FOREIGN AFFAIRS

Ankara eroding normalizaton with Athens

Despite lull on the ground, Turkey’s positions have not shifted on all key Greek-Turkish disputes

Ankara eroding normalizaton with Athens

The threats by Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan that the war in the Middle East would spread westward, especially to the Republic of Cyprus and Crete, are seen to constitute a clear rhetorical choice and yet another dissonance in the process of normalization of Greek-Turkish relations over the last 16 months. 

Referring to the crisis in the Middle East, Fidan not only adopted the rhetoric of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who targeted the Republic of Cyprus over Nicosia’s supposed involvement in the war in Gaza, but extended the threat to Crete as well, saying “the fact that this place and the Greek islands are used for operations in the Middle East will not benefit the ‘Greek-Cypriot Administration’ [the Republic of Cyprus] nor Greece.”

According to Kathimerini’s Istanbul correspondent Manolis Kostidis, Fidan even noted that “our advice, what we told the Greeks, is ‘Stay away from these issues,’ because when you get involved in this way in the ongoing wars in the Middle East, if you become part of them, the fire will come and find you. And we are in the same geography, so [the fire] will come and find us.”

For their part, diplomatic sources at the Greek Foreign Ministry remarked that “threats against the sovereignty and the existence of an EU member-state are absolutely unacceptable,” while noting that Greece, like the entire EU, stands in solidarity with Cyprus. 

“Greece does not accept any suggestions on the way it conducts its policy and safeguards its national interests,” the same sources said, adding that Athens has maintained a principled stance throughout the Middle East crisis “without a confrontation with any country.”

Fidan’s statements were preceded by unilateral moves such as the conversion of the Chora Monastery into a mosque, but also the inclusion in secondary education textbooks of the “Blue Homeland” doctrine, which expresses Ankara’s maritime claims in the Eastern Mediterranean.  

What’s more, a few days ago it issued a navigational telex (Navtex) disputing the limits (beyond 3 nautical miles) of the maritime border between Greece and Turkey at the mouth of the Evros River. 

Moreover, Ankara is implicitly reiterating its firm positions on the continental shelf in the Eastern Mediterranean, this time on the occasion of the laying of telecommunication cables by an Italian vessel. 

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