Speaking to Kathimerini about the issues of territorial waters and the continental shelf, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said, among other things: “The domestic political balances in Greece do not allow many possibilities to any political leader to solve this problem and put his signature… In the domestic politics of Greece, the issue of the perception of Turkey as a threat always plays a decisive role in politics. That is, when someone tries to do something regarding Turkey, they must definitely and necessarily pay a political price.”
No sane citizen will disagree with the remarks of the Turkish foreign minister. Indeed, Greek-Turkish relations have been integrated into the political life of the country, but this is nothing new. Not to go too far, for as long as I can remember, Greek-Turkish issues have dominated the public sphere as a national threat from the East, which coexisted alongside the permanent danger from the North. And it is completely normal in a democracy for national issues to be the subject of criticism or polemics or broader consensus and to influence, to a greater or lesser extent, the vote of citizens. Fidan does not understand this because he operates within a different kind of regime. A regime that imprisons political opponents, tightly controls the media, as well as every lever of power. Such an authoritarian regime is able to control reactions to national issues as well, as its mechanisms shape public opinion. In addition, it has the ability to always win elections.
But there are also many objections to the substance of what the Turkish foreign minister said. Why do Greeks really believe that Turkey threatens our sovereignty and our rights? And I am not referring only to the legacy of history. I am referring to the events of the last 50 years. We will not enter into the process of finding who is right and who is wrong. We will examine the perceptions. The formed national conviction. The hard core of the national consciousness.
Fidan is unfair to Greek politicians when he says that they are not willing to risk their political careers by putting their signature on a Greek-Turkish agreement. They do not put it on paper because they have realized that Turkey’s revisionism is a founding principle of the birth of the Turkish Republic, and the doctrine of the “Blue Homeland” has historical depth. Let’s remember that former British prime minister Neville Chamberlain, returning from Munich in 1938, in his delusion, he joyfully declared, waving the agreement with Nazi Germany, that he had achieved “peace for our time.”
Today, our country is in an excellent position, both diplomatically and militarily. I assume that the diplomatic efforts in Greek-Turkish relations will be carried out taking this fact into account. Something that can be read in two ways.