as the victor while Greece became the vanquished, the outcome would be uncertain.

Otherwise, the current border situation is unlikely to change. This triple lock of "established treaty, Greek control, and international recognition" makes it difficult for Turkey, even if it harbors resentment towards the Aegean Sea, to find an effective way to rewrite the status quo.

Therefore, Türkiye can only gaze longingly at the Aegean Sea a few kilometers away.

Judging from this situation, the maritime dispute between Turkey and Greece is likely to continue in the future.

Fortunately, the island of Ialos that he bought was not on the border between Turkey and Greece, but closer to Athens.

But it wasn't until he arrived in Athens that he discovered something that annoyed him: the island wasn't so easy to take in because it had a bad reputation locally.

Similar to Alcatraz Island, which is famous in San Francisco, Alcatraz Island is also considered an ominous place.

Trees are sparse here, the cries of seabirds rise and fall, the cliffs are steep, and the rocks are rugged.

Historically, the Greeks and Byzantines exiled political prisoners to this island, so there is an ancient fortified prison on the island.

After World War II, the ancient fortress prison on Ialos Island was converted into a prison for exiled convicts.

In this gloomy castle, more than 20,000 political prisoners were exiled and lived inhuman lives.

In those dark days, many prisoners carved their names and the dates of their imprisonment on the walls. These marks are still clearly visible today, bearing witness to the vicissitudes of history.

In recent years, the prison on Ialos Island has been abandoned, and the nearby islands of Mykonos, Andros, and Tinos have been developed into tourist islands and are gradually thriving.

Only Ialos Island, belonging to the military and uninhabited, has remained undeveloped and desolate to this day.

Not only that, the Greek Navy also uses this place as a firing range, coming over to fire a few shots whenever they have free time. They even anchored several abandoned warships on the beach to use as targets for naval training.

There are several tourist islands right next to here, and your navy is actually conducting target practice here. What if the shells hit the tourists?

The residents of several nearby islands immediately took the navy to court, and the court ruled against the navy, forcing the navy to dispose of Ialos Island.

Later, after changing hands several times, Iyalos Island came into the hands of Sun Zhiwei. However, his takeover did not improve the situation on Iyalos Island in any way.

Because the previous owners of the island did not spend any money to repair, renovate or develop it, it just sat there empty.

When Sun Zhiwei consulted the Greek National Land Administration about the change of ownership procedures, the first thing he received was a large legal book that detailed many things he needed to know about private islands.

This involves complicated procedures, including a 32-step government approval process, to ensure that national security is not compromised.

The regulations included a series of unequal clauses, such as prohibiting the use of seaplanes and stipulating that the island's beaches were public property.

If Alcatraz's reputation and the desolate island are things that money can solve, then...

Seeing these things in his hands, Sun Zhiwei finally understood why the previous owners had abandoned the island. Owning a private island in Greece is practically a money pit.

In particular, the clause that "the beach is for the public" means that your private island may receive unexpected visitors at any time.

They can play freely on the beaches of your island, do whatever they want, and you can't object.

(End of this chapter)