16 - Sputnik international news-Russia

16 - Sputnik international news-Russia

Turkish-Greek Escalation Stems From Sovereignty Issues Rather Than Hydrocarbons’ Control 

MOSCOW, August 27, 2020 (Sputnik) - The Turkish-Greek escalation that reached a boiling point this month is sparked by their sovereignty issues, which have been simmering for a long time, rather than the actual control over hydrocarbons’ reserves in the Mediterranean, experts told Sputnik.

 The tensions between Athens and Ankara escalated earlier in August after Turkey's Oruc Reis research vessel began exploration drilling in the Greek-claimed waters in the eastern Mediterranean. Greece considers this territory to be its exclusive economic zone, has mobilized its armed forces to high alert, and vowed to protect its sovereign rights by all necessary means. 

The row has reached a dangerous point when both states have started to hold military drills in the contested maritime area. This week, Greece alongside Cyprus, France and Italy held a joint military exercise in the Eastern Mediterranean as part of the so-called Quartet Cooperation Initiative (QUAD), while the navies of Turkey and the United States have conducted joint drills in the same area.

 CONTROL OVER NATURAL RESOURCES DRIVES UP HISTORIC TENSIONS

 The Turkish-Greek relations have been shadowed by the disputes for years, but the discovery of hydrocarbon reserves in the maritime zone, claimed by both states, have escalated the tensions, bringing the historic conflict back into the spotlight, Dr. Zenonas Tziarras, the researcher with the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) Cyprus Centre, told Sputnik. 

"The biggest problem in the area is not energy resources, but traditional sovereignty issues pertaining to maritime zones. The discovery of hydrocarbons over the past years exacerbated these problems given that control over maritime space sometimes entails control over natural resources as well, among other things. At least since the early 2010s," Tziarras said. 

Turkey seeks to expand its control over maritime areas and natural resources through its "openly revisionist foreign policy," designed to elevate the country to the status of great power, the researcher noted.

 "The latest crisis is only one episode in a long series of episodes stirred by problematic relations and unresolved issues. The efforts for de-escalating this crisis might be successful sooner or later. However, the core of the problem will not go away unless gunboat diplomacy, especially by Turkey, is abandoned and the two countries engage in dialogue to resolve their bilateral issues. Without a breakthrough in this respect, more crises will follow," Tziarras said. 

COULD ESCALATION SPILL OVER INTO OPEN MILITARY CONFLICT? 

After Greece and Turkey have simultaneously launched military drills in the eastern Mediterranean, some have expressed fears that an open military confrontation between two NATO allies could happen by accident or deliberately.

 "There remains the small possibility of an accident that would lead to confrontation and also to the now unpredictable character of President Erdogan. Truly, Erdogan, after the failed attempt of 2016 to assassinate him, has become another man determined to take incredible risks that he would have never taken before July 2016," Prof. Dimitri Kitsikis, an expert in the Turkish-Greek relations, told Sputnik. 

However, "there is no intention whatsoever neither from Turkey nor from Greece to go to war in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean," Kitsikis, who serves as the professor emeritus with the University of Ottawa’s History Department, noted. 

The PRIO researcher is in agreement with Kitsikis that both Turkey and Greece do not seek a military confrontation.

 "The two countries do not want a military confrontation. However, when there are such tensions and military-naval mobilization, the possibility of an accident or a miscalculation is always a possibility, especially if the crisis is prolonged and the diplomatic efforts for de-escalation take a long time or are unsuccessful," Tziarras said.

 The rising tensions between Athens and Ankara negatively impact the unity with NATO, the expert noted. 

"The potential of a conflict between Greece and Turkey has always been a concern for NATO and the United States. For this reason, they have tried in the past to keep the peace between the two countries. Any crisis between Greece and Turkey hinders NATO's unity, regional cohesion and interests. Although Germany and the EU are playing a primary mediation role in de-escalating the crisis, the US and NATO are also believed to be trying to defuse tensions and prevent further escalation," Tziarras underlined. 

As for NATO's role in efforts to deescalate the tensions, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has said that he regularly maintains contact with both Turkey and Greece. 

