High-stakes political developments in both Greece and Turkey were momentarily but noisily distracted by a brief spate of old-style saber-rattling over the weekend, as Greece’s outspoken defense minister warned of dire consequences if Turkish troops “stepped on” a couple of eastern Aegean rock islets that Ankara claims are of disputed sovereignty.
Panos Kammenos’ bold words on Sunday nevertheless came after equally outspoken Turkish Foreign Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu told Turkey’s state-run news agency, a day earlier, that Turkey’s general staff chief could have landed on the islets if he wanted to late last month. “If his duty was to do so, he would have done it. Let’s not forget that we set foot on the places we were supposed to. Our stance on Kardak is clear,” he said.
Çavuşoğlu used the Turkish-sounding name for the two rock islets that it dubbed as “Kardak” immediately before a brief military showdown between Athens and Ankara in January 1996 almost resulted in blows.
The latest “tit-for-tat” centering on the islets comes as the embattled leftist-rightist government in Athens is struggling to come to an agreement with its institutional creditors and Euro zone partners over the current (third) bailout, as well as fiscal targets and debt relief measures after 2018 – when the bailout ends.
Conversely, Turkey faces an utterly divisive constitutional referendum on April 16, 2017 that will, to a large extent, define the political landscape in the neighboring country for decades to come. If 18 proposed amendments are passed, as increasingly autocratic Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his dominant AKP party want, then an executive presidency will replace the current system that bestows power to a prime minister, as head of a Cabinet, via a Parliamentary majority or a coalition of MPs. Changes to the judiciary, shifting more control to the executive branch, are also up for vote in the referendum.
Back in Athens on Sunday morning, Kammenos appeared on an A.M. news affairs program to maintain that there’s “no issue of (anyone) stepping on a Greek island. Let me just see how they’ll leave if they arrive … any provocation is answered.”
Kammenos, who established and leads a small rightist-populist party (Independent Greeks or AN.EL) that serves as the junior coalition partner to the hard left SYRIZA party, even took at a jab at the Greek political leadership that was in power in 1996. Kammenos, himself the target of withering criticism by Greece’s political opposition, has seen his popularity and that of his previously anti-bailout party collapse in all mainstream opinion polls over recent months.
“Allow me to remind him (Çavuşoğlu) that (Costas) Simitis is not the (Greek) prime minister (today), but that (Alexis) Tsipras is; that the foreign minister is not (Theodoros) Pangalos but (Nikos) Kotzias, and that I am the defense minister… Greece does not respond to verbal provocations, but it will not back down from its sovereign rights.”
Kammenos’ quip generated an immediate reply by the political opposition that descends from the once dominant PASOK party, which was in power in 1996.
MP and former minister Andreas Loverdos said concern over national issues is rife today “exactly because Mr. Tsipras is the prime minister and Mr. Kammenos is the defence minister… Because only irresponsible and dangerous (politicians) would choose divisiveness and polarization on national issues instead of a unified domestic front.”
In statements to Anadolu, Çavuşoğlu also reiterated Ankara’s displeasure with a Greek high court decision preventing the extradition of eight Turkish servicemen that Turkish prosecutors have charged with participating in the July 15 coup in the neighboring country.
“Greece preventing traitors from being prosecuted for their crimes is not in line with good-neighborly, friendly relations,” he said, in again referring to the Greek government instead to the independent judiciary’s rulings.
Finally, an increasingly independent-minded MEP elected on SYRIZA’s ticket for the European Parliament on Sunday took to Twitter to post that “the Greek foreign ministry is exclusively responsible (on the part of the government) for responses to the unacceptable and provocative statements by the Turkish foreign minister”.
MEP Costas Chrysogonos emphasized that national issues should not be utilized for attacks against political ‘ghosts’, a thinly veiled criticism of the DM’s comments.
The weekend “war of wars” was ostensibly sparked by a television interview by Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias late last week, who said that Turkish “general staff chief couldn’t set foot on the Imia (islets) even if he wanted to.
