|
The
Brownstone Journal >>
Issues >> Vol.
IX Spring 2000
The Aegean Sea Conflict: A Recent Perspective
Antonios Clapsis (CAS XX) comes from
Westwood, Massachusetts. He is a sophomore in CAS, studying
international relations with a concentration in foreign policy
and security studies. Tony is a recipient of the Trustee Scholarship,
and he likes swimming in the Aegean.
It is in the power of ethnic conflict that the
post-Cold War decade has found its most telling characteristic.
Its manifestations range from the killing fields of Rwanda of
Kosovo and the mountains of Chechnya. But there is hope. In
December of 1999 the Greek and Turkish governments took drastic
reconciliatory steps in approaching a situation where common
interests in the context of the European Union may prevail over
centuries-old struggle. Public opinion debates, disputes over
mineral resources, and territorial questions in the unique geography
of the Aegean Sea are giving way to changing attitudes and policies
of cooperation. From the brink of war three years ago over the
continental shelf, Greece and Turkey are fast approaching the
brink of lasting peace.
The Greeks call it Imia – for the Turks it is Kardak. On December
26, l996 the Turkish cargo boat Figen Akat ran aground on this
twin set of barren rocks located 3.65 nautical miles off of
the Turkish coast, and l.9 nautical miles from the Greek island
of Kalolimnos. The Greek navy was quick to provide assistance
to the ship, which they believed to be in their territorial
waters. The Turkish captain refused their help, claiming that
he was in Turkish territory. A compromise was reached, and the
Figen Akat was set free by a Greek tugboat and towed back to
the Turkish port of Golluk.
The tugboat did not tug a ship that had run aground, it carried
the seeds of a major international conflict that would reach
the brink of war. On December 29th, the Turkish government issued
a verbal note to the Greck embassy, claiming sovereignty over
the Greek island of Imia, which it called Kardak. It was Turkey's
first such claim to the territory. On January l0th, the Greek
government responded with its own verbal note, rejecting Turkey’s
claim to the island on the basis of international law. The issue
would soon reach a head with a high-stakes game of capture the
flag.
The mayor of the neighboring Greek island of Kalymnos had a
Greek flag hoisted up on the island following the Figen Akat’s
questioning of its ownership. On the 27th, journalists from
the Turkish daily newspaper Hurriyet arrived by helicopter in
Imia and ripped down the blue and white Greek flag, replacing
it with the Turkish colors.
The Greek government responded promptly, dispatching a unit
of nine commandos the next day to restore the Greek flag to
its position on the island. Turkey, in turn, dispatched missile
patrol boats, a frigate and other vessels to the Aegean to protest
the Greek action. Not to be outdone, Greece carne back with
more commandos, submarines, helicopters and twelve frigates.
As Turkey breached the Greek naval ring around the islands and
landed its own troops on the rocks on January 30th, the two
rivals faced each other down well into the early morning hours
of January 3lst. The United Stales, led by President Bill Clinton
and Secretary of State Warren Christopher, placed calls to the
premiers of both Greece and Turkey that night. Their calls were
followed up by Richard Holbrooke, Assistant Secretary of State
for European Affairs, and other top American officials. “A mutual
withdrawal was negotiated. General Shalikashvili sent American
planes overhead to monitor it. Both countries gave their guarantees
to the U.S., saying they would not initiate any additional action
in the area,” said Holbrooke.
A major international crisis between the two countries on NATO’s
southeastern flank was narrowly averted. Holbrooke castigated
both Greece and Turkey for fighting over “two rocks used for
grazing goats.” The United States ensured that the situation
was restored to the status quo ante, a status quo that was inherently
unstable because the causes of the crisis were never confronted.
The desire for stability in the Aegean motivated the US in this
case, but that stability could never be attained unless the
fundamental conflict between the two countries in the area was
addressed.
The conflict as such is a result of the peculiar geography of
the Aegean Sea, and the most basic historical struggles between
the peoples of Greece and Turkey. It is a product of the development
of international law regarding the sea and the delimitation
of the continental shelf, and the extent to which public opinion
in both countries can influence the interpretation of those
laws. These factors intertwined to create a powderkeg in the
Aegean that almost exploded when the Figen Akat ran aground
on a barren ten-acre rock.
