John Le Carré, a legendary author of espionage novels, described Lesbos as “a Greek island in the Aegean wholly surrounded by monstrous memories” in his bestselling thriller “A Perfect Spy.” The line between fiction and truth becomes murkier as tensions between Turkey and Greece over Lesbos, Samos, other Greek islands and other issues show no sign of abating and are likely to escalate.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan upped the ante in Prague yesterday with his response to a Greek reporter’s question about whether Turkey was “really considering to attack” Greece, in reference to the Turkish leader’s threat that the Turkish army “could come all of a sudden one night.”
“In fact, you got the point right,” he said in a televised presser on the sidelines of a European conference in Prague. “This is our answer to any country which attacks us, harasses us: We can come all of a sudden one night. They need to understand this.”
Greek reports alleged that the tensions even led to bickering between Erdogan and Greek Premier Kyriakos Mitsotakis during the summit’s dinner, when the latter said that Turkey “must stop” questioning Greece’s sovereignty over the islands. Erdogan denied the spat, saying that he didn’t counter Mitsotakis and accusing him of ignoring protocol rules by giving an “unplanned” speech.
Erdogan and Mitsotakis’ mutual lambasts seem to be aimed for domestic consumption.
Lingering tensions between Athens and Ankara escalated last week, with the United States also joining the fray. Turkey protested both Athens and Washington for Greece’s deployment of US-made armored military vehicles on the two Aegean Greek islands in violation of international treaties. The tensions even extended to the State Department’s press briefing room last week and prompted a somewhat heated back-and-forth between US State Department spokesperson Ned Price and the Associated Press’ Matt Lee, after the latter questioned the “consistency” of Washington’s stances vis-a-vis Turkey and Greece.
This week, Turkey’s signing of a hydrocarbon exploration deal with the Tripoli government in Libya has further “clouded waters in the East Mediterranean,” as Nazlan Ertan put it. “The deal, whose details are yet undisclosed, has rekindled the dueling claims on maritime boundaries and gas and energy rights in the eastern Mediterranean, with Turkey and Libya on one side and Greece and Egypt on the other.”
Fehim Tastekin, meanwhile, explained how the deal “crippled” Ankara’s “recent efforts to balance its policy in Libya and fanned the internal and external rivalries haunting the conflict-torn country.”
On the domestic front, Turkish women’s right to wear the headscarf “has re-emerged on Turkey’s political agenda ahead of the elections,” Andrew Wilks reported. Following main opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu’s announcement of plans to introduce a law to protect the right to wear a headscarf in public institutions, Erdogan ordered a constitutional change to enact the same protection, “in an apparent bid to seize back the initiative on an issue” that his ruling party “has long seen as its own,” Wilks wrote. Yet, the draft constitutional amendment that the Justice Ministry has started to work on might contain some additional changes that could further encroach on civil liberties in the country, which government critics have long argued is drifting away from secularism.
In addition to government critics, Iranians living in Turkey also worried about the trajectory of the country. “Many Iranians feel that space for culture, freedom of speech and a secular lifestyle is steadily shrinking in Turkey, which until now has been serving as a safe haven for many Iranians to live freely,” Arian Khameneh reported, adding, “It is no coincidence that they gathered in front of the Ataturk statue, a potent symbol of Turkish secularism, to protest Mahsa Amini’s death.”
As opinion polls suggest a tight race in the nearing presidential and parliamentary elections expected to be held in June 2023, political leaders will likely use every card in their hands to turn the tide in their favor.
Erdogan’s biggest challenge remains the country’s worsening financial crisis as inflation hit 83.45% this week. Yet, despite the breakneck inflation, “Erdogan has doubled down on his controversial monetary policy, urging the central bank to cut its policy rate to single digits by the year-end,” Mustafa Sonmez reported.
The annual inflation rate is expected to drop to about 65% in December, about 55% in January, thanks to the base effect and “Erdogan is likely to make use of this largely arithmetic downtick to argue that his low-rate policy has begun to bear fruit,” Sonmez argued.
The regional landscape, meanwhile, has been relatively seamless this week. Prague hosted a series of landmark meetings between Erdogan and southern Caucasian leaders in fresh signs of smoothing tensions in the region after deadly clashes between Armenia and Turkey-backed Azerbaijan last month. First, Erdogan, his Azeri counterpart Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Premier Nikol Pashinyan gathered in an informal and unplanned setting on the sidelines of the European summit. Thereafter, Erdogan and Pashinyan held a bilateral one-on-one.
A comprehensive peace agreement between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the conflicted Nagorno-Karabakh region was a top agenda item during the talks. As Amberin Zaman reported, Baku and Yerevan “are now involved in drafting a peace agreement, which Aliyev can easily ram through his own parliament. Pashinyan commands 70 seats in the 107-seat Armenian legislature.”
However, she added, “the consensus is that he will need Moscow’s blessing for any deal. Distracted as it is by the war in Ukraine, Russia still holds sway over Armenia, where it has thousands of troops. Any US plan would want them out.”
Ankara’s fast-moving fence-mending efforts to restore its ties with Israel have also witnessed new advancement: Ankara named a diplomat as the new Turkish ambassador to Israel, moving to fill the position that has been vacant for nearly five years due to a series of political rows between the two countries. Sakir Ozkan Torunlar’s appointment also reflects Ankara’s sensitivities to the Palestinian cause. Torunlar, a veteran diplomat of nearly 40 years, also served as Turkey’s ambassador to Palestine in 2013 following the UN General Assembly vote granting Palestine non-member state status.
On a lighter note, recounting how he decided to become a diplomat at a college career day in Ankara in 2016, Torunlar reportedly said he had decided as a child so that he could go and buy toys similar to those his uncle brought him from abroad.