For the Turkish leadership, Greece is not only an easy target. At the same time, it is also suitable for slapping in order to feel concern, at least, the… asses of Washington.

Both o President Erdogan as well as the first-class ministers of the Turkish government for a long time have, with their public positions, identified the Hellas as puppet manipulated by American foreign policy to pressure/hinder Ankara’s moves.

Rightly or wrongly this pejorative for Greece perception has permeated Turkish society, as this view is shared by almost all of the country’s political forces. In this sense, Greece, aligned behind the Americans and other Westerners, is indicated as external enemy.

Guiding the attention of Turkish voters “outside” to the enemies and not “inside» to the enormous daily problems they are tried and tested tactic what the respective leaderships do when they see that they are having difficulty gathering the necessary beans/votes for their re-election. In this sense the maintenance of tension in Greek-Turkish relations, characterized by decades of chronic problems, it is a choice of Erdogan and the power system he has created.

So as it moves towards the May 14 polls the system Erdogan he will escalate his aggressive rhetoric against Greece, repeating the known “arguments” or creating new ones. In fact, anyone can predict that the flare-ups of tensions will be inversely proportional from poll forecasts. In other words, the lower Erdogan’s percentages are recorded, the greater will be the tensions that Ankara will ignite in Greek-Turkish.

THE particular political reality in Turkey makes the export of Erdogan’s internal problems extremely dangerous, and this is because the Turkish President knows that a eventual defeat will bring him face to face with his many enemies at home, who will not be content to watch him “write” his memoirs, but they will hunt him relentlessly, as he also did/does as long as he holds power in his hands. Faced with this kind of life-or-death game, Erdogan has shown that he will not hesitate to use any card he can play, no matter how heavy it may be. In this sense, the provocation of a heated Greek-Turkish episode is not outside his agenda.

Demilitarization

A significant strain of it Erdogan’s system, the foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu with his positions he makes sure to keep the Greek-Turkish tension warm. In this context, the Turkish Foreign Minister once again repeated the accusations against Greece, saying that it violates the Treaty of Lausanne and other agreements, by militarizing the islands. In particular, Mevlut Cavusoglu, in a pan-Hellenic collaboration in which he participated, between the Antalya Diplomacy Forum and the Hungarian Institute of Foreign Affairs and Trade in Budapest, said among other things: “The Greece violates the demilitarized status of the islandsthis is the clear violation of the Lausanne Treaty of 1923 as well as the Paris Treaty of 1947. And I sent a letter to the UN that it is a clear violation of the treaties…”.

At this point, it should be underlined that the “promoted” Turkish opinion on the “illegal”, as they characterize it, militarization of the Greek islands located near the coast of Asia Minor has been formulated as follows: since Greece violates the Treaties with the Greek concessions islands, that is, he puts an army, fortifies and equips them, then illegally owns them!

At the level of rhetoric, then, Turkey has developed and exposed all the arguments that will justify possible extreme future choices

In the “cheetah” the opposition

those extreme positions, as we said, are now a common place in Turkish society. And in this sense, when Greek-Turkish becomes the subject of political confrontation, a process develops “patriotic” bidding between Erdogan and his opponents.

Thus, the opposition often accuses the Turkish President of being “soft’ and apathetic seeing Greece illegally occupying hundreds of islands in the Aegean, prompting him to do something in practice (ie military intervention) and not content with big but hollow words.

For his part, Erdogan at every opportunity accuses his opponents of being ready to compromise with the enemies, namely the Americans, Greece and the West in general.

The Turkish President, speaking at an event that had a purely pre-election character, referring to the opposition, said:One of them (of the opposition) even said “the West will tell us… well done”. Shame on them! Did you so desperately want the West to say “well done” to you??”. In particular, the Turkish President clarified that “those who say that we will return to the program F-35which it presupposes our country’s renunciation of its sovereign rights in many matters, salute those who profess conscious and systematic hostility towards Turkey through the mouths of those most responsible. They welcome Greece saying they will abandon our fight for the protection of our rights in the Aegean”.

How far the bidding of patriotism between Erdogan and his opponents will go remains to be seen until May 14 when the elections…

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