The two countries face each other from across the Aegcan Sea,
which acts to create a “semi-enclosed” area between the two
nations. The Greek Peloponnese, Crete, and Rhodes produce an
arc of division that separates the Aegean from the rest of the
Mediterranean Sea. The Aegean serves as an important international
sea-route for traffic passing through the Dardanelles and into
the Black Sea. It is dotted with over 2,383 islands and islets,
which, with the exception of Gokceada, Bozcaada, and the Rabbit
Islands at the entrance to the Dardanelles, all fall under Greek
sovereignty. Its geographical conditions have turned the Aegean
into a Greco-Turkish battlefield.
The cultural war began when the Turkish armies of the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries swept out of Asia Minor and conquered
vast parts of the Middle East and the Balkans. In 1453, they
took Constantinople, ending the glorious age of the Byzantine
Empire and ushering in the Ottoman rule over the Greeks. More
importantly than Ottoman victory over the Greek, it was a Moslem
victory over the Christian in the epicenter of eastern Christendom
and at the crossroads of Europe and Asia. The Moslem Turk, newly
thrust into Europe but never truly feeling a part of it, underwent
a crisis of identity with which he continues to struggle. The
Ottomans would rule over the Greeks until l831, when the Greek
quest for independence was finally achieved. The formation of
the Greek state would be a gradual process, not to be completed
until after World War II.
The Treaty of Lausanne in l923 delimited the frontier between
the two countries. It fixed the land frontier on a line running
northward through Thrace to Adrianople, while the whole of Anatolia
was ceded to Turkey. Greece also received the islands of Lemnos,
Lesbos, Chios, Samos and Icaria. The Treaty of Paris in 1947
transferred the Dodecanese islands and their “adjacent islets”
to Greek control, thus completing the formation of the modern
Greek state.
From their period of occupation throughout the period of state
formation, the Greeks had evinced an unabating hostility towards
Turkey that they have been unable to relinquish. “In Greece
most things evil and aggressive are identified with Turkey and
the Turks. Perhaps the most logical explanation is that of fear–fear
of a much bigger neighbor with a history of conquest and consequently
of animosity towards Greece.” That fear permeates the mentality
and invades the policies of the current Greek nation-state.
Loukas Tsoukalis argues that “The pathology of Greek foreign
policy starts with a strong sense of insecurity, which sometimes
turns into a siege mentality, in a country that is, admittedly,
surrounded by difficult neighbors. This sense of insecurity,
which is certainly not created out of nothing, is cultivated
by a sensationalist press and other mass media.”
For their part, the Turkish people have their own bias toward
the Greeks. “To some extent the Turks have an inferiority complex
about the Greeks, chiefly because they seem to consider [the
latter] more Western.” This attitude is a function of the Turkish
struggle for an international identity, a struggle which in
part has defined Turkish history of the last half century. It
points to Turkey's attempts to “choose” to enter Europe rather
than remain a principal member of Asia. According to a brief
prepared by the Congressional Research Service. Turkey's joining
the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1952 was “a logical
extension of the Europeanization and modernization goals of
Turkey as espoused by Ataturk in the 1920s and pursued by Turkish
leaders ever since.”
The United Stales has consciously sought to reinforce and encourage
Turkey's Western orientation in order to serve its own security
interests in the region. “The maintenance of Turkey's role in
NATO and the stability of Turkey's parliamentary system serve,
in a limited fashion, and should continue to serve overall U.S.
strategic and diplomatic objectives in the Middle East.” From
combating communism with Jupiter missiles during the Cold War
to conducting bombing raids against Saddam Hussein. Turkish
military cooperation has been critical to the success of American
strategic objectives. The United States' attempt to preserve
the status quo in the Aegean was an attempt to restore the stability
that has allowed America to fulfill its objectives. To achieve
lasting peace and move Turkey into Europe would require that
both Grecce and Turkey transcend their historical animosity
and work toward resolving the causes of the Imian dispute.
Specifically, those causes lie in the questions of ownership
of the territorial waters and mineral resources of the Aegean.
