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The US did not offer Turkey anything to get Erdogan to drop his objections to allowing Sweden and Finland into the alliance, a trio of senior administration officials claim – The Pavlovic Today A trio of senior administration officials detail the first day of NATO Summit in Madrid. Here’s what they told The Pavlovic Today. The new NATO strategic concept will be released shortly and focuses …
Before the text was released, Turkish officials circulated to media outlets a note titled “Turkey got what it wanted.” Finland’s leading newspaper, Helsingin Sanomat, wrote in an editorial that “Turkey got what it wanted – and so did Finland and Sweden.” “The memorandum was the price that had to be paid for the weird style of dealings with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that at …
Egypt, Greece, Cyprus sign power linkage agreement in Athens – Ahram Online The ninth trilateral summit, focusing on energy and boosting trilateral cooperation, is part of a cooperation mechanism launched in 2014 between the three countries. Egypt on Saturday signed an accord with Cyprus on linkage between the two countries’ electricity transmission networks. Two days earlier, Egypt also signed with Greece an agreement on an undersea …
Turkey is now further away from the EU compared to what was happening a quarter of a century ago, according to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, in an interview given to a small number of European newspapers, including Kathimerini. Commenting on the choice by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan not to apply European sanctions against Russia, von der Leyen noted that alignment is …
Government patronage has been a crucial factor in aiding the internationalization of Turkish construction service corporations.[23] Construction firms, especially those aligned closely with the AK Party, have been among the main beneficiaries of easy access to credit in the international market, tax incentives and exemptions, and relaxed public procurement practices.[24] Erdoğan has personally presided over the building and functioning of this patronage system, actively …
During the Fifth Trilateral Defence Ministers Meeting, Egypt’s Minister of Defence and Military Production Mohamed Zaki highlighted the importance of supporting cooperation and partnership between Egypt, Cyprus and Greece to achieve security and stability in the Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean regions, Egyptian Armed Forces spokesman Gharib Abdel-Hafez said in a statement. He hailed the fruitful relations witnessed recently between the three countries, who have a unified vision …
When you, Mister Secretary-General, call on Greece to engage in dialogue with Turkey to resolve their differences, you are essentially asking Greece to place its territorial integrity as a subject of negotiations with Turkey. And you are asking for it while representing an Alliance that was set up and still exists for this very reason, namely the protection of the territorial integrity of its …
While Russia has become India’s “second-biggest” oil source since the start of the war in Ukraine, following its $25 per barrel discount to India and supply chain disruptions since the war, data collected by the Finnish think tank, the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), also shows that India has been Russia’s eighth largest importer of fossil fuels, at 3.4 billion …
In an interview for the newspaper “Naftemporiki” on Saturday, where the main place was occupied by Greek-Turkish rhetoric and tensions, Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias also referred to relations with Albania. Asked if after the election of the new Albanian president, there could be rapid developments regarding the signing of the joint agreement for the establishment of the EEA with Albania in the Hague tribunal, …
“Now, I am saying that I am the candidate of the People’s Alliance,” he told supporters in the Aegean port city of Izmir last week. He was referring to the ruling coalition of his AK Party and the nationalist MHP. Turkey’s allies and rivals, along with Turks themselves, might want to buckle up for 12 months of turbulence. The US and Europe should brace themselves for even more mudslinging …
European Commission Vice President Margharitis Schinas said that Turkish Cypriot authorities should also be held accountable for curbing migrant arrivals. “We won’t let the Turkish Cypriot community to consider itself neutral in what is going on,” Schinas said after visiting upgraded facilities at the Pournara migrant reception camp outside the capital. “They must also assume their share of responsibility and we’ll find a way to …
Turkey under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is in a somewhat similar situation. If he makes the mistake – as his political rivals are encouraging him to do – of transferring his hostile instincts into the field of military operations in Evros and the Aegean, he will spell his own destruction just as Putin did. The difference is that no one will step in to …
