Another Greece-Turkey “map flap”, albeit with only unofficial quips and counterpoints in the latest instance, emerged on Friday on the occasion of a gift bestowed to Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew by the chief of the Hellenic National Defense General Staff (HNDGS), Gen Dimitrios Houpis.

The Greek military chief presented a copy of a historical map to Bartholomew, the primus inter pares of the world’s Orthodox patriarchs, at the latter’s Phanar district seat in Istanbul. Gen. Houpis was in the Bosporus metropolis to attend the 18th summit of Balkan states’ chiefs of staff.

What apparently riled Turkey’s defense ministry, according to local media reports, is that the replica of the 16th century map depicts the Thrace province, the Dardanelles, the Sea of Marmara, the Bosporus, Istanbul – then known the world over as venerable Constantinople – parts of the southwest Black Sea and the north Aegean islands of Imbros, Tenedos, Limnos, Samothrace and Thassos.

According to a report in the Turkish daily Sözcü, unnamed Turkish defense ministry sources referred to an “instrumentalization of the past”, while claiming that such actions are nothing but “nostalgic comforting”. The same report has the sources calling on Greek military officers to “understand and accept events” – i.e. that a large portion of the territories depicted in the specific map are today part of the Republic of Turkey (Turkiye).

The map presented to the Ecumenical Patriarch is a replica of Flemish cartographer and geographer Abraham Ortelius’ Thraciae Veteris Typus, dated to 1585. The date is significant, as the entire area shown on the map in the late 16th century was part of the Ottoman empire at its peak.

The “clash of the sources” subsequently had unnamed circles from the Greek defense ministry maintaining that the gift was clearly symbolic in nature and that whatever reactions by the Turkish side are ridiculous.

The same Greek sources said the specific map was chosen as a gift for his All-Holiness Bartholomew because it includes his native island of Imbros (Gökçeada), while also expressing surprise over any Turkish annoyance of a 16th century map at the same time when official Ankara continues to peddle a “non-existent map of what it calls the ‘Blue Homeland’ in the present day.”