Greece says Turkey warming Aegean waters

This is the case between the media of Turkey and Greece now. "Do what you like. We are not going to leave from here. This is where we were born," said one of the hundred or so inhabitants of Agathonisi or Gaidouronisi or Esek adasi in Turkish, just off the coast of Turkey, one of the Dodecanese Islands in the southern part of the Aegean Sea. The islander who was standing in front of a background of white washed pretty houses festooned around a beautifully shaped natural port full of fishing boats, was referring to a small formation of Turkish F16s which had just slashed the bright sky over his head creating a deafening noise.

The islander was not particularly angry; he looked as if in the past he had many similar one-way conversations with Turkish pilots who have been passing over his blue sky for years. He actually said this to the anxious Greek TV reporter who had arrived to this miniscule Greek island in order to check what the majority of the Greek media have been murmuring for the last few weeks: that Turkey is setting the agenda for a "hot incident" in the Aegean in order to bring back the issue of the "gray zones." Seeing the Turkish F-16s with his own eyes, the reporter reported immediately the "hard evidence" live to his TV studio in Athens; but the islander was more stoic. "They have been doing it all the time. For years. We are used to it." But Athens has already decided that Ankara has changed gear.
If the information going through Greek media lately is true, then Athens is about to set its relations with Ankara on a new tougher ground in response to an increased "aggression from the Turkey." Already the visit by the Greek president Mr. Karolos Papoulias to another small, inhabited island near Agathonisi, Farmakonisi (Mulamac Adasi) for the celebrations of Epihpany Day on Jan. 6, was meant to send a message to Ankara that Greece is not pleased. Strong official statements implied that Greece would resort to every means in order to defend the sovereignty of its islands. In an interview yesterday to the new newspaper "Real News," the Greek Minister of Defense, Evangelos Meimarakis, called the recent Turkish military activity over the Aegean "unacceptable, especially for a country that wants to enter the European Union," and warned that Athens's response to the "escalating actions by Ankara" will not be limited to the diplomatic level, but "will be given to other appropriate circles."

"The Turkish actions on Farmakonisi-Agathonisi are unacceptable. They are in blatant violation of international law and hamper the efforts being made to improve Greek-Turkish relations. I have instructed that the appropriate demarches be made," said Greek Foreign Minister Bakoyiannis in a statement Jan. 7. According to yesterday’s "TO VIMA" newspaper, the military leadership of the Greek Ministry of National Defense is "being placed on alert, by increasing the degree of responsiveness for certain units and increasing the number of personnel in the observation posts on the islands of both Central Aegean and the Dodecanese. Reinforced air force and navy units are also on alert in order to fully monitor the Athens FIR and the Greek territorial waters. The Greek side is adamant about its position.

They think that Ankara is planning to create a legal precedent by claiming an opening to the Aegean Sea, by challenging issues like the continental shelf around the Aegean islands, the air traffic control and the right of the exploration of the Aegean depths. Some loud nationalists are calling out for the use of casus belli now, in order to "teach a lesson to the Turks." The Greek media who are quoting "reliable military and political sources" are more than sure about their analysis: There is a "new provocative stance by Ankara, they claim, which is aiming at scrapping the international treaties which define the Aegean frontiers like Lausanne Agreement of 1923, Italy-Greece agreement of 1932 and Paris Agreement of 1947, and challenge the status quo in the Dodecanese islands, with continuous hostile actions in the air and sea. The landscape of the Aegean seen from Athens is strongly reminiscent of the days before the Imia-Kardak crisis in 1996. Needless to say that the "crisis with Turkey" is pushing other hot domestic issues in Greece out of the main headlines: economy, the killing of the young student by a special police guard last month, students riots, the serious injuring of a policeman by "terrorists", etc, to the inside pages.

There is a new agenda now. The widely expected government reshuffle which replaced the unpopular economy minister - but not the economic policy Ğ and the education and the public order ministers and brought in younger popular conservative figures in the government, did the trick: It reduced the gap with the opposition by giving the new Karamanlis cabinet some valuable extra points of popularity. This latest cabinet will be an "election cabinet" as it is widely anticipated that Karamanlis will go for early elections perhaps in the spring. On the other side of the Aegean, the landscape seems strangely calm. At least the total absence of any official statement by government officials or military leaders on the "war mongering" in the Aegean, plus the almost complete lack of coverage or analysis in the Turkish media, is giving a surreal twist to the story.

However this is not completely true. On the web page of the Turkish General Staff, there is regular daily list of the "incidents in the Aegean" by Greek F16s harassing Turkish jets and Greek coast guard vessels, and fishing boats entering Turkish territorial waters. It is the story seen upside down where the bad ones are the Greeks and the good ones are the Turks. When asked by journalists whether he can say that there is lately an unusual upsurge of Turkish military in the Aegean, the well known retired ambassador Hristos Zaharakis replied that he did not think so, but he pointed out that, "With such a neighbor, we will always have to be on alert."

If there is something sinister going on in the Aegean, as the Greek side is claiming, and we do not hear anything about it in Turkey, then for the sake of the proclaimed good neighborly relations of both sides, the leadership in Ankara should pause from its local election considerations, the Ergenekon pit, the Gaza bumpy diplomacy, the new scene in the United States and the slippery ride to Brussels, and explain to us what is really going on. But whatever it is, one gets the impression that Athens is doing a lot of hard rethinking about Turkey and its support for the AKP government. The original policy of Karamanlis government that the European Union vision will cause a more lenient stance toward Athens may be going under revision. It is too early to foresee the changes in the Greek policy toward Ankara, but it looks likely that the days of "best men, best friends" are over. After all a tension with Turkey may also prove very helpful for the Karamanlis government as it will put the whole of the electorate on a patriotic foot against which no opposition party can have an alternative view.