The political staff of the parties of all wings of bourgeois politics underestimates the Turkish threat against the territorial integrity and sovereign rights of the country. Any «concerns» are manifested in moments of great tension, such as the current ones, and are accompanied by the «certainty» that the allied factor will prevent a generalized conflict and as if by magic the humiliation of political compliance will be saved, along with the stability of the political system.
For this reason, it has proclaimed as a unique doctrine of foreign policy the satisfaction of every US-NATO demand in exchange for «friendly pats on the back» and the alleged recognition of the country as a «strategic partner».
Disorientation and confusion
In spite of the facts and the denials of the allied guarantees, the political elite and a number of dependent think tanks, professors and journalists reproduce blackmail dilemmas to instill confusion and above all fear in the citizens, crucial factors to justify the ordered concession and acceptance of the Euro-Atlantic strategy.
The recognition of «rights» in Turkish demands and the denunciation of the «maximalism» of Greek positions leads to the consolidation of the conviction «let's work it out», which is the only echo of every statement of support from Washington or Berlin.
The Turkish claims are presented as a problem of sharing the resources and natural wealth of the Aegean or the Eastern Aegean. Therefore, «co-exploitation» or recourse to The Hague is seen as a realistic solution to war.
Does anyone really believe that if the Turkish demands had been for the coexploitation of resources, a solution would not have been found by now? Turkish expansionism is not limited there. Turkey envisages becoming a major power in the region and is seeking to expand its living space on land and sea. The «Blue Homeland» strategy, despite its historical depth, is coming aggressively into the daily lives of all the peoples of the region at a time of a major geopolitical crisis and a rearrangement of imperialist power, which Ankara considers to be in its service and which it is cunningly and decisively exploiting. So it is not only the claims in the Aegean and Cyprus. The same policy is being applied in Syria, Iraq, Armenia, it is aggressively intervening in the Balkans, Libya, North Africa, Qatar and the Gulf countries, in the Transcaucasian countries as far as Central Asia and China (Uighurs).
It is precisely the broader objectives set by the Turkish political class that make it reject in abhorrence not only the Confidence Building Measures proposed by Athens and Nicosia, not only the recourse to The Hague, but even its commitment to the Law of the Sea, whose provisions do not serve it.
Ankara is trying to impose an agenda based on the law of the strongest. In Greek-Turkish relations, the «resolution» of disputes includes not only claims for sovereign rights but also for the territorial integrity of the country, from the Aegean to Thrace. In effect, it attempts to place Greece under its hegemony. At the same time, it is exploiting Greek compliance by raising the bar of claims, determined to resort to the use of military force as elsewhere. The tolerance of the West stimulates its expansionist ambitions.
This is precisely the dimension of things that the Greek side, subordinated to NATO priorities, refuses to see. And through suppressions and lies it resorts to the blackmailing dilemma «what do you prefer, war?». The accident, of course, is that the policy of appeasement brings war closer.
Nobody prefers war. It wants an active policy of deterrence. But history does not always ask the citizens. If necessary, it needs to confront the cultivated defeatism with the real dilemma. Defence or half the Aegean losing its colour?;
Spyros Panayiotou
