The dispute over Greenland has threatened a rift between two Nato members – the United States and Denmark – over ownership of an island.
A similar, long-standing dispute between two other Nato members, Greece and Turkey, involves ownership of not one island, but many, and the entire seascape in the eastern Mediterranean, known as the Aegean.
As the “sharp end” of Europe vis-a-vis the Middle East, Greece is comparable perhaps to the Greenland-Denmark axis at Europe’s other end.
Greece, like many Balkan countries (including its neighbours Albania, North Macedonia and Bulgaria), emerged from the dominance of the Ottoman Empire. Greece’s territory has expanded exponentially since 1830 – almost entirely at the expense of the Ottomans in 1864, 1881, 1913 and finally in 1947, when the Dodecanese islands, with Rhodes as their capital, became part of the Greek state.
But the legacy of the Ottoman Empire, which finally collapsed in 1922, continues to be felt throughout the Balkans and especially in the age-old rivalry and mutual distrust between Greece and Turkey, both of which joined Nato in 1952.
Greece’s always uncertain relations with Turkey are underpinned by the essential issue of borders. At certain points in recent years, war with Turkey over border disputes has only been narrowly averted, with the Greenland stand-off reminding Greeks of the political and military precipice that geopolitics can involve. Nato is, in fact, responsible for mediating the frequent disputes between the two countries.
[ Michael Jansen: US-Greenland agreement could be modelled on Cyprus dealOpens in new window ]
[ Jack Power: Cyprus’s frozen conflict holds lessons for any Ukraine peace dealOpens in new window ]
Meanwhile, US president Donald Trump’s apparent disregard for international law and the concept of a sovereign state and its borders is regarded very seriously in Greece as damaging to European unity. The minor status of Greece in terms of its economic and industrial clout in the increasingly fragile European collective thinking underlines this damage.
Greece shares its core values with most other EU members. This differentiates it from Turkey in almost every respect: cultural, ethnic, religious and economic. Its borders have been established not only by military expansion but also, as in the case of the Ionian Islands in 1864, by social, cultural and ethnic factors. These borders are, increasingly in the current geopolitical climate, vulnerable.
As Cyprus is not a Nato member, the organisation has no remit in the dispute between Greece and Turkey over Turkey’s illegal 1974 occupation of northern Cyprus, which the United Nations has failed to resolve. It remains a reminder that “might is right” is not a new concept in international law and its potential erosion. Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan is unrepentant about the Cyprus occupation: he upholds, and even wants to expand, the self-styled Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.
Trump calls Erdogan a “friend” whom he admires. Erdogan is like Trump in that he is unpredictable and quixotic; his policy of expanding Turkish influence, including claims on the eastern Mediterranean through his Blue Homeland policy, and interventions in other Balkan countries such as Kosovo, could even be construed as an attempt to re-establish the hegemony of the Ottoman Empire – make Turkey great again.
A recent spat between the foreign ministers of Greece and Turkey underlined the fragility of border territory, especially in the marine dimension. The Greek foreign minister refused to be drawn into any discussion with his Turkish counterpart regarding national sovereignty, but this is an issue on which Turkey insists on revision of a century-old international treaty (to which Turkey was a signatory) which, if successful, would award many Greek islands to Turkey.
But territory is only one aspect of the post-Ottoman era. Since independence, Greece has been profoundly concerned with the identity of its people – those who are ethnically Greek, or Hellenic, which includes Greek Cypriots. The survival of the Greek state, since the impetus for independence in the early 1800s (in, of all places, Odesa in Ukraine) has been based on this ethnicity.
This inclusive project of Greekness has been the principal motor of the Greek state. Where James Joyce made a joke of a nation being “the same people living in the same place”, Greek ethnicity goes further, and promotes the cultural, linguistic, social and spiritual values of being Hellenic, and their manifestations, as the basis of the nation.
Greece, as part of the EU and of Nato, is inextricably part of the West, yet Greeks need to be understood in terms of their own identity and ways of thinking. Greece also needs to be cherished as a player – if only a minor one – in the geopolitics of EU diplomacy, not as the historic “home of philosophy” or “home of democracy” but as a forward-looking hub of creative and cultural acumen. These are demonstrable values which might be lost in a smash-and-grab for power.