A Warning on Turkey’s Expansionism Is Sounded by Defense Minister of Greece

ATHENS — When the Turkish intelligence chief, Ibrahim Kalin, visited Damascus last week, it wasn’t to fire up his Instagram feed, if he has one. Antennae at Athens and possibly elsewhere shot up, though, as Mr. Kalin met with Syria’s caretaker prime minister, Mohammad al-Bashir, and Qatar’s head of state security. This marked the first known visit by a senior foreign official to Damascus since President Bashar Al-Assad’s ouster on December 8.By now it is widely known that President Erdogan backed the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham rebels who toppled the despot of Damascus. The wild card is just how much influence Ankara will wield over the new Syria.It could be considerable. Last week, the HTS leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani told Al Jazeera that “the Turks are the closest friends of our people.” Those are words seldom heard in another country with which Turkey shares a border — fellow member of the North Atlantic Treaty, Greece.Quite the opposite. In a Sunday interview with the Greek newspaper To Vima, Greece’s defense minister, Nikos Dendias, said that “What I observe in Turkish rhetoric and what saddens me is the continuous expansion of Turkish claims.” Mr. Dendias was referring not specifically to Syria but to something Turkey calls its “Blue Homeland” doctrine, which concerns mainly maritime claims but is also seen as a springboard for Ankara’s wider geopolitical aims. Greece and Turkey have long been at loggerheads over exclusive economic zones, or EEZs, in the Mediterranean — something of enormous significance for the exploitation of energy resources under the seabed. “It is certainly obvious that Turkey currently has an increased role in Syria and is the second coastal country in the Mediterranean in which, after Libya, it is acquiring an increased role,” Mr. Dendias stated. In 2019, Turkey and Libya — which Mr. Dendias calls “a failed state” — signed a memorandum to establish a new EEZ in the eastern Mediterranean. The problem is that it would conflict with parts of the sea that front some Greek islands like Crete. Greece considers the memorandum to be void, while Egypt called it illegal. Any country with a Mediterranean coastline is linked. A Turkey emboldened by newfound influence in Syria could leverage that latent power down the road in unforeseen ways. The Greek foreign minister seemed to acknowledge this by evoking “a new reality in Syria,” adding that “no one will mourn the Assad regime” but that “a successor state to a bad reality is not always better.”The nascent Turkish dominance in the troubled northern precincts of the Levant can be seen in the broader scheme of things a positive development if it comes at the expense of Iranian influence in the region. It is for that reason also less likely to perturb the other power player in the region, Israel. However, the bloody history that Asia Minor shares with Europe antedates that between Syria and Israel or, for that matter, between America and any other country in the region. In this respect, and especially for European powers like Greece, friction between the American-backed Syrian Democratic Forces and the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army in northern Syria is largely peripheral to what could actually be the opening salvos of a renewed clash of civilizations.Nobody claims that Turkey is eyeing fresh territory south of its border, and some fears that Syria could become a Turkish protectorate can be overblown. However, 2024 will be remembered as the year the tables turned in Syria — and the view from Ankara is markedly different from the one at Athens.At Athens, birthplace of democracy, the outlook heading into 2025 is less than exuberant. The head of the Greek opposition party, the Panhellenic Socialist Movement, Nikos Androulakis, said at at foreign policy parley last week that “if a regime is created in Syria that will be a satellite of Turkey, we may have a new Turkish-Libyan pact — this will show that time is not working in our favor.”Brussels is sitting this out. Mr. Dendias, for his part, laments that “the European Union does not exist in this equation.” The EU, he tactfully observes, “is theoretically the greatest pole of strategic power near Syria” but “has ended up not radiating power.”Will this swirling Mediterranean angst have any bearing on the warp and weft of the new government of former Islamist rebels at Damascus? Doubtful, although the chessboard of the Middle East may not look the same by this time next year.With recovering dictator Bashar Al-Assad holed up at Moscow and Russia now beating a retreat from Syria, that is not necessarily a bad thing, even if ultimately it is Turkey that stands to benefit. That might be more palatable to some in the West if Mr. Erdogan were to turn over a kinder, gentler leaf — an unlikely prospect before his term ends in 2028.

A Warning on Turkey’s Expansionism Is Sounded by Defense Minister of Greece

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