FEARS OVER LOCAL CONFLICT BECOMING INTERNATIONAL

 France decision to send naval forces to the Eastern Mediterranean, which was welcomed by Greece, may add to tensions in the region, Panayotis Tsakonas, a professor of security studies at the University of Athens and the head of the Program on Security at Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP), told Sputnik.

 "By implication, France has not been hesitant in supporting Greece in its conflict with Turkey by sending a strong message to Turkey — through the mobilization of its fleet — that this time Turkey went it too far. However, a note of caution should be added here — although Greece welcomes France's initiative aiming at deterring any further Turkish aggression this may also add up to an already heavily militarized region where the possibility of an accident is high," Tsakonas said.

 The expert also mentioned that Paris and Ankara have contradicting interests not only in the Eastern Mediterranean sea but also in Africa, adding that French President Emmanuel Macron and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan have "personal antipathy." 

"Based on the aforementioned reasons for France's military engagement in the region I strongly doubt there will be any other country willing to follow suit," Tsakonas added. When addressing the joint response by the European Union to Turkey over Ankara’s actions in the Eastern Mediterranean, the expert said that France and Germany do not "share the same views on how best to deal with Turkey." 

"France is more in favor of punishing Erdogan's aggressiveness through the adoption of direct punitive measures, i.e. sanctions while Germany — which now runs the EU Presidency — is more interested in not letting Turkey further distancing itself from the EU promoting thus Turkey's engagement with the EU," Tsakonas said.

 At the same time, the professor noted that NATO, unsurprisingly, is much more fragmented and divided over the issue with Turkey.

 "Indeed despite a series of strategic divides between Turkey and its NATO allies, the Atlantic Alliance is expected to remain a passive observer with regard to Turkey's behavior vis-a-vis Greece, another NATO member, given that for NATO Turkey remains too big, powerful and strategically important to allow for an open confrontation," Tsakonas said. 

The expert added that the current situation, if it is left unchecked, would have certain negative effects on the stability at the EU’s southern border and said that the EU and the United States should reset their relationship with Turkey "with a new one based on a balanced mixture of carrots and sticks and/or benefits and obligations" as soon as possible.

15 - Erdogan and the Rebirth of the Empire

15 - Erdogan and the Rebirth of the Empire

(Interview given to Gercek Hayat, Istanbul, special issue, 24-29 February 2020, pp. 32-34)

In 1453, the imperial succession passed from the Greeks to the Turks. In 1821, the Westerners through the Eastern Question started the dismantlement of the Empire by persuading the Greeks that the 1453 succession was made to their detriment and that they had to come back to the values of pre-Christian Greece.

The main result was double fold: to enslave the Greeks to the Frankish West and to destroy the Empire after a hundred year civil war (1822-1922) between the two brother nations that had formed the Ottoman Empire.

The extraordinary courage of the Turkish people and their leader Mustafa Kemal who refused to give up to Western imperialism led to the liberation of Anatolia but only after sacrificing the traditions of the Turkish people by throwing the Turkish cultural baby with the water of the bath tub i.e. Islam in the same way than Venizelos had thrown away the Greek cultural baby of Orthodox Christianity.

Since 2002, the extraordinary feat of Erdogan was to put back in place Islam in the heart of Turkish tradition without betraying Ataturk principles of independence of Anatolia while at the same time in Rumeli Greeks through Archbishop Christodoulos were coming back slowly to their Christian traditions.

The result of these evolutions on both sides of the Aegean was a revival of nostalgia for the greatness of the defunct Empire that had been destroyed in the 100 year Greek-Turkish civil war by the West.

On the Rumeli side, Kitsikis was the first Greek that through his numerous publications openly promoted the idea of the coming back of the Ottoman Empire, already in the 1960s while Erdogan followed on his path and on the path of Kitsikis’s spiritual son  Ozal, by promoting openly the rebirth of the Empire around its long time prestigious capital Istanbul.

Nevertheless such a political revival which Kitsikis called the Çamlica dream, referring to the hill on the Asian side of the Bosphorus facing Istanbul as the center of the future federal capital, was considered by everybody an unattainable dream even though one should have known that only dreams make great history.

