The relations between Turkey and Greece have never been normal. The legacy of Mongol Turkish conquest of Greece in the fifteenth-century poisons all connections between Turks and Greeks. The Greeks remember their Turkish oppressors like other barbarians who invaded their country. They fought hard and long to free themselves from the tyranny of the Turks. Moslem Turks, however, remember they live on land they stole from the Greeks. They also remember their empire in Southeastern Europe and the Middle East and want to recreate it. Now the impending conflict between NATO allies: Greece and Turkey is more than likely a reality.
Erdogan trouble
Erdogan, president of Turkey, is consumed with becoming a Sultan. He apes Western diplomats when talking about peace and security while planning the exact opposite of peace and security. He also takes advantage of disunity and political and presidential chaos in America, which founded NATO as an arm of its foreign policy. Erdogan mocks the foolish American funding of the wars in Ukraine and Israel. He takes advantage of America’s delusions of planetary hegemony. He demanded payment or Greek territory to stay a member of NATO. In 1963, President Lyndon Johnson agreed with Turkey and made it possible for Turkey to invade and capture a third of the Greek island of Cyprus. Fifty years after their 1974 conquest of northern Cyprus, the Turks want more. Erdogan forces the American leadership of NATO to prepare Greece for losing more land to Turkey. This time the objective of Erdogan is no less than capturing the entire Aegean Sea and its hundreds of Greek islands.
Greece and Turkey on the brink of war: July 23-25, 2024
Despite the American effort to have both Turkey and Greece in its military camp of NATO, the two countries barely tolerate each other. America’s obsession with fighting Russia through the proxy of Ukraine, leaves no time or interest in the State Department or the White House to resolve the outstanding strategic problems between these two NATO “allies.” The European Union also ignores Greece and its precarious relations with the Islamic rogue country of Turkey. It’s not surprising that the European Union ignores Greece. During the Obama administration, the European Union and America’s International Monetary Fund just about crushed Greece in order to use the money Greece borrowed from them to save failing American and European banks. All the participants in the debt tragedy of Greece, EU, IMF, and Greece, knew that the EU-IMF methods of debt “relief” were illegal and criminal, but they had the power and treated Greece like a colony.
Back to the Greek-Turkish drama in the Aegean. Left alone, the contest between these two enemies, Greece and Turkey, boils over every so often. The latest episode took place from July 23 to 25, 2024. An Italian research vessel, Ievoli Relume, was mapping the underwater area between the Greek islands Kassos and Karpathos in the Southeastern Aegean Sea. The idea is to place a cable between Cyprus and Crete in order to move green electricity from one island to another. While the ship was investigating the underwater landscape, 5 Turkish warships arrived. They ordered the Italian boat to cease work. They claimed sovereignty over the sea around Kassos and Karpathos. We don’t know what exactly happened to avoid war. Two Greek warships arrived and faced the 5 warships of Turkey. Greek reporters speculate that the foreign affairs ministers of Greece and Turkey, George Gerapetritis and Hakan Fidan, spoke on the phone and defused the crisis. Turkey even issued its own Navtex, navigational warning, in which it took credit for avoiding conflict over the “violation” of its territorial waters, even thanking Greek and Italian authorities for recognizing its jurisdiction in the Aegean Sea. The Turkish Navtex said: “We would like to thank the Greek and Italian authorities for their respect for our maritime jurisdiction and their cooperation.”
Of course, Greek and Italian authorities did no such thing. What is to respect of such blatant lies? The Turkish warships were violating international law by being in waters in the exclusive economic zone of Greece. Moreover, their presence near the Greek islands was illegal, provocative, and insulting. They could have started a war between Turkey and Greece. The Greek Ministry of Defense minced no words. On July 26, 2024, its spokesperson said: “No respect [to Turkish maritime jurisdiction] was shown or will be shown in the future by the Greek Armed Forces to Turkey’s illegal actions within the zone legally delimited between Greece and Egypt.”
The journalist Manolis Kottakis writes:
If you read my article for which we were sued, which was published simultaneously in “Estia” and ” Demokratia”, you will see that I made a long reference to the maritime zones under Kastelorizo, which have been considered by the Turks to be of disputed jurisdiction, contested. The English term that is popular in backroom discussions between the leaders is dispute. Everything I pointed out in that text is unfortunately confirmed in the worst way by the latest developments. As Turkey’s claim to the Dodecanese region has now extended to the areas delimited by the Greek-Egyptian agreement, not only to the areas not delimited and, according to them, of disputed jurisdiction.
The silence with which Athens is treating the developments in the region and the “thank you” of the Turks for recognizing as their own Turkish waters the recognized Greek waters reinforce the suspicions that we are facing an organized choreography. A choreography that began with the zoning of marine parks in areas of the Cyclades and the Dodecanese by the Greek Ministry of Energy (which Ankara directly contested and Athens folded) and continued with Kassos, again with the Ministry of Energy as the protagonist, where Italian ships operating on behalf of the Hellenic Republic requested permission for exploration in Greek waters from the Turkish Republic. To whose celebrations Athens was silent. The conspiracy of silence, otherwise known as omertà, was joined by the SYRIZA of its American citizen leader, Stephanos Kasselakis. He came to Greece with a mission to turn SYRIZA into a coalition opposition. All arranged.
