Greece waves white flag at Turkey in the Mediterranean
Greece realises diplomacy is the only weapon it has against Turkey, as Athens weighs up giving credence to Ankara’s demands on maritime borders.
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Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Greece’s Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis broke a silence of six months in June to discuss low-level policy issues in a phone call. Their conversation may have just been limited to the coronavirus pandemic and tourism, but it was their first direct contact since January 24th.
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In those six months, a lot has happened to sour the relationship between Turkey and Greece. Greece has accused Turkey of infringing on its claimed Exclusive Economic Zone in the Mediterranean following Turkey’s deal with the UN-recognised government of Libya at the end of 2019. The deal between Ankara and Tripoli marks out a sea border of maritime territories between Turkey and Libya. The problem for Athens is that the deal between Turkey and Libya overlaps with a previous deal between Greece and the Republic of Cyprus. Under the Turkish-Libyan deal, a huge swathe of sea territory that is claimed by Greece south of the Aegean is handed to Turkey. Greece has protested this in the international arena, but in the absence of a maritime demarcation deal between Greece and Turkey, we’re left with two contradicting claims.
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Despite the absence of a Greek-Turkish agreement, Athens bases its claims on its interpretation of an updated version of the Law of the Sea, an international treaty to which Turkey is not a signatory. The treaty in question allows islands off the mainland to have their own maritime zones for hydrocarbon exploration. As the majority of small islands in the Aegean belong to Greece, Greece’s claim restricts Turkey’s exploration rights to its immediate coastline, in effect blocking Turkey within the Bay of Iskenderun. Moreover, Greece, in its deal with Cyprus, has been able to connect its maritime zone with that of Cyprus thanks to the tiny island of Kastellorizo, located just 2 miles south of Turkey’s coastal Antalya province. This deal threatens to block Turkey’s access to the open seas.
In response, Turkey struck a deal with the Tripoli-based Libyan government to secure a maritime corridor. Just as Greece and Cyprus exercised a maximalist policy that ignored the concerns of Turkey, Turkey did the same to Greece in its deal with Libya. The resulting scenario led to Turkish warships and Greek warships coming head to head in the region. The Turkish-Libyan deal particularly enraged France, which has sent its own warship to the region to boost its European partner Greece. This escalation in tensions almost came to blows in June when a Greek navy helicopter, operating as part of the EU’s IRINI operation in the Mediterranean, was forced to back off from a cargo ship en route to Libya following warnings from a nearby Turkish frigate.
What took place that day was actually a battle of wits. Turkey proved to Greece the lengths it was willing to go to in order to protect its interests in Libya. Greece’s tough stance towards Turkey turned out to be a bluff, and without the confidence of a united European front against Turkey, the Greeks were left with no choice but to back down from the incident. Very logically, a reluctant but gradual de-escalation of tensions has followed.
Greek foreign minister Nikos Dendias invited Turkey to join its Eastern Mediterranean pact with Cyprus and Israel. The pact envisions the export of natural gas to Europe via an undersea pipeline. Of course, given that Turkey does not recognise the Republic of Cyprus, Turkish foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu in his response could not accept the offer. Instead, Cavusoglu suggested making way for Turkey by taking Cyprus out of the equation. Turkey has denied the legitimacy of the Republic of Cyprus since a Greek-inspired coup on the island in 1974. Turkey only recognises the self-declared Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, a state set up by the island’s Turkish Cypriots in the Turkish-controlled north. Therefore, Turkey has a tendency to reject any international agreement with the predominantly Greek Cypriot republic based in the south, arguing such deals violate the rights of its Turkish Cypriot allies. Likewise, Turkey denies any claims of the Republic of Cyprus to a maritime territory, and just as Ankara asserts Turkish claims to what is internationally recognised as belonging to Cyprus, it also encourages other Eastern Mediterranean countries to do the same. That is why Cavusoglu told Israel that its deal with Cyprus had ceded Israeli maritime territory to the Greek Cypriots.
Turkey has tried this tactic before to win over its neighbours, namely Egypt. By offering a greater share of the Eastern Mediterranean pie to each nation, Turkey is trying to make a partnership with itself seem more lucrative than a partnership with Cyprus. And while it is true that Israel and Egypt particularly could expand their maritime claims into Cypriot waters by siding with Turkey, both nations have assessed that there is more to lose in betraying Cyprus than there is in ceding maritime territory. But Turkey has also made it clear that until its interests in the region are secured, it is willing to use its military to consistently disrupt and sabotage attempts to bring the East Med pipeline into fruition. Turkey is ready for a military confrontation, but its opponents in the region are not. Israel and Egypt are not in desperate need for the pipeline, especially as the world is in the middle of a gas glut. Doubts over whether the pipeline will be economically, or even scientifically viable, still linger. Both nations have more pressing issues they need to tend to. It is also clear that Greece and Cyprus do not have the power to take on Turkey militarily without international support, and neither NATO nor the EU has shown willingness to jump into the fray on their behalf. Even Greek Cypriot leader Nicos Anastasiades had enough sense to recently remark that a military solution to the Cyprus problem would “end Greek Cypriots on the island,” a rebuttal of his defence minister who called on the EU to form a navy to confront Turkey.
Indeed, diplomacy is the only weapon Greece and the Greek Cypriots have against Turkey, but if they really want to go anywhere with Turkey, they’re going to have to give credence to its demands and acknowledge it as a main player in the region — not one to be ignored. Europe has shown to lack the resolve to confront Turkey, leaving the Greeks with no choice but to wave the white flag. If Greece wants peace and security on its eastern front, it is going to have to give concessions on its maximalist policy in the Aegean. Then again, Greece’s European partners may wish to prolong the Turkish threat on the continent’s southeastern flank to create the illusion of a conflict. This would influence EU policymakers to take strict measures against Turkey, such as sanctions, and thus prevent Turkish soft power from seeping into the Balkans. The ball now is in Greece’s court, and Athens must decide what it wants — peace with the Turks at the expense of Europe, or regional instability with its most powerful neighbour without any security guarantees from its Western allies.
Ertan Karpazli is the Editor-in-Chief of Radio EastMed.
Tweets @Ertan_Karpazli
All views expressed by the writer are solely his own.
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