Greece’s new interlocutors in Turkey
The top jobs at the Foreign and Defense ministries in the new Turkish government have been filled by individuals who are no strangers to Greece, albeit for different reasons.
The new foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, who is well-known in Athens for being Turkey’s invisible diplomatic hand as the chief for many years of its potent intelligence agency, MIT, despite never having held any policy-making positions before.
Greece is also well aware of Fidan’s crucial contribution as the head of MIT to the gradual rise of Turkish influence in Tripoli, resulting in the Turkish-Libyan memorandum.
Fidan is known as the man who laid the groundwork for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s major foreign engagements, especially in Central Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
Needless to say, the move of Ibrahim Kalin, until recently Erdogan’s spokesman, to the post of MIT chief, merely confirms the Turkish president’s absolute control over the central cogs of power.
The fact that Kalin was for a considerable period of time in direct communication with Greek officials, mainly with the PM’s former diplomatic adviser Eleni Sourani and the current one, Anna Maria Boura, is viewed as significant.
On the other hand, the new Turkish minister of national defense, Yasar Guler, who until recently was the head of the Turkish Armed Forces, is known to Greece, but he never had the contact with Greek officials that the other two had.
The lack of personal relations with Guler is due to a significant extent to the crises of 2020 (in Evros and the Eastern Mediterranean) and the total lack of communication between Greece and Turkey at the military level.
When Konstantinos Floros took over as chief of the Hellenic Armed Forces in early 2020, the government had explored the possibility of opening a direct channel of communication between the two armed forces chiefs. As this did not materialize, it was done instead by the former ministers of defense Nikos Panagiotopoulos and Hulusi Akar.