Aside from a few words of condemnation at the start of the war in Ukraine, Turkey has remained on good terms with Russia throughout. When Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, visited Ankara this month his Turkish counterpart kindly suggested that the West should ease sanctions against Russia if Russia relaxed its blockade of Ukrainian ports. When Mr Lavrov repeated his claim that Russia had …
The timing of the event was not random. Greece’s relationship with Turkey is deteriorating and tensions are escalating dangerously due to their maritime disputes in the Aegean Sea and the eastern Mediterranean Sea. The dispute is complicated, and perceptions from each side are different. According to Turkey, for instance, everything starts back in 1923 and the Treaty of Lausanne, the main treaty between the …
You forget, of course, that these islands have been Greek for thousands of years, many centuries before your ancestors for the first time in their history laid their eyes on the… blue colour of the Aegean. The islands of Imvros and Tenedos were also Greek. Why do you not implement, correspondingly, the provisions of Article 14 of the Treaty of Lausanne? [Article 14 stipulates: “The islands …
The crisis culminated when Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis rushed to the United States recently and targeted Turkey in Congress. While the Turkish delegation was discussing the F-16s in the U.S., the Greek leader was trying to persuade Washington to embargo Ankara, a NATO ally and neighbor of Greece. It happened at a time when “third parties” were not included at the request of …
“What is default for Turkey, what is bankruptcy? It means that the Republic of Turkey cannot pay for the natural gas and oil it imports. Bankruptcy means that basic needs such as gas and diesel cannot be met even with money. You have money, you can’t get more than half a gas tank, or you wait in a queue for 3 hours. That is …
Nowadays, the only remaining problematic region in Turkish foreign policy is the Eastern Mediterranean, in which it conflicts with Greece. As a matter of the fact, the balance of power has changed in the region in favor of Turkey over the last two decades. Turkey has begun to play in a higher league, which creates more concerns in Greece, which has been exploiting the …
Under President Erdoğan, Turkish foreign policy has increasingly become an extension of domestic politics. Therefore, whenever President Erdoğan is conducting foreign policy, he has goals at both the international and domestic levels. Given that Erdoğan has an uphill battle in the presidential and parliamentary elections scheduled for June 2023, the domestic level game is at least as important as, if not more important, than …
Greece and Turkey’s competing bids to win U.S. attention, money and weapons are roiling the region, with war already raging next door. The longtime Mediterranean rivals have suddenly found themselves in a prominent position as the U.S. and its Western allies reorient their military forces to constrain Russia’s march into Ukraine, which sits just across the Black Sea from Turkey and northeast of Greece. And …
Kakabaveh says she believes the NATO memberships stalemate will be resolved with a backroom deal between the U.S. and Turkey. If it isn’t, and Sweden is unable to join NATO because of her, Kakabaveh won’t have any regrets. She is against NATO membership anyway, saying it would undermine Sweden’s ability to be a voice for peace in the world. “I am for disarmament,” she says. …
In the concluding paragraph, the Turkish president requests the approval of parliament to send Turkish troops to foreign countries for operations and interventions in order to effectively protect Turkey’s interests and to help pursue a dynamic policy so as to to avoid facing a situation that can’t be remedied, adding that the scope of operations, number of troops and time deployed will be determined by him. The …
“Unfortunately, this is not the first time that Mr. Stoltenberg has chosen to justify the authoritarian Erdogan regime, even Turkey’s extortionate attitude towards Sweden and Finland,” Androulakis said, adding: “But it should be absolutely understood by everyone that it will be the last. He can not be both Erdogan’s ambassador and NATO Secretary General.” “The provocations in the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean, the threat …
Turkey, in addition to provocative actions and inflammatory statements, is also spreading fake news, accusing Greek authorities of opening fire on migrants trying to cross the border in Evros, resulting in the death of an Afghan man. The DHA news agency reports that the incident took place in the village of Alibey on the border with Edirne. However, Greek police categorically denied the claim, noting …
A serious incident took place during the NATO Parliamentary Assembly Committee between Greek MPs and the Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar. Speaking at a meeting of the NATO parliamentary committee in Constantinople, Hulusi Akar once again raised the issue of territorial waters and the demilitarization of the Aegean islands and accused Greece of supporting terrorism.