Following the Arab oil embargo and a steep rise in petroleum
prices after the October Arab-Israeli war of l973, Turkey granted
a number of permits to its state petroleum company to probe
for oil in an area west of a number of Greek islands. Just a
few weeks after the issuing of those permits, Greece discovered
modest supplies of oil off of the island of Thassos. The oil
find increased both Greece's and Turkey's economic interest
in the Aegean Sea end ignited the battle of international law
and public opinion through which Greece and Turkey would look
to settle their differences.
Both the mainland and the islands are afforded their own sovereign
territorial waters. Most countries adopted a six-mile territorial
sea limit around both mainland and islands in the I920s. Because
of the Aegean's enclosed nature, this means that 35% of the
Aegean is Greek territorial sea, 8.8% is Turkish, and the remainder
is designated as international waters. Current international
law recognizes a twelve-mile limit, but Turkey has stated that
a Greece declaration of twelve miles would be a casus belli
for war. Greece indicated it has no intention of extending its
territorial sea limit, though she reserved the right to do so
in the future. If Greece were to assert its twelve mile right,
and Turkey were to follow, then Greece's share of the territorial
waters would rise sharply to 63.9% while Turkey's would be just
10%. More importantly, a Greek extension would mean that all
ships sailing westwards from Turkish Aegean ports would have
to pass through Greek territorial waters.
Ultimately, what pushed Greece and Turkey towards war was the
debate over mineral resources in the continental shelf beyond
the territorial sea limit. The continental shelf is the relatively
shallow belt of sea-bottom bordering the land, the outer edge
of which rapidly falls to the deep ocean floor. Starting in
1958 with the Geneva convention on the Continental Shelf of
the First United Nations Conference On the Law of the Sea, and
subsequently through the Third United Nations Conference of
the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS III) in l982, coastal states were
given the right to exploit the continental shelf in the submarine
area adjacent to islands and beyond the limit of their territorial
sea. The Turks never signed either of the agreements, because
they recognized that granting shelf rights to islands would
preclude them from shelf rights in the Aegean.
Turkey’s fundamental stance on the continental shelf issue is
that due to the unique nature of the Aegean Sea, both Greece
and Turkey must share in its resources. It has sought either
to transform the science and international law of UNCLOS III
into a new science and a new seabed law, or at least to receive
an exceptional status. Turkey believes that the Aegean islands
do not have their own continental shelves because intervening
international waters make the islands discontinuous from the
Greek mainland. It also believes that regardless of island ownership,
Turkey should receive half of the continental shelf in the Aegean
due to its unique status as a Greco-Turkish sea. “In the Turkish
view, the Greek islands in the eastern Aegean lie within Turkey's
continental shelf which extends naturally from the analogical
peninsula.” Turkey does not believe that these islands, which
lie within its “natural” continental shelf, can possess a continental
shelf of their own. In this argument of equity that Turkey was
making, it could cite an encouraging decision by the International
Court of Justice (ICJ) in the 1969 North Sea Continental Shelf
case.
The decision was part of a larger series in which the ICJ recognized
special circumstances where islands could not have their own
continental shelves. This continued in the 1977 Anglo-French
Continental Shelf case, in which the Court enclaved the Channel
Islands of Britain which lie close to France’s coastline. In
effect, while recognizing the sovereignty and the territorial
waters of those islands, the ICJ ruled that they do not have
their own continental shelf because they lie too close to the
French coastline and too far from that of Great Britain.
Greece believes that the Geneva Convention and UNCLOS III demonstrate
that the islands have their own shelf, and that the Aegean islands
form a continuum with the Greek mainland that would be destroyed
if Turkey were granted shelf rights over any areas between the
islands and the Greek mainland. Even though Turkey did not sign
the Geneva Convention or UNCLOS III, Greece has pointed to opinions
of the International Court of Justice which establish the Geneva
as international customary law. Turkey must therefore be held
accountable under its standards, including those on the continental
shelf.
In February 1975, under the caretaker government of Premier
Sadi Irmak, Turkey acquiesced to Greek desires for arbitration
by the International Court of Justice at The Hague on the continental
shelf issue. The Greeks wanted the International Court to arbitrate
not only because a “compromise would encounter less opposition
if it were handed down by an external authority,” but also because
they believed they were right. Turkey, for its part, had reasons
to be encouraged by the court’s recent mood.
