T

he Lausanne Peace Treaty of 1923 was used to settle many disputed aspects of the Greek-Turkish traumatic relations in the early 1990s—but not all. In addition to the conclusively unsettled issues like the title to some islets in the eastern Aegean Sea, newly emerging rules of international law concerning maritime and airspace have created new areas of disagreements, such as the extent of the Greek territorial waters, national airspace, and the delimitation of the continental shelf in the Aegean Sea.

The Aegean Sea is characterized by disputes rather than friendly relations and cooperation. The two countries do not even agree on what constitutes the dispute in the Aegean Sea: while Greece maintains a “single-dispute approach,” Turkey argues that there are multiple disputes to be settled.

Greece’s long-standing insistence that there is only the continental shelf delimitation dispute leads to a restrictive approach. Greece submits the issue as such to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which implies  one way of settlement. On the other hand, Turkey insists that there are many disputes such as the title to certain islets, the violation of the demilitarized status of the eastern Aegean islands, the illegitimate attempt to extend the Greek territorial waters beyond the current six miles, and the illegal extension of the Greek national airspace which is four miles wider than its territorial waters. Turkey’s perspective is that all these issues should be negotiated as a whole with any unresolved dispute eventually being brought to international adjudication.

With this approach Turkey insists that Greece acknowledges all the existing disputes that are key to a sincere negotiation. The next step, according to Turkey, would be bringing the unresolved disputes to the international courts in order to find durable solutions acceptable to both sides. However, Turkey’s stance is regarded by Greece as refusing to go to international adjudication, which is actually not the case.

The Greek obstructions

The first concrete sign of Greece’s single-dispute approach was to unilaterally submit the continental shelf dispute to the ICJ in 1976. The court ruled that it lacked jurisdiction to handle the case due to the lack of Turkey’s consent. This move is used by Greece to argue that Turkey is “against a legal settlement.”

The picture is, however, quite the opposite. Greece obstructed the process of finding a legitimate solution by bringing the dispute to the ICJ unilaterally. This is unequivocally evidenced in Greece’s 2015 declaration whereby it announced that it recognizes the compulsory jurisdiction of the ICJ ipso facto and without special agreement in relation to all legal disputes with any other state accepting the same obligation.

At the same time, Greece puts quite comprehensive restrictions on the compulsory jurisdiction of the ICJ. The first exception covers “any dispute relating to military activities and measures taken by the Hellenic Republic for the protection of its sovereignty and territorial integrity, for national defense purposes, as well as for the protection of its national security.”

This exception is vague and ambiguous enough that any issue which constitutes a dispute between Turkey and Greece could fall under its jurisdiction—therefore, all bilateral disputes can be excluded from the jurisdiction of the ICJ, thus obstructing the way to judicial means.

Greece goes even further by putting a further exception: “[a]ny dispute concerning State boundaries or sovereignty over the territory of the Hellenic Republic, including any dispute over the breadth and limits of its territorial sea and its airspace” is to be excluded from the compulsory jurisdiction of the ICJ.

This exception directly refers to the disputes in the Aegean Sea that Greece refuses to acknowledge. These are the disputes over the extent of the Greek national airspace, the territorial waters, and the delimitation of the Aegean continental shelf.

A third exception includes two categories of states with which Greece encounters disputes. First, the exemption prevents Greece from accepting the jurisdiction of the ICJ in regard to states which have accepted the the compulsory jurisdiction of the court “only in relation to that dispute.” Secondly, states which have accepted the compulsory jurisdiction of the court “less than twelve months prior to the filing of the application” are also excluded.

These restrictions are far-reaching because any issue which does not fall under the first two exceptions would still be excluded due to the fact that the other side has accepted the compulsory jurisdiction only in relation to that dispute or has accepted the jurisdiction less than a year prior to the filing of the ICJ application.

Reflections on the settlement of the Turkish-Greek disputes

Contrary to the distorted perception successfully created by Greece, it is not Turkey but Greece that has closed the doors to international jurisdiction as a way of settling Aegean disputes.

A review of the Greek declaration demonstrates that Greece excludes all the Aegean disputes from the jurisdiction of the ICJ. This is even true for the continental shelf dispute for which Greece once turned to the ICJ. The Greek refusal to go to the ICJ is so strong that the declaration lists the disputes by name such as the extent of the Greek national airspace, the territorial waters, and the delimitation of the Aegean continental shelf.

Ironically, Greece does not give any chance to negotiation either. Despite many meetings and even a process of talks initiated in 2002, which lasted for 14 years, all the meetings were declared by Greece as “exploratory.” The underlying reason behind the failure of the talks is the Greek refusal to acknowledge the disputes as real and existing.

Despite its limited capacity, Greece assumes itself to be a major playmaker in regional politics, and thus follows an aggressive foreign policy towards Turkey. It’s worth asking why Greece pursues this strategy and what it hopes to achieve.

Neorealism, also known as structural realism in International Relations, offers a simple answer to this question: “Greece is trying to balance Turkey.” Drawing on Kenneth Waltz, the pioneer of the Neorealist School, states try to balance other states, which they lag behind, or try to limit others’ ability to some extent by resorting to internal balancing and/or external balancing mechanisms.

Internal balancing is the first and most common method of a balancing strategy. This happens as states strengthen their material capacity and power, and when they try to survive by their own means in the anarchic world system. If this is not enough, they resort to external balancing either to defend themselves or to minimize the threats they face. This generally occurs when states look to form alliances with stronger states. In this regard, Greece applies both internal and external balancing methods in order to counterbalance Turkey.

Initiatives for internal balancing

Following the Kardak (Imia) crisis with Turkey in 1996, Greece launched an armament program as part of an internal balancing against Turkey and came a long way towards this purpose. However, it temporarily paused the program due to the 2008 economic crisis and its effects.

Since Greece’s domestic and national defense industry is weaker than Turkey’s, the country needs the support of other nations.

Thanks to the relative economic recovery in recent years and due to the current high tension in the Eastern Mediterranean, Greece resumed its armament program. In order to counterbalance Turkey, it launched a new armament and military modernization program. The Athens administration increased its armament expenditures fivefold in 2021 compared to 2020, and launched a 10-year armament program worth 10 billion euros.

Since Greece’s domestic and national defense industry is weaker than Turkey’s, the country needs the support of other nations. For example, Greece ordered a total of 18 fighter jets from France last year, with a cost of 2.3 billion euros. In 2021, it signed a contract to buy three frigates from France. Again in the same year, it purchased four warships worth $6.9 billion and signed an agreement with the U.S. for the modernization of its existing frigates worth $2.5 billion. These examples indicate that since Greece is incapable of modernizing its army by using its own sources, it needs outside support to activate its internal balancing elements.

Aside from the French and American military support, Greece uses its EU membership as a political and economic leverage against Turkey with the unconditional support of the GCA as its main ally in the region. So much so that Greece, acting together with the GCA, imposed sanctions on Turkey for its activities in the Eastern Mediterranean by using the EU’s legislative bodies, the European Parliament and the European Council. However, Turkey has not compromised its stance at the table and on the ground, and has insisted on protecting its rights in the region.

Can Greek counterbalance against Turkey work?

The question now is whether Greece will succeed in counterbalancing Turkey. In terms of internal balancing, Greece has almost no chance. There are two reasons for this. The first is related to Turkey’s current capacity which is incomparably greater than Greece’s. So much so that according to the rounded Armed Forces data, Greece, with a population of 11 million, has 100,000 active soldiers and an annual defense budget of $5 billion. Turkey, with a population of 85 million, has 350,000 active soldiers and an annual defense budget of $20 billion.

Greece has 1,300 tanks, 3,400 armored vehicles, and 1,200 artilleries whereas Turkey has 3,000 tanks, 11,500 armored vehicles, and 2,500 artilleries.

All of Greece’s land and air forces lag behind Turkey’s. For instance, in terms of ground power Greece has 1,300 tanks, 3,400 armored vehicles, and 1,200 artilleries whereas Turkey has 3,000 tanks, 11,500 armored vehicles, and 2,500 artilleries. Likewise, although Greece is rapidly modernizing its air power, it cannot compete with Turkey in this field either. In terms of the most important elements of air power, Greece has 600 aircraft, 200 multirole aircraft, and 270 helicopters whereas Turkey has 1,500 aircraft, 250 multirole aircraft, and 650 helicopters.

Moreover, while Greece does not have any armed unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs) in its inventory, Turkey has 170 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and UCAVs, and almost all of them are produced domestically. These UAVs and UCAVs are Turkey’s strong trump card: they are battle-proven and have proven to be game changers in conflict zones such as Syria, Nagorno-Karabakh, and Libya. As for naval power, Turkey and Greece have more or less similar numbers of warships, frigates, and submarines. Overall, it is not possible for Greece to compete with Turkey in terms of total military power – at least not on its own.