The seemingly unsurpassable difficulty for the realization of such a bold dream was the existence since the I5th century of the Russian candidate to the Istanbul throne as Third Rome and also the activity of the destroyers of the Empire through the Eastern Question represented by the Western imperialist Powers who wanted a free passage to their Asian colonies through Eastern Mediterranean, a passage that was permanently blocked by the Ecumenical Byzantine-Ottoman Empire.

Nevertheless, 2016 marked a decisive turning point. The coming to power of President Trump and the defeat of former President Obama who failed to assassinate Erdogan. Trump seemed as a present of God.

His seemingly chaotic foreign policy, in fact directed exclusively against China, reversing the century long Western policy of expansion from West to East through the Eastern Mediterranean to an East West expansion using the new Silk Road of Chinese conquest of Western Europe, gave to the Intermediate Region of Civilization which center had always been the Ecumenical Empire for the last 2500 years a new importance: it had to become a wall against China drive to the West.

So President Trump through his seemingly chaotic foreign policy had one and only aim: stop the Silk Road Western expansion by all means. This meant trying to form a chain of alliances with as many nations as possible in Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East and first and foremost with Russia to form a barrier against Chinese expansion.

The dismemberment of the Ecumenical Empire had to be stopped and even it had to be rebuilt. Turkey, since 2002, because of Erdogan, had become a stabilized geopolitical entity which could form this barrier by reviving the Ottoman Empire.

But this could not be done without the reunification of the two shores of the Aegean lake not by splitting it between Greece and Turkey but by reuniting it in the form of a Greek-Turkish Confederation.

I have many times compared the Aegean Sea to a human body with two lungs: the Rumeli lung and the Anatolia lung, with a trachea in the middle for the body to be able to breathe freely: the Aegean Sea. It is nonsense to cut the trachea in the middle: a Rumeli half and an Anatolia half. Because then the body of the Empire would suffocate. This happened in the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913 with the result to have created the present disputes between Greece and Turkey.

So, in order to reunite the Aegean lake the Lausanne treaties have to be revised, even abolished.  Unfortunately the terrible crime of the exchange of populations cannot be mended today. But why not? The Cretan Muslims could come back to Crete and the Karamanli Christian could go back to Cappadocia.

God gave Erdogan the mission to accomplish the dream. The dream of the revival of the Ottoman Empire, perhaps with the help of President Trump. Erdogan represents the forces of unification (Empire) againt the forces of division (Eastern Question). It is neither in the interest of Turkey to be dismembered between Kurds and Armenians nor in the interest of Greece to be dismembered between Thracians and Cretans

I, as an intellectual, I will continue with all my enthusiasm to promote the  reunification dream. Lets God accomplish  his scheme.

Dimitri Kitsikis                        29 February 2020

11 - ABOVE GÜLEN AND ERDOĞAN STANDS TURKEY

11  - ABOVE GÜLEN AND ERDOĞAN STANDS TURKEY

I reproduce below an article by Jennifer Campbell, editor of «Diplomat &  International Canada», a magazine established in Ottawa, in 1989. She writes that the Canada Gülen organization sponsored her visit to Athens in order to write the article below, published in the magazine's issue of October-November 2018.

Having been myself for some years a follower of the Fethullah Gülen organization in Ottawa and having published some articles and contributions in books on Gülen, as a professor of Geopolitics and International Relations at the University of Ottawa since 1970, as well as a specialist of Turkey and being myself a Greek, being well known in Greece and Turkey to have uttered the sentence, «The best Greeks are the Turks», I would like to give here some further information on the relations between these two eminent Turks.

Both have repeatedly expressed their admiration for late president of Turkey, Turgut Özal, who considered me, in his own words, his «spiritual father» in pursuing the dream of a Greek-Turkish Confederation. Even though Gülen is pro-Jewish as Sufi Muslim and Erdoğan is anti-Jewish as a member of the Muslim Brotherhood there are both supporters of the multi-religious structure of the late Ottoman Empire. Özal`s father was an Orthodox Christian Armenian and his mother was a Kurdish Nakshibendi Sufi. Erdoğan and Gülen are both supporters of the Greek Orthodox Patriarch in Istanbul.

