Turks doubling down on revisionist claims
The incident in July near Kasos in the southern Aegean which saw a Turkish naval mobilization was not not random, according to officials of the Turkish government who are loudly reiterating the rhetoric of the “Blue Homeland” – which envisages Turkish influence over vast swaths of the Eastern Mediterranean.
The resurgence of this rhetoric, however, seems to be directed mainly at the population in the interior of the country and in response to the criticisms of the Turkish opposition that the government is backtracking on the country’s foreign policy.
Turkey’s former defense minister and current lawmaker of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), Hulusi Akar, said last Monday in his speech in parliament that “the Blue Homeland is the continental shelf, the territorial waters, the EEZ, the maritime jurisdiction zones in the Black Sea, the Aegean, the Mediterranean; it is all kinds of rights and interests above and below our seas.”
“The Blue Homeland is our national issue. With 12,000 kilometers of coastline, with 462,000 square kilometers of sea fields, the Blue Homeland is a clear truth, not a fairy tale,” he said. Akar, who in addition to being a government deputy is also the chairman of the Turkish parliament’s National Security Committee, showed the map of the Blue Homeland twice to support this position, stating that there is no retreat, as he stressed, “There is the map, look, there is the map.”
Political analysts believe that Akar would not have made this demonstration with the map if he had not gotten approval from the presidency or the Foreign Ministry. Analysts also noted that during the period of de-escalation of Greek-Turkish tensions Turkish officials sought not to display the map. A day later, Erdogan stressed in his speech after the cabinet meeting that “we will not take the slightest step backward in defending our Blue Homeland, which is an integral part of our motherland. Let them know that.”
In the same vein was the position of Turkey’s Vice President Cevdet Yilmaz, who in his interview with the Haberturk TV channel, stressed, referring to the Eastern Mediterranean, that “de-escalation does not mean that we will not defend our rights and interests.”
