The "Blue Motherland", the largest exercise "in the history of the Turkish Republic" according to the headquarters of the Turkish armed forces, began at dawn on Wednesday. The start of the "rehearsal for war", as the Turkish media described it, was at 5:00 on the morning of February 27, with the exercise being completed in ten days on 8 March. The first images from the bases of Aksaz - opposite Rhodes and Gjoljuk, in the Marmara Sea: