Turkey’s lost memory and Germany
It is estimated that in the late 1930s, 45% of Germans were members of the Nazi Party or affiliated to Nazi organizations. Nevertheless, anyone who knew young Germans in the 1970s and 80s would have observed that none admitted to their families having had any involvement in this tragic chapter of German history and particularly […]
Why Erdogan’s Turkey is becoming “the sick man of Europe” again.
“We have a sick man on our hands, a man gravely ill, it will be a great misfortune if one of these days he slips through our hands, especially before the necessary arrangements are made.” The phrase is attributed to Tsar Nicholas. In 1853 he talked with the British ambassador in St. Petersburg about the […]
Why is the Oruc Reis back out at sea?
On September 22, Greece and Turkey announced that they would engage in exploratory talks. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is unlikely to have seen this particular development as a desirable conclusion to the 35-days crisis in the Eastern Mediterranean for a number of reasons. Maritime zones are the only topic on the agenda of the […]
35 days
Τhe second serious crisis in Greece’s relations with Turkey that the government of Kyriakos Mitsotakis had to deal with dragged on for an usually lengthy period, namely 35 days. Here are the main characteristics of that crisis: Objectives: Turkey, being the aggressor, set the basic parameters of the crisis. The aim of President Recep Tayyip […]
This beast that grows beside us
The Turkish Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) is one of the country’s most powerful public institutions. In 2002, when President Recep Tayyip Erodgan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) rose to power, it employed a staff of 72,000 people. Today it has 130,000 employees. Likewise, the funding it received from the state budget was 450 million […]
On the dialogue that will surely follow
Between 1974 and 2019, we had three major crises in Greek-Turkish relations. The shortest was the Imia standoff on January 30, 1996. It lasted 24 hours. The crisis of March 1987 lasted for about four days. The lengthiest crisis erupted when Turkey sent out the seismic survey ship Sismik in 1976. That crisis went on […]
A necessary agreement
From the signing of the Turkey-Libya agreement on maritime boundaries, it was clear that there had to be a response from the Greek side. The fact is that the above memorandum is completely illegal. International maritime law suggests that for there to be an agreement on maritime boundaries between nations they must have either adjacent […]
A potentially irksome Greece
After 1923 Greece and Turkey determined their place in the international system mostly through the prism of their bilateral relations. This was a result of Turkey’s longstanding decision to remain anchored to the West and to Europe. Greece was a key factor in these ties. The situation changed under the leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdogan. […]
Violations of Greek airspace and the root of the problem
The first Turkish violations of Greek airspace took place in May 1964 and were related to the tension over Cyprus at the time. They were followed by a hiatus of a couple of years and resumed from September to November of 1967, coming in the aftermath of a failed summit meeting in the Greek border […]
Turkey’s surprise tactics failed
Turkey has a long history of conducting extreme operations with its secret services. The most traumatic of these for us was against the Greek minority in Istanbul in September 1955. On August 21, 2013, it was accused of launching a deadly sarin gas attack on a Damascus suburb, killing hundreds. The aim of that operation […]