{"id":16819,"date":"2018-05-04T15:09:44","date_gmt":"2018-05-04T10:09:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/jwt2015\/?p=16819"},"modified":"2018-05-04T15:09:44","modified_gmt":"2018-05-04T10:09:44","slug":"greece-and-turkey-are-inching-toward-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/studykit\/currentaffairs\/daily-articles\/greece-and-turkey-are-inching-toward-war\/","title":{"rendered":"Greece and Turkey Are Inching Toward War"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Greece<\/a><\/p>\n

Populists in both countries are deepening a rare military crisis between NATO allies.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The relationship between Greece and Turkey has never been easy. The neighboring countries have been at war with each other several times in the 20th century and were close to military conflict over the Greek islet Imia in 1996, before the United States stepped in to avert disaster.<\/p>\n

The NATO allies are now at the brink again, goaded by populists on both sides \u2014 and this time, Washington is nowhere to be found.<\/p>\n

On Monday, a Greek-Turkish confrontation rekindled old memories. Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim, during an event in Ankara, claimed that the Turkish coast guard had removed a Greek flag from an islet near the island of Fournoi, after it was placed there earlier by three Greeks. The Hellenic National Defense General Staff responded that no Turkish boat had been seen in the area in the last 48 hours; the mayor of Fournoi then visited the islet and reported that the Greek flag was still there.<\/p>\n

But Greece was obliged to respond to Yildirim\u2019s claims with the utmost seriousness. Monday\u2019s incident follows a tragic accident last week in which a Greek pilot was killed after his plane crashed while returning to base from a mission to intercept Turkish fighters about 10 miles north of Skyros island. This wasn\u2019t an isolated incident, either: Turkish jets have violated Greek airspace more than 30 times in April alone. While Yildirim and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan made swift diplomatic moves to send condolences to Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, Greek public opinion blames the death of the 34-year-old pilot squarely on Turkey. The arrest of two Greek army officers last month and their imprisonment in Turkey, where they might face charges of espionage, further feeds the anger among Greeks.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the islet involved in this week\u2019s dispute \u2014 called Anthropofagos (Greek for \u201ccannibal\u201d) \u2014 is part of what Turkey claims are \u201cgrey zones,\u201d areas that are of disputed jurisdiction, in the Aegean Sea. Greece, on the other hand, recognizes no such \u201cgrey zones,\u201d in accordance with the Treaty of Lausanne and international law. Turkey\u2019s position was reiterated by Erdogan during his visit to Athens last year. He claimed that the Treaty of Lausanne needs to be reconsidered, evoking the Turkish-speaking minority of Thrace, a region of northern Greece, as justification. As if to underscore Erdogan\u2019s intentions, Turkish warships recently stopped an Italian research boat from reaching its destination in Greek Cypriot waters.<\/p>\n

Even amid this dangerous climate, both sides are indulging in reckless rhetoric. In Turkey, Erdogan and his party are embarking on ever more aggressive rhetoric toward Greece, and the largest opposition party is now headed by Kemal Kilicdaroglu, a man who claims Turkey needs to reclaim 18 Turkish islands currently occupied by Greece.<\/p>\n

Turkey\u2019s behavior has provided perhaps the only point of agreement between the Greek government and the opposition, with Tsipras, of the far-left Syriza party, implying Erdogan is behaving like \u201ca sultan,\u201d and the center-right New Democracy\u2019s Giorgos Koumoutsakos, shadow minister of international affairs, saying that Turkey is \u201ca country of authoritarian rule that produces instability and tension in the region.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tsipras\u2019s problem in dealing with Turkey centers, rather, on his own government \u2014 specifically, on his junior coalition partner, the Independent Greeks, whose leader, Panos Kammenos, is also minister of national defense.<\/p>\n

The partnership between Syriza and the Independent Greeks has always been odd, but it\u2019s now coming into especially sharp relief. The only thing the two parties ever had in common was their opposition to austerity. Where Syriza has its roots in the radical left, Kammenos was a minister from the nationalistic and populist wing of New Democracy before breaking off and forming his own party in 2012. Kammenosis is now alleged to have ties to both U.S. President Donald Trump via his former advisor George Papadopoulos, and to Russian President Vladimir Putin through Greek-Russian bussinesman and former Russian MP Ivan Savvidis. While he has helped Tsipras with his connections with and knowledge of the functions of the Greek state (and especially parts of what we would call the \u201cdeep state\u201d), he has been a consistent headache in foreign policy.<\/p>\n

Kammenos and his party have repeatedly put Tsipras in an awkward position by making belligerent and even aggressive statements toward Turkey, or simply by simply being confused about the government\u2019s own policy. Kammenos, as defense minister, has repeatedly taunted the Turks, making statements along the lines of \u201clet them come and get it.\u201d Kammenos\u2019s deputy in the Ministry of National Defense, the leftist Fotis Kouvelis, said on Monday night that Greece finds itself in \u201cundeclared war in the Aegean.\u201d And the deputy speaker of the Greek Parliament, an Independent Greeks member, managed to contradict himself within 10 days by saying both that Greece is being \u201ctoo harsh on Erdogan\u201d and that \u201cwe won\u2019t let them go unchallenged.\u201d<\/p>\n

Such problems aren\u2019t limited to Turkey; Kammenos has also been a problem for Tsipras in the negotiations over the name of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, where he sided with Greek protesters, and against his own coalition partner, by demanding that the name of the neighboring country not include the term \u201cMacedonia,\u201d despite the fact it\u2019s long been in use. Ultimately, Kammenos was forced to backpedal and \u201cagree to disagree\u201d with Tsipras.<\/p>\n

Still, for all Kammenos\u2019s excesses, the real problem in the Aegean is Turkey\u2019s strategy of provocation \u2014 a strategy that preceded Erdogan and will most likely continue after he\u2019s gone. Erdogan has simply amplified this strategy in recent months, having seemingly decided that he has leverage over the European Union after agreeing to take responsibility for stemming the Syrian refugee crisis.<\/p>\n

In the Greek public opinion, there is a very real fear that the country is sleepwalking toward a conflict it doesn\u2019t want. The mood is reflected in the front pages of the daily press, and insinuating remarks by politicians across the spectrum. NATO seems unwilling to get involved in the war of words, and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg\u2019s statement that this is \u201cnot an issue for NATO\u201d is indicative.<\/p>\n

But it would be extremely careless to think that Turkey\u2019s behavior in the Aegean will change. It hasn\u2019t in the past, and it certainly won\u2019t now that Erdogan\u2019s neo-Ottoman dreams are in full gear. It will take very careful handling of the situation by all parties to prevent escalation. But we should also come to terms with the possibility that, eventually, confrontation might be inevitable.<\/p>\n

BY: YIANNIS BABOULIAS
\nSource: http:\/\/foreignpolicy.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Populists in both countries are deepening a rare military crisis between NATO allies. The relationship between Greece and Turkey has never been easy. The neighboring countries have been at war with each other several times in the 20th century and were close to military conflict over the Greek islet Imia in 1996, before the United …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":149,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5285],"tags":[257,9668,2231,8939,146],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16819"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/149"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16819"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16819\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}