Irmak was replaced when a government under Justice Party leader
Superman Demirel was formed. Demirel, who continued to work
towards a legal settlement, was denounced by opposition leader
Bulent Eevit for allowing “the balance of power in the Aegean
to change against us” instead of starting by “creating Turkey's
legitimate rights to the Aegean seabed. This denunciation was
characteristic of Turkish politics. “Turkey has what are considered
true ‘opposition’ politics; there are two major parties with
no great philosophical differences. Whichever party is out of
power at a given time pursues a course of opposing whatever
the party in power advocates.” The next day, the Demirel government
announced that the Sizmik would be sent to conduct seismic research
in the waters off of Thassos. The Sivmik's purpose was not only
to assert the entirety of the Turkish claims to over 8 million
hectares of continental shelf in the Aegean, but also to conform
to the hawkish demands of the hard-line opposition.
The public opinion of both countries profoundly affected the
policies of Greece and Turkey. Underlying those opinions is
the classical hatred that has marked Greco-Turkish relations.
As Greek Premier George Papendrou would admit, “I may not believe
in a Turkish threat, you may not believe in a Turkish threat,
but the Grcek public believes in it, and that makes it Greek
reality and you have to deal with it in those terms.” This helped
explain Papandreou's call as a member of the opposition in l976
for the Greek government of Constantine Karamanlis to sink the
Sizmik. As Tozun Bahclleli argues, “The greatest setback to
the prospect of a Greek-Turkish settlement was dealt by Andreas
Papandreou’s PASOK government when it carne to power in 1981.
In opposition, Papandreou had made firmness in dealing with
the Turkish threat a major element of his party’s appeal.”
One of the most basic centripetal forces for any country consists
in uniting against a common enemy. This force has kept countless
states, otherwise torn by social or ethnic divisions, united
to reach a common purpose. The opposition parties in both Greece
and Turkey expropriated this right from the ruling party to
serve their own self-interest. Papandreou’s call to sink the
Sizmik in 1976 would have driven Greece and Turkey to catastrophic
war. His militant and jingoistic appeals to the Greek national
identity made forging eventual peace when he succeeded Karamanlis
much harder to achieve. Opposition leaders gained strength in
a hard-line approach to the other country, but when they came
to power they found that they were constrained by their own
propaganda. The hard-line approach was used in both Greece and
Turkey to undermine the ruling government so that the opposition
could gain power. But the militancy has lasting effects on the
national psyche. As Papandreou pointed out, when the Greek public
believes that the Turks are a threat, it is a reality to be
dealt with. When Papandreou bombarded the Greeks with negative
images about the Turks, their belief in the Turks as the “root
of all things evil” became stronger. Even if it was not a reality,
Papandreou’s militant nationalism made it Greek reality, and
as Premier he had to deal with it in those terms. The centripetal
nature of uniting against the common foe has damning repercussions
when used by the opposition party. Even when conciliation serves
the national self-interest, it cannot always be pursued because
the nation itself has lost sight of where its real interests
lie in the vision of hate with which they have been inculcated.
Under the Papandreou government, the two countries went to the
brink of war again in l987 over mineral rights in the Aegean.
The Turks authorized the Sizmik II to conduct more research
in disputed waters. Papandreou, in power since 198l and presented
with the first opportunity to show his resolve, threatened to
respond with full force to any Turkish violations of Greek waters.
This brinkmanship was escalated in the Imian crisis of 1996.
Rather than questioning the expanse of the continental shelf
or the width of the territorial sea. Turkey was challenging
the very sovereignty of Greece over the islands and islets of
the Aegean. The inherent instability in the resolution of the
Imian crisis is seen in the Turkish claim of 132 of Greece's
rocky Aegean islands by August of 1998, despite the cession
of those islands under the Treaty of Paris. The Turkish government
was creating its rights in the Aegean as Ecevit had urged it
to do in 1975.
What both Greece and Turkey had by August of l998 was a clear
understanding of their own rights but an insufficient grasp
of their interests. They could not conduct effective negotiations
to share the Aegean as the Caspian Sea countries could do that
same year. Russia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and
Iran were all negotiating over oil rights in the Caspian Sea.