Erdogan in the past few weeks has kept lashing out at Greece, trying to “put it in its place”, threatening it with severe consequences. He does this because, on the one hand, he sees Athens as a soft and easy target, and, on the other, he increases tensions with NATO ally Greece as a leverage on the United States regarding his plans to invade …
Only a three-week ceasefire, which came about on July 22 under pressure from the USA and NATO, changed the situation. While the fall of the military junta in Athens completely eliminated Greece as a supporter, the Turks increased their troops for their “Operation Atilla II” on the island to 32,000 men, plus numerous tanks, armored troop carriers and guns. The 45,000 Greek Cypriot fighters had nothing …
“We do not open a dialogue with the illegal, the ahistorical and the irrational”. This statement by Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis came after the Turkish leadership’s decision to climax its rhetoric of threats against Greece over the last few months. The Greek premier’s recent speech before a joint session of the US Congress revealed, without naming Turkey, the neighboring country’s revisionism against Greece. Turkey’s unilateral claims against sovereign Greek territory in …
In the aftermath of the Imia crisis in January 1996 and since, Turkey has repeatedly challenged the Greek title over certain islands in the region, even including islands in the south of Crete, which were given to Greece pursuant to Article 4 of the Treaty of London of the 17th-30th May 1913. The possibility of any Greek government accepting to discuss issues pertaining to sovereignty over the islands, or indeed any …
And while this propaganda is strictly for domestic consumption, experienced analysts point out that similar discourses preceded both the invasion of Cyprus in 1974 – triggered and enabled by a coup organized by the Greek dictatorship of the time – and the occupation of one of the two Imia islets, in 1996.
Starting from the Treaty of London in 1913, the militarization of the eastern Aegean islands was restricted and their demilitarized status was confirmed with the signing of the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923. The Lausanne pact established a political balance between the two countries by harmonizing vital interests, including those in the Aegean. The 1947 Treaty of Paris, which ceded the Dodecanese islands from …
It is the height of spring in Turkey, and with that comes a flurry of concerts and outdoor festivals to complement the pleasant weather. But in recent weeks, a string of events have been cancelled by cities and districts run by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party), leading critics and analysts to accuse the government of attempting to wage a “culture war” in …
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is at it, disrupting the region again. This time, he is threatening aggression not only against Greek islands, but also actually attacking the Kurds in northern Syria and Iraq as well as the Yazidis in their homeland of Sinjar, Iraq. Turkey’s neo-Ottoman expansionist goals in the region appear to be the major motive behind its aggressive policies. The Republic of …
“After the blatant Russian invasion of Ukraine, we must send a clear message that no one in the third decade of the 21st century can accept the despotic revision that threatens not only the international geopolitical balance, but also the acceptable borders on which the modern world. History is not rewritten because someone constructs it arbitrarily in his mind.” Regarding the processes of the Summit, …
In Europe’s frantic search to end its dependence on Russian energy, there’s an untapped resource: The waters around Cyprus. Yet a decades-old conflict between Turkey, Cyprus and Greece — rooted in Turkey’s 1974 invasion of Cyprus — is stymying efforts to explore and extract any natural gas lying beneath the Mediterranean Sea. Turkey wants a say in how any profits are made off the island’s riches, …
Lobbyists In US Play Key Role In Turkish-American Relations – Eurasia Review The US political system enables pressure groups and lobbies to access the policymaking process and exert their influence on foreign policy. Through their activities, these groups aim to become powerful political players. In this regard, four major lobbies — namely Armenian, Greek, Jewish and Turkish — play a significant role in shaping Turkish-American …
Driven apart by clashing regional interests, Turkey and Iran appear headed for a face-off in Syria, with Tehran explicitly opposing Ankara’s plan for a fresh military operation against Kurdish-held areas, wary of risks to its own posture in the region. Turkey has failed to get a green light from the United States to press ahead with the plan, while Russia appears to be stalling. The …
The classified three-page report, sent by the Turkish Embassy in Vilnius to foreign ministry headquarters in Ankara, detailed how an imam from the Turkish government’s religious arm, the Diyanet, spied on residents and nationals of Lithuania. The report also exposed the Turkish Embassy’s efforts to infiltrate the small Muslim community in the Baltic nation on behalf of a foreign government. The report, dated February 1, …
