Op-Ed To Vima: Erdogan spins out of control

By Yannis Kartalis

It has been apparent for some time now that the “new sultan” of Ankara, in his effort to divert the attention of Turkish citizens from the continually worsening economic situation and its negative repercussions on their daily lives, has adopted a two-pronged approach to foreign policy.

Firstly, he wants to repair relations with neighbouring countries, mainly with Israel and the Gulf Emirates, in order to attract investments.

Secondly, he wants to exclude Greece from this approach, piling up new, legally unfounded claims, beyond the demands that Ankara unilaterally raised in 1970. To support his demands, he concocted the ridiculous theory of the “Blue Motherland” [which lays claim to a substantial segment of Greece’s maritime zone], which is reminiscent of the expansionist pursuits of a painful past.

Thus, as of last July he came up with the newest groundless claim – that because Greece has defensively militarised some of its islands near the Turkish coast, in violation of the treaties of Lausanne and Paris, Athens automatically loses sovereignty over those islands.

He brushes aside both Ankara’s daily violations of Greece’s airspace, its threat of war [casus belli] if Greece under international law extends its territorial waters to 12 nautical miles, and the threat to Greece posed Turkey’s Aegean Army, a huge landing forces a stone’s throw from the Greek islands, a situation which under the UN Charter gives Athens the legal right of defence.

Indeed, Erdogan has announced that he will raise the issue with all countries that are signatories to the Treaty of Lausanne, ignoring the fact that Washington, London, and Paris recently issued official statements recognising Greece’s sovereignty over the islands in question.

One wonders why to this day Athens has not responded to the second letter regarding these claims, that was submitted to the UN last September by Ankara’s Permanent Representative.

It is also entirely unacceptable that Turkey’s provocative ambassador to Norway reiterated the theory that Turkey is not bound by the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea because it is not a signatory.

Consequently, Ankara believes it is also not bound by the obligation to refer the matter to the International Court of Justice of Justice at The Hague (ICJ), in the event that there is no agreement in talks regarding the Aegean, which are more necessary than ever, but that Turkey’s stance is a priori torpedoing.

This constitutes yet another critical backpedaling by Turkey, if we are to believe what then Turkish ambassador to Athens Deniz Bölükbaşı revealed about bilateral talks in which he participated when Costas Simitis was in power – namely, that the two sides had agreed that outstanding differences after a possible general agreement would be referred to the ICJ.