By Constantinos Fili, director of IGA, associate professor of the American College of Greece & ANT1 international affairs analyst
Greek-Turkish relations are going through their most difficult moment since 1974. The choice of Greece as the main enemy is not only connected to internal reasons in view of elections. Erdogan’s intention to co-opt the nationalist audience, much of which is drawn to the even more extreme in rhetoric Aksener rather than his governing partner Bakhtceli, certainly plays a role, but there are two main reasons for the obsessive targeting of Greece.
The first objective concerns Turkey’s systematic attempt to undermine Greek-American military cooperation. Erdoğan constantly portrays the Americans not simply as co-responsible, but as the orchestrators of Greece’s equipment and its general behavior towards his country.
The narrative is that Greece cannot deal with Turkey on its own, but uses the backs of others, who want to prevent their country from playing its rightful role in the new balance of power on the planet.
As he sees that the relations in the Aegean are changing to his detriment, he sends messages to the Americans at every opportunity that they must limit their penetration into Greece. While he expected that after the upgrade of the Turkish position due to Ukrainian, the US would show greater tolerance towards his revisionist views, however he finds that not only is this not happening, but in the Aegean the balances are tipped against him.
Turkey’s second goal is to create an environment, just as Russia did before it invaded Ukraine, in which any aggressive move Turkey makes against Greece will appear as self-defense: Greece is illegally arming the islands, Athens is that threatens Turkey’s national security, therefore, all a country threatened by a third party has to do is to react, even preemptively.
He is looking for a way to legitimize a potential action against Greece that will even have a preventive nature. It is cultivating the same climate as Putin did before he invaded Ukraine, when the Russian president accused it of wanting to join NATO and deploy offensive missiles on its soil.
Of course, especially after Putin’s escalation and increasing isolation, even the most pro-Turkish international actors could hardly justify Turkey preemptively attacking a Greek island because it was being fortified against a country that maintains the casus belli .
In practice, Turkey is shaping the conditions for an action that will not be the occupation of a rock island, nor an attack on a Greek island, but something that will be connected to the sending of soldiers and military material to Greek islands.
