Agreeing on commonly accepted rules is a necessary precondition
Last Wednesday, at the NATO summit in Vilnius, the Greek prime minister and the Turkish president laid the foundations to restart the two countries’ bilateral relations. For the first time, the meeting between the two leaders meets all the conditions to be crowned with success, for at least four reasons: a) Erdogan had emerged as the protagonist of the summit, having given his consent to Sweden’s NATO membership and received a strong commitment from US President Joe Biden that he would do everything in his power to proceed with the sale of 40 F-16 fighter jets and the modernization of its existing warplanes; b) Mitsotakis and Erdogan are now free and powerful, with enough time to move flexibly and take, if necessary, difficult decisions (for their voters); c) the climate is clearly improved, both because of the suspension of violations of Greek airspace and overflights in the past four months and, respectively, Turkey’s satisfaction with the closure of the Lavrio migrant camp, which it had claimed was a hotbed of Kurdish extremists; and d) Erdogan’s willingness to rewarm his relationship with the West – due to the state of his country’s economy – and obviously the good news from his meeting with the Greek premier, that would add to the image of a Turkey that, on the surface, is changing tack, becoming more reliable and less problematic for its western partners.
This is where the “key” lies to relations both between Turkey and the West and between Ankara and Athens: in reliability, in the gradual establishment of a climate of trust against the evident mutual mistrust, and in consistency. Very few, out-of-touch people trust the words of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and they mostly confuse their wishful thinking with reality, considering that his attitude at the recent NATO summit is enough to bring Turkey back into the Western fold.
This view is extremely naive, as it ignores what has happened inside Turkey in the last 20 years, when its identity changed drastically and Turkish society, as well as the elite, was significantly imbued with perceptions that deviate from the dominant Western way of thinking. It also shows that they cannot “read” Erdogan correctly, as he has changed the politics of his country and by extension its foreign policy, judging that its autonomy from the West and the balance between it and the East widens – rather than diminishes – the room for political maneuvers. And that’s not going to change. Already, since Vilnius, despite the recent Ankara-Moscow confrontation over the repatriation of Azov commanders to Ukraine, the Turkish president has noted that NATO’s actions should not be directed against any third power – meaning Russia – but also sending a message to China, since the intention of the North Atlantic Alliance is to expand its bases in Asia.
Therefore it remains to be seen just how sincere Erdogan’s intentions are, and how long this positive shift will last. We, for our part, have to exhaust all our options, betting or hoping that his need to shake up the economy by restoring market confidence and attracting investment will put him on the right track – whatever that will look like. The question, of course, is how his arrogant attitude and hegemonic ambitions of the so-called “borders of his heart” and the “Blue Homeland” doctrine will be moderated, and certainly if this rapprochement with the West ultimately has depth and continuity. For as long as it lasts, the Greek side has the possibility to advance its positions through EU-Turkish and American-Turkish relations, given that we have managed to get Washington and European capitals to take them into account. Without overestimating the assistance of our partners and allies in correcting Turkey’s policy, and even more so in changing the Turkish agenda, we must invest in the conditionality that will arise if Erdogan insists on reviving Turkey’s EU accession process, but also in our access to the US.
The ‘key’ to relations both between Turkey and the West and between Ankara and Athens lies in reliability, the gradual establishment of a climate of trust and in consistency
The US Congress and the European procedures will not provide a solution to the Greek-Turkish issues; however, they will show and pave the way for Turkey’s normalization, to create the conditions for a scenario that today seems distant, and is nothing more than the final settlement of the exclusive economic zone and continental shelf in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean. This presupposes hard and continuous negotiations with both the US and the EU, for example the insistence of having rules in place instead of a transactional policy, which, sooner or later, will bring us back to the status quo ante.
The way to gradually lift the reservations on both sides is a binding framework with a detailed roadmap, so that each side can check the other based on their commitments and compliance. That is why it is necessary to accept a set of commonly accepted rules: So that the two countries – Greece and Turkey – and the two sides – the West and Turkey – can function, and any misinterpretations and deviations from the roadmap are not referred to some distant future or remain without consequences. The clearer and better agreed the boundaries are, the smaller the chances that intentional deviations will not be diagnosed in time. That is the only way to ensure that a restart in bilateral relations will be based on solid and not flimsy ground.
Constantinos Filis is the director of the Institute of Global Affairs, associate professor at the American College of Greece.