From dividing the seabed into national sectors to holding the
mineral resources in common, these countries conducted earnest
negotiations aimed at reaching a compromise solution.
Rather than improve through negotiation, relations between Greece
and Turkey continued to deteriorate through confrontation. In
February of 1999, Turkish commandoes seized Kurdish rebel leader
Abdullah Ocalan in Kenya, where he had been under the protection
of Greek diplomats. This marked both the low point and the turning
point in Greco-Turkish relations. The Ocalan affair led to the
resignation of hard-line Greek foreign minister Thedoros Pangalos,
who in 1997 had described Turkey as “the bandit, murderer and
rapist.” In his place came George Papandreou, the son of former
Premier Andreas Papandreou, who in a little more than a year
would effect a fundamental reversal in Greek policy.
Ultimately, it was tragedy that would allow Papandreou and his
Turkish counterparts to accomplish this. A devastating earthquake
struck Turkey in August, killing at least 18,000 people. The
outpouring of public sympathy from Greece began the thaw in
Greco-Turkish relations. The reciprocation of support from Turkey
when a tremor hit Athens soon afterward furthered the goodwill
effort between the two countries.
Given the opportunity to lead public opinion rather than be
led by it, both Turkish and Greek leaders stepped up admirably.
They finally began to think in terms of their interests instead
of their absolute rights. At the European Union's December 1999
meeting in Helsinki, Greece formally dropped its veto of Turkish
accession to the European Union. If negotiated settlement could
not be reached, Turkey agreed to submit by 2004 any territorial
disputes against Greece to the International Court of Justice
at The Hague for arbitration. The two countries followed this
groundbreaking agreement with a series of bilateral accords
in crime, immigration, tourism, commerce and the environment.
Greece and Turkey were bridging the historic rift that had so
often led to the brink of war. “It is always impressive in politics
when you see people taking on the past, making very brave and
difficult decisions, and trying to chart a new future. As we
have seen in Northern Ireland, politics, courage, and character
are setting the agenda and that is the case heres” said Chris
Patten, former Tory Cabinet Minister now in charge of the European
Commission's foreign policy.
Ironically, it was the leadership of Papandreou and Ecevit that
took on the past. George Papandreou did what his father could
not, he made the Greek people realize that the Turks were no
longer a treat. Bulent Ecevit put aside his opposition to arbitration,
vocal since 1975, in his desire for Turkey to enter the European
Union and in pursuit of the common interests Greece and Turkey
share in the Aegean. They have at once overcome the fear Greeks
have towards the Turks and the inferiority the Turks feel towards
the Greeks. Integrating Turkey into the European Union has allowed
for progress unthinkable just a few years before. Ecevit and
Papandreou have altered the perceptions that each country has
towards each other and have chartered a new future of hope.
The Helsinki agreements and the bilateral accords which followed
are not as important as what they symbolized. They represented
the hope that the Aegean arms race in which Greece and Turkey
competed for decommissioned NATO weaponry and new tanks, warships
and aircraft will end. It is the mood of mutual cooperation
that will allow for arms reductions in two countries who spend
an average of 4.8% of their Gross National Products on military
expenditures, compared with 2.8% for the rest of the world.
Greece and Turkey still face obstacles to cooperation. In early
February, accusations flew in the Turkish media that Greek warplanes
interfered with the maneuvers of the Turkish airforce of the
Aegean. Greece in turn denied the claims and charged Turkey
with violating Greek national airspace. Turkey must also deal
with the contradictions inherent in its political geography.
It has chosen to enter Europe, but at what expense? It has begun
the process of Europeanization by allowing for greater freedom
of its Kurdish minority, by beginning talks of ending the death
penalty and making efforts to improve human rights.
To what extent Turkey can reconcile Europeanization with its
Asiatic heritage remains to be seen. However, is evident that
the integration of Turkey into the European framework gives
the Turkish government and the Turkish people the incentive
to continue recent developments. This incentive to change, together
with the new mood of reconciliation introduced by George Papandreou
in Greece, portends a future of cooperation and earnest efforts
by both countries to resolve their remaining differences. It
has shown that no matter how close they were to war in 1996,
both Greece and Turkey have chosen peace. TBJ
|
|