Since the coming to power of Erdoğan, in 2003, himself as well as his supporters, in the Turkish population were Gülenists and pro-American. Only, after the 2016  July military coup in Turkey, engineered by the alleged previous American administration of President Obama, did  Erdoğan accuse Gülen and his supporters of wanting to replace him by Gülen himself as a Turkish Khomeini. The result was understandable. Erdoğan was hit like a bull in a Spanish bullfight arena and persuaded that the bullfighter was Gülen himself under American instructions, he cracked down on his former self and supporters. A sheer tragedy in which the West with its hypocritical human rights should abstain from taking sides.

So what about me? Should I choose between my two favorite men? We Greeks are presently favorably impressed by the seemingly independent policy of President Erdoğan towards Great Powers, as all third nations victimized by the West would be. Because above NATO and Russia, stands our Turkish brother and the Greek public thinks Turkey`s seemingly aggressive policy against Greece is directed by Great Power interests. Above Gülen and Erdoğan I choose my dream of a Greek-Turkish Confederation. In 1934, Venizelos just 12 years after the catastrophical defeat of his country by the Turkish leader Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, proposed in a memorable letter to the Nobel Price organizers that they should give the Peace Nobel Price to his latter former foe!

Dimitri Kitsikis, Fellow, Royal Society of Canada, Ottawa, 28-X- 2018, www.idkf.gr

http://diplomatonline.com/mag/2018/10/fleeing-oppression-in-turkey/

5 - What Americans think of Greece today

5 - What Americans think of Greece today

 (Below is in my opinion a very good analysis of today's Greece's position in Eastern Mediterranean compared to its neighbors, by an American friend - 27 October 2017 - Dimitri Kitsikis)

Israel would have made a good model for Greece to follow when it was still a healthy, emerging market economy until the shame of 1974 and the miserable political class, who took over the leadership and ran the country into the ground and made it into an EU German protectorate.

All this on the idiocy that somehow big brother Brussels is a protection from Turkey.  In Simitis times, they even thought that they could convince Turkey to put itself in the same cage, but the Turks, respecting their succession from the Byzantines and more Greek than the Elladites, were not foolish enough to fall into such a trap. Instead of the present regime in Greece which has not even achieved the level of Turkish GDP back in 1974 – despite the transfer money, loans, etc. – Turkey successfully restructured with the IMF with Kemal Dervis and have a achieved a GDP many times the size of Greece GDP with industry and exports.  Russia is now their major trading partner and they have moved to a partial Russian alignment after the failed US coup.

I think that Erdogan and Putin could achieve a tremendous event for the Orthodox faith with a Russian Patriarch like Kyrillos of Moscow to replace Bartholomeus.   Instead of social events with the Greek elite for society marriages and baptisms, it would transform the Ecumenical Patriarch to something truly vibrant and worthy of its two thousand year heritage, just as it is growing in Russia despite 70 years of attempted eradication and forced Westernization by the Bolsheviks..   The Russians have every excuse to do this given Greece’s current atheist government and a Parliament who are hypocrites with no respect for the Orthodox faith again in favor the present forced Frankokratia here under Greek Bolsheviks. 

The Americans would go crazy with a Russian Patriarch!!!   Already they do not what to do with Erdogan and Putin….   It would be a just punishment for the EU, too.

Greece has valuable resources and human capital and a large Diaspora.  The political elite who rule Greece are totally incapable of harnessing this energy.  They only know how to negotiate bail out loans and cajole  EU transfer money.  Israel a smaller country exports twice what Greece does and with much higher added value.

As for Turkish relations – sometimes good and sometimes bad – but there is mutual respect between Turkey and Israel.  When Ergdogan tried slyly via Flotilla to violate their borders, the Israeli sent three or four Turks back to Turkey in caskets…..  They were not likely to play around with Israel again in these matters.

I met with Nicholas Burnes, former US Ambassador to Greece, recently at a Credit Suisse event.  He sees Macron and Koulis as saviors for France and Greece respectively.  He was cursing Trump every other sentence despite being a former US Diplomat.  I was thinking to myself how many average American voter would support his policies…..  Not many since Trump is now POTUS!

Frankly I do not see elections here until 2019.  Political life in Greece at present has as much interest as it did under Ioannis Rallis and German occupation…..

Diran

27 October 2017