The Greek government stands down
Despite this brave rhetoric, Greece must have given Turkey something to withdraw its warships. Could it be that the Greek authorities secretly recognized some kind of joint Turkish-Greek or sole Turkish “jurisdiction” of the Aegean? This would be a dream come true for Erdogan. The fulfillment of his vociferous claim that the Aegean is his blue homeland. In the long-term war strategy of Turkey against Greece, the incident of July 23-25, 2024 was a “validation of its expansion” in the Aegean.
Despite this offensive policy of Turkey towards Greece, the Greek Prime Minister, Kyriakos Mtsotakis, plans to meet Erdogan in September in New York. One wonders why. To continue the meaningless dialogue of better neighborhoods and the Turkish celebration of 50 years of brutal occupation of northern Cyprus? What’s to discuss? Instead of launching an emergency campaign of strengthening the armed forces of his country and those of the Republic of Cyprus and creating alliances with countries that don’t like Turkey, Mitsotakis is living a nightmare of opening more doors to the genocidal policies of Erdogan. He keeps giving signals of collaboration with the millennial enemy of the Greek people. Perhaps he is brainwashed that the United States will put Turkey in its place on his behalf.
America without a president
Mitsotakis should know that at this pre-election moment, summer and winter of 2024, America is in no position to oppose Turkey. No one knows who the president will be next January. And the rulers of America are determined to keep pushing the wars in Ukraine and Israel. The thought of helping NATO Greece against NATO Turkey is probably alien to most Americans. Philhellenism is becoming rare in America. Even wealthy Greek Americans spend their money in furnishing churches and enjoying galas than lobbying for Greece or Hellenism, a foundation stone of Western civilization.
Pray to Athena or America but be ready to defend yourself
But more important than these realities, no country relies on others to save it from its enemies. And this is a tradition dating millennia in Greek history. United Greeks are invincible. They defeated the Persians 3 times and saved Greek and Western civilization. Alexander the Great conquered Persia and created a golden age of science and technology that sparked the scientific and technological revolutions of Western Europe since the Renaissance.
Konstantinos Grivas, an insightful commentator on international military politics and professor of strategic studies at the Hellenic Military Academy of Evelpidon, has nothing good to say about Mitsotakis and the disturbing relations he maintains with Erdogan. He suspects Mitsotakis is making Greece vulnerable to Turkish influence, nay Turkish invasion and potential conquest. He has been ringing the bell of danger of imminent war with Turkey. He is right that Turkey does not recognize the Law of the Seas, which becomes an excuse for Erdogan to argue that no Greek island in the Aegean has national sovereignty rights. This bolsters the other fake but strategically important theory that the Aegean is his blue homeland. In this geostrategic context, Grivas sees the latest confrontation of July 25, 2024, as crucial in documenting the more aggressive strategy of Turkey against Greece. That Mitsotakis remains passive speaks volumes in boosting the war party in Turkey. At the same time, Grivas says, the Greek government is brainwashing the Greeks that all is fine with Turkey. This propaganda is wasting time necessary to prepare the country to defend itself by being ready for war. This also convinces the Europeans that probably Greece deserves what’s coming, though any attack of Turkey against Greece is an attack against Europe and America. Grivas is right. Turkey is preparing for war against Greece.
Another critic of Mitsotakis is Leonidas Chrysanthopoulos, former Greek ambassador to Turkey. Chrysanthopoulos says the hatred of the Turks for the Greeks is so deep, that Turkish TV blacked out showing the boat carrying Greek athletes during the opening ceremony of the Olympics in Paris. Like Grivas, Chrysanthopoulos is convinced that, during the crisis of July 25, 2024, Greece negotiated with Turkish officials her hegemony of the Aegean. He urged Mitsotakis to order the resumption of research in Southeastern Aegean and not tolerate the presence of any Turkish warships in Greek waters.
Epilogue
The Greek people need to hear the voices of reason and self-respect of Grivas and Chrysanthopoulos. Greece needs a government of national unity to prepare the country to face Turkey in the battlefield, if need be. This government should speak loud and clear about the danger Turkey represents not merely in the Aegean and the Mediterranean but all over the world. Turkey acts with impunity against the rule of law. Genocide is part of its policies. Greece, the Republic of Cyprus and other law abiding countries must throw Turkey out of northern Cyprus, allowing Greek and Turkish Cypriots to live together without a Turkish army of occupation, British military bases, and “protecting foreign powers.” The United States and other nations in the NATO alliance should expel Turkey from NATO or make it clear to Turkey that any attack on Greece will be an attack on NATO. They should also make clear that they would no longer tolerate Turkey killing its Kurdish citizens. Thez international community should create an independent country for Kurds.
Evaggelos Vallianatos, Ph.D., studied history and biology at the University of Illinois; earned his Ph.D. in Greek and European history at the University of Wisconsin; did postdoctoral studies in the history of science at Harvard. He worked on Capitol Hill and the US EPA; taught at several universities and authored several books, including The Antikythera Mechanism: The Story Behind the Genius of the Greek Computer and its Demise.
