Give Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan his due: He has masterfully played his cards to exert diplomatic and regional influence far beyond Turkey’s actual strength.
The reality is Turkey is weak. Its economy is a wreck. Turkey’s currency has lost 82 percent of its value against the dollar and euro in just the last five years. Erdogan once spoke of Turkey becoming one of the world’s top ten manufacturing powers; instead, Turkey is rapidly falling from the top twenty. There is not a single Turkish bank that is not at risk from failure. Even if Turkey’s debt-to-Gross Domestic Product ration looks strong, Turkish statistics are often based in little other than Erdogan’s imagination. The rates of personal debt are so high that Turks cannot repay the principle on loans.
The credit international leaders gave Erdogan two decades ago for his economic stewardship now appears misguided. The growth Turkey experienced in the first decade of the 21st century had less to do with Erdogan than with a demographic dividend: Turkey’s youth bulge entered the workplace. Now, however, Turkey is in demographic decline, its population growth rate below replacement level. Some countries manage population decline well. Turkey will not. Not only do Turkey’s Kurdish population enjoy population growth, but Erdogan’s mismanagement puts Turkey far behind states like Japan or South Korea that face similar population decline.
Yet, despite this weakness, Turkey dominates conversations on the world stage. It not only conducts Europe’s longest occupation in Cyprus, but demands the world accept and the United Nations genuflect to its landgrab. The only differences between Turkey’s vassal state in occupied northern Cyprus and Russian puppet states in Donetsk and Luhansk are that the European Union and United States allows the Turkish puppet state in Cyprus to maintain offices in Washington and European capitals, and European airlines fly direct into occupied Cyprus to allow vacationing Europeans to subsidize the money-laundering narco-state the Turks have established. This alone shows the profound disrespect with which both the United States and Europe meet Greece’s polite professionalism.
If Greece continues to err on the side of submissiveness, it will lose half the Aegean just as Cyprus has lost—temporarily—38 percent of Cyprus.
With such weakness, is it any surprise Turkey would believe that its Mavi Vatan policy could succeed in seizing half the Aegean or that Turkey could redraw the Eastern Mediterranean’s Exclusive Economic Zones? Nor does the problem just involve Greece: Turkey held NATO hostage and forced Sweden to humiliate itself and its principles by extraditing Kurdish dissidents to face torture and prison inside Turkey. The only reason the West pretends that Syria under Ahmad al-Sharaa is anything other than a terror state is to avoid an Erdogan tantrum. A reformed Al Qaeda regime makes as much sense as a woman who is half pregnant.
Hans Christian Andersen’s fairytale “The Emperor’s New Clothes” is relevant to Turkey today. Crowds pretended to admire the emperor until a child cried out, “But he isn’t wearing anything at all!” Today, it is time to call out Erdogan as being the naked, declining, and shriveled despot he is.
For too long, Greece has believed a quiet, responsible approach would reinforce its partnership with Europe and win plaudits and influence in international forums. Such attitudes, however, never work. When terrorist groups kidnap hostages, many governments counsel quiet. Such tactics only serve to absolve pressure on governments and terrorists, but do not bring victims home. Noise can be a virtue. Indeed, Turkey often demonstrates that the squeaky wheel gets the grease.
If Greece continues to err on the side of submissiveness, it will lose half the Aegean just as Cyprus has lost—temporarily—38 percent of Cyprus. After all, there is a dangerous tendency in both the United States and among many larger European states to demand small democracies make concessions to appease larger bullies. In such a dynamic, the security of Greece and Cyprus will never come first.
Yet, with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office willing to shake diplomatic precedent, trilateral cooperation among Greece, Cyprus, and Israel, Turkey’s weak economy, widespread exacerbation with Erdogan’s antics, and Greece sitting on the United Nations Security Council, the time is now to go on the diplomatic offensive.
Greece’s likeminded allies should demand investigations in both allied states and in the United Nations regarding Turkey’s terror finance and money laundering. They should agitate for Turkey’s inclusion in the Financial Action Task Force blacklist, alongside Iran, Myanmar, and North Korea. If any diplomat hand wrings and asks if Turkey truly deserves such company, they should no longer represent Greece in any international forum.
The question for Greek policymakers is whether the status quo is tenable and if diplomatic strategies that might work among allies in the United States and Europe are relevant to the challenge Turkey poses today. Frankly, the answer should be obvious.
Just as Armenians demand international recognition of the Armenian Genocide, so too should the Greek government and Greek Diaspora groups demand countries recognize the Greek Genocide in Anatolia that culminated with the burning of Smyrna. Greek officials should not see such events as commemorations of the past, but rather a necessary education to understand the ethnic and cultural cleansing now underway in Cyprus and elsewhere. That education is overdue because Erdogan will lash out to distract his populace as Turkey’s economy continues to deteriorate. As Turkey relishes renaming towns from Nagorno-Karabakh and Syrian Kurdistan to occupied Cyprus, it is time to demand the United Nations refers to cities and towns in Anatolia by their Greek names in addition to the names imposed by Turkish conquerors. There is something very wrong when non-Greek Americans are more willing to demand “Free Constantinople” than Greek officials.
Greece should also demand further investigation in the Pyla incident and seek the public testimony of UN observers injured by Turkish bulldozers. It should demand the UN designation of key Turkish financiers for terror finance.
Athens should also demand Washington and Brussels blacklist Ankara for violations of religious freedom. Turkey should not get a free pass for its abuse of churches from the Hagia Sophia to the Church of St. Savior in Chora, now should its confiscation of religious endowments and its interference in religious education any longer be tolerated.
Turkey is on the offense in the Aegean, only because Greece cedes the upper hand. As Erdogan seeks to relitigate history and revise longstanding borders, Greece has two choices: Make the discussion about the Aegean only or throw Hatay—a territory Turkey annexes after a sham referendum—into the mix.
Greece has many policy and diplomatic arrows in its quiver, and Erdogan wears no clothes. The question for Greek policymakers is whether the status quo is tenable and if diplomatic strategies that might work among allies in the United States and Europe are relevant to the challenge Turkey poses today. Frankly, the answer should be obvious.
