Editorial To Vima: Turkey is playing with fire

Greece’s entire political establishment, with extremely few, absurd exceptions, from the very beginning took a firm stand against the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

That is because everyone recognised the deeply revisionist underpinnings of Putin’s war and his refusal to accept the geopolitical realities that developed after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.

The Greek political class realised that Putin, with his “special operation”, wanted to erase the last three decades of history by violating borders and trampling over agreements, treaties and the national sovereignty of Ukraine and its right to exist as an independent state.

He chose to overlook the fact that the collapse of the Soviet Union was not the result of external interventions, but rather of internal impasses.

The connection between Putin’s rationale and that of Ankara is obvious.

Turkey has over the last years been expressing an ever more audacious revisionism on the specious grounds that it has been treated unjustly and slighted by history.

It declares that it is capable and ready to revive the Ottoman Empire’s influence and geopolitical power in the broader Eastern Mediterranean region and the Aegean.

Turkey depicts itself as being limited and suffocated by Greece’s presence and activity in the Aegean. That is the root of its “Blue Homeland” maritime expansionism construct and of the escalation of its bellicose rhetoric.

Most Greek political parties saw clearly that Turkey’s revisionism is bolstered by Russia’s claims against Ukraine and took a position that acknowledged that fact.

As time went by, they were vindicated, because Turkey expanded its claims and most recently Ankara has not hesitated, using as a pretext Greek military defences on its islands, to challenge Greek sovereignty over the islands of the northeastern Aegean.

Turkey pretends to ignore the fact that it has deployed its very large Aegean Army a stone’s throw away from the Greek islands and that the Turkish Armed Forces in their entirety conduct exercises daily, at times violating Greece’s territorial waters, at others violating Greek national airspace with flights over inhabited Greek islands, and most recently with flights above the northern port city of Alexandroupolis.

After the PM’s recent, successful trip to the US and the deepening of the Greece-US strategic relationship, the Turkish leadership has been spinning out of control, with unprecedented threats and challenges.

Although some have sought to link this behaviour to future political developments in Turkey, such as the June, 2023 general election, Turkey is in fact pursuing longstanding claims and is continually adding new ones.

It began by disputing sovereignty over Greek rock islets, then it challenged Greece’s Exclusive Economic Zones (maritime jurisdiction), and finally the Turkish foreign minister disputed Greece’s sovereignty over 152 Aegean islands.

Let us not deceive ourselves. Turkey is a dangerous, revisionist power, and it is not just Erdogan. All of the country’s political forces are imbued with the same outlook, which entails aggressive claims against Greece that would exist even if Erdogan were not in power.

The Greek political establishment must take very seriously into account the Turkish threat and take a stand.

Greece has a duty to incorporate in its defense strategy scenarios regarding a prospective Greek-Turkish war.

No one can preclude the possibility of a Turkish military attack against Greece, and that mandates vigilance and preparation.

The Greek Armed Forces must bolster their deterrent capabilities, so that it will be clear to all and sundry that any effort to violate Greece’s national independence will come up against an impenetrable wall of fire and steel.

There is no other way to confront such revisionist powers, as history and recent experience have taught us.