Turkey and Greece are members of NATO and therefore Greece’s repertoire of moves against Turkey is limited.

The second pillar of Greece’s balancing strategy against Turkey is a relatively more functional deterring capacity. Undoubtedly Athens enjoys a high-level military cooperation with the U.S. and also benefits from the advantage of EU membership vis-à-vis Turkey, which is an EU candidate country. However, both Turkey and Greece are members of NATO and therefore Greece’s repertoire of moves against Turkey is limited.

It should never be forgotten that relations between states are interest-oriented and may change according to new conjunctures. Although Athens seems to have “secured” the support of the U.S. and France, nobody can know how long this alliance will last. In fact, the “AUKUS incident” experienced by France recently stands out as an example of how states can act against their allies when their interests are in question. Accordingly, Turkey’s determined stance to protect its rights in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean can foil Athens’s attempts to counterbalance Turkey politically, militarily, and economically.

To summarize, the Greek aggressive foreign policy to counterbalance Turkey pushes the Athens administration toward an extensive armament project and the modernization of its army. Greece has strengthened its cooperation with the U.S. and France and secured the political and economic backing of the European Union.

However, given the fact that the Turkish army is getting stronger every year by relying on its own domestic and national capacity, and given that Athens’s cooperation with France and the U.S. is susceptible to change in the long run, Greece may face disappointment in the future. Greek initiatives carry the risks of creating further tension and serious consequences if the country opts to lead Turkey toward security dilemmas instead of looking for ways to cooperate and establish permanent peace.

Turkey and Greece have many differences which gain new dimensions through regional and international incidents. It is a curious question whether there could ever be a path toward a long-term dialogue between the two nations and a sustainable solution to their differences. So far, to promote dialogue and peaceful settlement, third parties such as the EU, the U.S., and NATO have played important roles. Some observers argue that the Greek-Turkish NATO partnership has kept the bilateral problems under control, while others think that the post-World War II order and the U.S. role in Greek-Turkish disputes have worsened the situation.

A number of experts believe the EU still has the potential to push Greece and Turkey to reach a solution and others argue that the EU created further tension and turbulence by recognizing the membership of the Greek Cypriot government as representative of the whole island before a resolution to the conflict had been reached. What is certain, however, is that the role of third parties in Greek-Turkish disagreements will determine to a great extent the success of the bilateral talks. Regional and global actors will play a decisive role in the disputed matters according to their interest definitions or priorities.

Exploratory talks between Turkey and Greece started after a crisis between the two countries at the end of the 1990s. Talks and rapprochement were stimulated when Turkey’s EU initiative for accession was supported by Greece. Turkey and Greece have held 60 rounds of talks over 14 years. However, rivalry in the Eastern Mediterranean turned the Aegean crises into a larger problem premised on the delimitation of maritime borders and especially in relation to the islands near Turkey’s coast.

Bilateral relations deteriorated in the 2010s, not because of the delimitation of the maritime borders, but due to the July 15, 2016 coup attempt in Turkey and the Gülenists who sought refuge in Greece. After the coup attempt, exploratory talks were hindered by Greece’s refusal to extradite the Gülenists to Turkey. Moreover, other regional problems poisoned the bilateral disagreements, such as the Syrian civil war and the flow of immigrants to the Aegean Sea and the region of Evros in Greece.

These new problems are no longer excluded from the agenda of the bilateral relations. Greece continued the EU-ization of Greek foreign policy priorities and Turkey rejected any kind of fait accompli. In this context, Greece’s naval exercises with the inclusion of numerous third actors as a show of strength and Turkey’s exploration ships in the Eastern Mediterranean will be regarded as the continuation of previous problems and are seen as having a multilateral character.

Recently, the most prominent issue in the Eastern Mediterranean has been the drilling activities around the island of Cyprus. Officially, this is out of the frame of exploratory talks between Greece and Turkey, but there is no doubt that the issue of Cyprus has always been poisonous for Greek-Turkish relations. In 2003, the Greek Cypriot leadership signed a maritime deal with Egypt for gas exploration in the Eastern Mediterranean.

The deal aimed to create an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) that complicated the Cyprus problem of how to share sovereignty between Greek and Turkish Cypriots. Greeks belittle the Cyprus problem reducing it to “occupation” in reference to the 1974 Turkish operation on the island after the brutal murders of Turkish Cypriot civilians by the Greek Cypriot militias backed by the Greek military junta with an idea of uniting the island with Greece. The real cause of the problem has been kept hidden: what will the rights of the Turkish Cypriots be?

