AEGEAN RISK

The confrontation between Türkiye and Greece is getting increasingly tense. The military solution is still at stake, given the escalation of the conflict since spring 2022.

Your mileage may vary

The main reason of the ongoing controversy between Türkiye and Greece is the status of the islands in the eastern Aegean Sea. They are under Greek domain pursuant to the 1923 Lausanne Treaty. However, Athens intends to extend Greek territorial waters off the island of Crete and around the islands in the Aegean Sea to another 12 nautical miles, as stipulated by modern international maritime law (the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea). In other words, the Greeks are going to do the same they did with their territorial waters in the Ionian Sea in January 2021.

However, Türkiye claims that Greece violates the provisions of the Lausanne and Paris (1947) treaties on the status of these islands. According to international maritime law at the time, Greece's territorial waters shall be 6 nautical miles. If it now extends them to 12 nautical miles permitted under the current UN Convention, it will effectively close off access to the Aegean and Mediterranean Seas to Türkiye, which would be trapped in its territorial waters, unable to freely access international waters.

In 1995, the Turkish Grand National Assembly issued a statement that if Greece took advantage of the provision of international law to extend its territorial waters beyond 6 nautical miles, it would "alter the balance established by the 1923 Lausanne Treaty". Since then, Türkiye has warned Greece of war should it extend its territorial waters in the Aegean Sea to 12 nautical miles. This threat was repeated by Ankara at the end of 2022.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu has explicitly stated that Ankara would consider any extension of Greek territorial waters as a casus belli. Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar also confirmed Türkiye's unacceptability of Greece's territorial waters. Declaring that it was unacceptable for Türkiye, which has a coastline of over 1,800 km, to enter international waters with Athens' permission, Akar underlined that Ankara "will not pay for the consequences of Greek miscalculations." He also warned Greece of the consequences of its policy, which is disrupting the existing status quo in the Aegean Sea.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been pretty clear as to the specificity of these consequences. He highlighted Greece's concerns about the Turkish tests of Typhoon ballistic missiles over the Black Sea last October. "The Greek media published some concerns about the range of Typhoons, claiming that Ankara could strike Athens. We have no such target! Retaliation can follow only if Türkiye's interests are threatened," President Erdogan said.

Ankara has made it clear that the continuation of Athens’ policy of cutting off Türkiye's access to international waters would leave it with no alternative but to resort to force against Greece. Greek authorities seem to be aware of the reality of such a threat. Knowing that it lacks the capacity to confront Türkiye, which has the second strongest army in NATO, Greece, as another NATO member state, is seeking support from the alliance. Especially from the influential members of the alliance, such as the US and France, which have their own reasons to be interested in weakening Türkiye's regional position. Hence the particular emphasis of Greek propaganda against Turkish threats of war, which Athens finds ‘inappropriate for a NATO ally’. "Greece does not threaten anyone, but it does not want anyone to threaten it either," the Greek Defence Minister Nicholas Panayiotopoulos said that.

What can be the practical dimension of such a largely positional game between the opposing sides, given the factor of NATO as the political and military centre of the West, which binds Türkiye and Greece as allies?

Between NATO and third countries

Undoubtedly, Greek activity in the Aegean Sea has a strong economic motivation. It has to do with Athens' intention to secure control over the exploration, drilling and transportation of hydrocarbon resources discovered in the eastern Mediterranean. Naturally, this is against the plans of Ankara, which sees Greek actions as an encroachment on Turkish interests, territorial waters and natural resources.

Geopolitics is a key factor in the current confrontation between Athens and Ankara. Particularly, it means a significant increase in influence and power of Türkiye, which President Erdogan considers a "strong country, resolutely defending its interests in the region and on the international stage, and continuing its development despite wars and the global crises". But this development accompanied by Ankara's pursuit of an independent course on the international stage is at odds with the interests of several global players.

Remarkably, Greece has concentrated troops on the Aegean islands, which according to international documents should remain demilitarised. Ankara is extremely unhappy with the militarisation of the islands. To the point that President Erdogan warned Greece: "the Turks can come suddenly in the night". However, the key element of situation is that the US provides practical support to the process of arming of the Aegean islands by Greece. Despite Ankara’s protests, Washington helped Athens to deploy American-made Greek armoured vehicles on the islands of Lesbos and Samos. It is not surprising that many experts see an American trace in the Greek claim to extend territorial waters in the Aegean Sea to 12 miles.

The US indeed uses every opportunity to demonstrate its discontent with Türkiye's foreign policy detached from that of the collective West. Particularly in Syria, where Türkiye opposes the division of the country and makes steps to reconcile with the Syrian government, including on the issue of neutralisation of Kurdish terrorist groups by joint efforts. As to the Russian-Ukrainian war, Türkiye, contrary to the West, is positioning itself as a friend of both Moscow and Kiev. This also makes the US and a number of leading EU countries unhappy.

Interestingly, France has recently suffered a series of serious defeats from Türkiye in its struggle for geopolitical influence in the Mediterranean and northern Africa. In response, Paris is trying to forge an anti-Turkish coalition, including Greece and Cyprus. Possible success of this French endeavour has been largely thwarted by Ankara's renewed partnership with Israel.

Ankara is well aware of Greece's role in the geopolitical games of Washington and Paris. Therefore, Turkish leadership has repeatedly urged Athens to solve existing problems bilaterally, without involving third countries. However, these appeals have not yielded desired outcome, despite the NATO membership of both Türkiye and Greece.

Ankara and Athens have repeatedly approached the brink of direct military confrontation in recent decades. The current crisis in bilateral relations is another test not only for Türkiye and Greece, but also for NATO, which, as an integral organisation, can by no means be interested in an armed conflict between the two allies.

In fact, NATO has repeatedly failed to stop the long-standing rivalry between Ankara and Athens. Even the ad hoc NATO consultation mechanism between Türkiye and Greece has stalled. Ankara accuses Athens of sabotaging meetings in this negotiation platform. As a result, influential think tanks rank the Greek-Turkish crisis, which has been simmering on the Alliance's southern border for decades, among the events that pose the greatest risk to global security in terms of the likelihood of a major war.

This seems impossible, as NATO allies may not enter the war against each other. But it also seems that Greece will continue to exacerbate the contradictory territorial dispute with Türkiye. Also, pushing Ankara to a regional escalation remains among the tactical geopolitical priorities of a number of Western powers. This only confirms the seriousness of the risk of a military clash between Türkiye and Greece.