General Assembly President Abdalla Shahid announced the results of the secret-ballot vote and congratulated the winner. It will be Mozambique and Switzerland’s first time serving on the council, Japan’s 12th time, Ecuador’s third time and Malta’s second time. The five new council members will start their terms on Jan. 1, replacing five countries whose two-year terms end on Dec. 31 — India, Ireland, Kenya, Mexico and …
U.S. Senators Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) and Jim Risch (R-Idaho), Chairman and Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, today issued the below statements following the Committee’s approval of their bipartisan resolution welcoming His Excellency Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Prime Minister of Greece, to the United States for an address to a joint meeting of Congress. The resolution was originally introduced concurrently with Representatives Gregory Meeks …
A retired colonel and frequent commentator on pro-government TV networks in Turkey advocated a view of killing non-Turks and non-Muslims in Turkey in a private phone conversation that was intercepted by investigators as part a probe into organized crime. According to a transcript of the court-authorized wiretap obtained by Nordic Monitor, Col. Coşkun Başbuğ complained about the state of affairs in Turkey and criticized the …
Facing re-election next year amid rampant inflation, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has repeatedly attacked Greece over the islands and has said he would no longer meet Greek leaders. “Come to your senses,” Erdogan said on Thursday in another shot at Greece. “You should disarm the islands. I am not joking,” he said.
“Turkey won’t renounce its rights in the Aegean and won’t back down from using rights that are established by international agreements when it comes to arming islands,” Erdogan insisted. The Efes-2022 drills have been underway near Izmir since May 20. More than 10,000 troops from Turkey and 37 other countries have taken part in them.
In an effort to increase the wider public’s awareness of Turkish revisionism, the attached maps depict in a vivid and irrefutable way the Turkish illegal unilateral actions and claims. The maps begin chronologically with the status quo enshrined in the Lausanne (1923) and Paris (1947) Treaties.
Cyprus’s president sees parallel between Turkish and Russian ‘revisionism’ • FRANCE 24 Cypriot President Nikos Anastasiadis granted an interview to FRANCE 24 from the capital Nicosia. The northern third of the Republic of Cyprus has been under Turkish domination since 1974. Anastasiadis said that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine uses the “exact same arguments that Turkey used to invade Cyprus”. Asked about tensions with Turkey over hydrocarbons, …
Any Turkish operation would attack the Kurdish YPG militia, a key part of the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) that controls large parts of north Syria and is regarded by Washington as an important ally against Islamic State. Ankara sees it as a terrorist group and extension of the militant Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). A spokesman for the Turkey-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) said Russia …
It is just one sign of how Turkey’s strategy of positioning itself as something of a neutral zone is paying off. The country is attracting workers, money and business from both sides of the conflict — though not everyone is benefiting. On the one hand, Turkey has supported Ukraine since the beginning of the conflict. Before the invasion, it sold armed drones to the country …
Turkey and European Energy (In)Security – Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik The desire of the European Union (EU) to reduce its dependency on Russia for gas and diversify its sources of supply by turning to the resources of Central Asia, the Middle East, and the Eastern Mediterranean regions theoretically gives Turkey a major role in the EU’s diversification and energy security policy. However, this strategic role …
After months of declarations from top Turkish government officials that Greece’s sovereignty over a number of its islands in the eastern Mediterranean is contingent upon Athens demilitarising them, now Turkish Defence Minister Hulusi Akar has reportedly decided that he wishes to forbid Deputy Defence Minister Nikos Hardalias from visiting the said islands without Ankara’s permission. That constitutes a clear Turkish claim to sovereignty over the …
Akar told Shoigu that “the necessary response will be given to actions aimed at disrupting the stability achieved in the region and the presence of terrorists in the region is not acceptable,” Turkey’s Defence Ministry said in a statement. It said Akar also “reminded that previous agreements on this issue need to be adhered to.”
