Al Jazeera: Can Greece and Turkey come to war?
THE Hellas and the Turkey are headed for elections in the summer of 2023, but heightened tension could trigger a military incident in the Aegean or the Eastern Mediterranean. So are the two countries on a path to war?
Analysis of Al Jazeeraby the journalist Yiannis Psaropoulos, investigates them relations between the two countriesthe prevailing tension and whether it is manageable – but of course also where it can end up.
The suspicion of Athens
In Greece there is a suspicion that the president of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoganhe will seek to create a crisis that will boost his waning popularity after 20 years in power and in view of claiming a new five-year term in the presidential office.
It was only in August that he declared that “we can come suddenly overnight, if you Greeks go too far, then the price will be heavy”.
Until 2021, comment on Al Jazeera the admiral e.a. and former National Security Advisor, Alexandros Dakopoulos, “I argued that there was no case for war. I can no longer say that.” However, the Turkish ambassador in Athens chooses to keep a low profile. “As an embassy, we have a reasonable dialogue with our Greek colleagues – don’t believe what you read in the papers!” said Burak Ozugergin on Al Jazeera.
“All we try not to have accidents. “Things are not as bad as summer 2020, but we have to be very careful because things can get very bad very quickly,” he added.
A position with which the Deputy Minister of Education and the International Law seem to agree, Angel Syrigos. “We are at the lowest level of alert,” he says, but adds: “I think Turkey will attempt many parallel crises,” foreseeing a refugee crisis followed by the presence of a Turkish research vessel in the Greek EEZ.
Two years ago, Al Jazeera recalls, the two NATO allies almost came to blows in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean.
Turkey has stated that it is not deterred from doing research in the area that Greece considers to be its jurisdiction and seeks not to stop at seismic research but to proceed with drilling as well.
“Looking at Turkey’s strategy in 2019-2021, they were trying to get us to use violence first. Now Turkey realizes that this will not happen, so it is being considered to exercise use from the Turkish side that could be justified through the presentation of Greece as the power that owns the island of the Eastern Aegean”, says Alexandros Diakos.
Escalating threats
Turkey has also “upgraded” the threats. Start to disputes the Greek rocky islands in 1996, but last year began to openly challenge Greek sovereignty and on the inhabited islands in the eastern Aegean.
Erdogan is also upgrading his threats. In June, he demanded from Greece to stop arming the Aegean islands subject to a “demilitarized regime” and to abide by international agreements. In August he made the well-known statements that night will come and that “the islands you have captured do not bind us, we will do what is necessary when the time comes.”
Close by and the leader of the National Action Party, Devlet Bakhceli, Erdogan’s partner in the governing coalition. He posed next to a map showing all Greek islands in the eastern Aegean and Crete as Turkish territory. Greece “possesses them illegally and unjustly, it is our right”, he declared and added: “The Greeks should not test our patience. If they want to drive once more into the sea, as they tell us and we will throw them all away, God willing.”
The Turks are of course referring to the Greco-Turkish war of 1919-22 and the Asia Minor Catastrophe after the defeat of the Greek army. And indirectly they show that they are suffocating with the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 which gave Greece the islands of the eastern Aegean and defined what applies to Greek military installations.
Ta “communication channels” for tensions
The US and the EU stress that Greece’s sovereignty over the islands is undisputed.
Al Jazeera reminds her too speech by Kyriakos Mitsotakis to the US Congress in which the prime minister reported that Turkey used the upgraded F-16 fighter jets it requested (but has not yet received) to breach the Greek single space. “The last thing NATO needs at a time when our focus is helping Ukraine defeat Russian aggression is another source of instability in NATO’s southeast flank. And I ask you to take that into account when making defense procurement decisions with the Eastern Mediterranean.”
He also recalls the recent meeting of the defense ministers of Greece and Turkey, Nikos Panagiotopoulos and Hulusi Akar, for 40 minutes on the sidelines of the NATO meeting. The atmosphere was good, but these channels of communication are for bridging tensions and not for resolving the deep differences between the two countries.
The main issues are two.
The first is the territorial sea. With the extension to 12 miles, as Greece is entitled to, it could claim direct sovereignty over 72% of the Aegean. Turkey does not dispute the islands’ rights in territorial waters, but opposes the 12 miles and has threatened Greece with war if it exercises its rights under UNCLOS.
A second issue concerns the sovereign rights for the exploitation of hydrocarbons beyond the territorial waters, in the Exclusive Economic Zones. UNCLOS rules, according to the publication, grant Greece 500,000 square kilometers of EEZ in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean.
Turkey is not a signatory to UNCLOS and disagrees with its provision for a continental shelf and EEZ for the islands. In 2019, Turkey signed a maritime demarcation agreement with Libya cutting a corridor.
The EU denounced this deal as “illegal”, but Turkey ignored the complaints and signed an “exploration and drilling” agreement with the Government of National Unity in Tripoli, Libya, signaling that it would send survey vessels there, the article added.
“In the Aegean, if territorial waters are extended by Greece, then we really don’t have much open water to talk about – which makes going to court essentially pointless. Turkey is ready to appeal in the courts, but for all related matters“, Ozugergin told Al Jazeera.
“I don’t think we can convince each other of our position bilaterally,” he added. “We have to go to court.”
Professor Konstantinos Filis comments on this that “Greece needs a strategy for the expansion of territorial waters to 12 nautical miles. It must be one tiered strategywhich will allow Greece to apply the Law of the Sea instead of simply invoking it.”
The publication recalls that in 2020 Greece proceeded to expand territorial waters to 12 nautical miles in the Ionian, “at the height of its latest crisis with Turkey”. Then – it is noted – that the Minister of Foreign Affairs Nikos Dendias said that the territorial waters off Crete will be the next to be expanded. Another crisis, Al Jazeera comments, could be what Greece is waiting for to make this move.
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