In the 1960 constitution, Turkish Cypriots had the same rights as Greek Cypriots as constituent citizens of the Republic of Cyprus (RoC). Problems were exacerbated when the Greek side argued that the number of Greek Cypriots were higher than their Turkish counterparts, and therefore Turkish Cypriots should not have equal rights and that this should be addressed by introducing several amendments in the founding constitution.

Despite the existence of EU mechanisms, the exclusion of Turkey from all multilateral platforms and a maximalist insistence on using these platforms and mechanisms to achieve Greek national priorities are still the dominant attitudes in the Eastern Mediterranean. This irreconcilable attitude was reflected in the use of maps such as the Seville Map to decide the delimitation of the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) in international summits – a move that triggered Turkey’s reaction.

The most recent example of Greece’s efforts to exclude and marginalize Turkey from international platforms is the Philia Forum.

In 2006, the concept of “Blue Homeland” (Mavi Vatan) which includes Turkey’s EEZ was introduced by Admiral Cem Gürdeniz. With the studies of Turkish Navy Commander Cihat Yaycı, in 2010, the concept became a doctrine (of the Turkish Republic). The first application of Blue Homeland came in 2017 when Turkey started to send seismic exploration ships to the region. The peak in the tensions in Greek-Turkish relations came when Turkey signed a delimitation agreement with Libya on November 28, 2019. Today, Turkey’s Eastern Mediterranean policy depends on the Turkey-Libya EEZ deal that challenges  the Mediterranean Energy Plan of Israel, Cyprus, and Greece.

In 2013, the EastMed pipeline project was designed under the European Commission Regulation without referring to any probable cooperation with Turkey and Turkish Cypriots. This was taken as another sign of how Greece tries to use its EU membership to its national advantage. The most recent example of Greece’s efforts to exclude and marginalize Turkey from international platforms is the Philia Forum. The Greek government aims to utilize Turkey’s tensions with several regional countries in order to delegitimize and minimize Turkey’s rightful demands and rights in the Mediterranean.

As part of this strategy, the Greek government wants to find a solution to the delimitation issue with other neighboring countries such as the agreements with Italy on June 6, and with Egypt on August 6,  2020. The Albanian-Greek EEZ border had several problems despite continuous efforts since 2009. In 2018, the Tsipras government tried to push the negotiations with no success. On October 20, 2020, Albanian and Greek authorities confirmed that they had reached an agreement to take the issue to The Hague.

As a result of the rising tension in the Eastern Mediterranean, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg took the initiative to reduce the risk of incidents between the Greek and Turkish navies. With the support of Germany, Turkey and Greece resumed exploratory talks in Istanbul on January 26, 2021 with the hope to create a base for bilateral negotiations after months of tensions in the Eastern Mediterranean. After a five-year break, the 61st Round of Exploratory Talks were launched in the hope of supporting the EU efforts to promote a positive agenda in Turkish-EU relations.

Turkish Deputy Foreign Minister Sedat Önal and retired Greek diplomat Pavlos Apostolidis represented their countries at the negotiation table. However, both sides approach each other reluctantly and do not act in good faith. To gain diplomatic benefits, both try to project the image of a peaceful actor towards the international community. Some analysts say diplomats know how to solve the problems in the Aegean Sea while others claim no progress is being made. However, making progress in the exploratory talks is now a matter of a deeper question.

The relations between Greece and Turkey are part of the EU-Turkey relations. Greek officials state it clearly, and believe that the European Union can provide a solid victory for Greece by implementing sanctions against Turkey. On the other hand, Turkey wants a positive agenda – but the question is at what expense. Turkey accuses the EU countries of being unjust but is equally aware that the solution will come through an international meeting which must include all actors in the Eastern Mediterranean. So, the lack of trust and the existence of many different actors with a range of different priorities make the exploratory talks less promising in terms of reaching a comprehensive resolution in the near future.

Third parties play an important role in the game and according to Turkey it is not a fair game. This is the main reason why Turkey is active in the field with military exercises that manifest its decisiveness to preserve its maritime borders. However, the beginning of the exploratory talks shows that both Greece and Turkey do not want to increase the tension further. This creates a motivation to back the dialogue channels. To this day, the only reliable method to solve the existing problems between Turkey and Greece is peaceful negotiations through fair international summits with the participation of all relevant actors.