“In the current challenging times, values and principles, which are at the core of any EU accession process, cannot come second to any geopolitical contingency. That is why the Parliament – and I hope all EU institutions – will not remain silent when faced with the current authoritarian spiral in the country. Instead of regaining trust – a much-needed asset in EU-Turkey relations – …
…he does not want to have an ally that conducts 40 plus overflights every day. “Not just incursions in our airspace, but overflights over inhabited areas. Sometimes overflights are taking place overnight. I wonder for what reason,” Panagiotopoulos stressed. “It also feels peculiar to have an ally that calls for the demilitarization of our islands, arguing what? That if they are not demilitarized they are …
Kurdish rights hardly figure in the debates, and if they do, only as a prop for taking Turkey to task for its slide into authoritarianism. An ethnic group spread across southeastern Turkey, northern Iraq, northern Syria, and western Iran, Kurds are seen at best as assets in the fight against the Islamic State and at worst a threat to Turkish security and territorial integrity. Turkey’s …
Dendias expressed his regret for the hostile approach and false allegations promoted by Ankara against his country, accusing the latter of ignoring the rights of Crete by signing the Memorandum of Understanding with Libya, saying that its legal status is similar to Greece’s “assumed” signing of an “assumed” agreement with Spain that ignores Italy’s presence in the middle between the two countries.
…the peace group United Cyprus Now says this deal compels Turkish Cypriots to introduce measures curbing freedom of speech, making it easier for Turkish citizens to buy up property and cedes more power to religious authorities. “These measures constitute a direct threat to the will, identity, culture, way of life and heritage of Turkish Cypriots,” the group said. The leader of the leftist opposition Republican Turkish …
Above all, the regime in Ankara has violated the constitution and the existing domestic and international laws so many times that it does not have the luxury of losing the elections and simply handing power to its successor. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his proxies could face multiple life sentences. Thus the regime has a multilayer strategy to win the elections.
… The current conjuncture cannot be strictly reduced to Turkish-Greek relations. It is more serious than that this time. The context is the West-Eurasia showdown. Eurasia, primarily Turkey and Russia, is being pushed away by the West. While Vladimir Putin’s Russia is being put in a quagmire through Ukraine, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Turkey is being treated similarly through Greece. Look at Ukrainian President Volodymyr …
“Greece will not tolerate aggressive behavior, revisionist rhetoric and actions which amount to violations of Greek sovereign rights and Greek sovereignty. I think it is up to Turkey to change its behavior. We’ve never been the ones pushing the boundary in terms of aggressiveness, but we are very confident that we have the ability to defend ourselves should the need arise. And we’re also …
The arrest and release of a Turkish businessman close to the government on drug trafficking charges, only after an alert from German authorities, appears to follow classic stalling tactics often used by the government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to deflect international criticism. Time and again the Erdoğan government has “sandbagged” efforts to effectively investigate criminal conduct when the investigation incriminated or implicated senior …
Israfil Demir, former deputy chair of the Turkish American National Steering Committee (TASC), a front organization established under the guidance and support of the Erdoğan government to influence the US government, was charged last year with participating in a multimillion-dollar conspiracy to traffic counterfeit computer networking devices from China to the US. His associate Musa Karaman, also Turk who worked with Demir in running the …
The government issues chip-enabled national identity cards that contain no visible section to identify religious affiliation. The information on religious affiliation is recorded in the chip and remains visible to authorized public officials as “qualified personal data” and protected as private information. Previously issued national identity cards, which continue in circulation, contain a space for religious identification with the option of leaving the space …
Turkey was already fighting against the U.S. and European states in the Caucasus, in northern Iraq and Syria, in the East Mediterranean and in the Aegean, in Western Thrace, and in the Balkans. The northern shores of the Black Sea are among these too, now. Western countries’ opposition to Turkey’s stance in the Ukraine War cannot be considered an ordinary development.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is not a defensive organization but rather an aggressive one as the current conflict in Ukraine is designed by it, said a Turkish party leader in an interview with China Media Group.
Greece’s armed forces are on high alert in the Eastern Aegean Sea as tensions escalate with Turkey. Officials have been responding to what they say are mounting provocations by Turkey’s leadership. Senior Greek Defense Ministry sources say the military intelligence they have gathered point to the prospect of so-called hybrid threats that Greece may face from its neighbor Turkey as the two NATO allies compete …