The Calahif Incident (2017)

The Calahif Incident was an incident between Turkey and Egypt in which five Turkish patrol boats, TCG 6, 9, 10, 11 and 14 accompanied by the Greek battleship HS Hercules, ran into two Egyptian patrol boats ENS 4 and 6, mistaking them as illegal migrant boats.

The commander of the squadron, Calahif Mustafa, made the decision to cross into Egyptian waters to attack the boats he mistaked as illegal migrant ships.

The two patrol boats were shelled and gunned down, sunk to the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea, while the Egyptians inflicted four casualties on the Turks, firing at them with harpoons and emergency pistols.

The event caused a diplomatic uproar, forcing both Turkey and Greece to apologise for their actions and shell out a combined total of 600,000 euros (roughly 470,000 British Pounds or 675,000 U.S Dollars) to the families of the deceased and as compensation to the Egyptian government.

Several months after the incident few people actually remembered it, and it left little impact apart from the money Turkey and Greece lost and Egypt gained, and, sadly, the men that were lost on either side.