By Michalis Mitsos
The trilateral defence cooperation pact signed by Turkey, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia does not directly concern Greece. Its most important provision mirrors NATO’s Article 5: the participating countries commit to come to one another’s aid if any of them is attacked. As far as we know, however, Greece has no intention of attacking anyone.
The pact is therefore primarily instructive. It shows what Greece could have done through similar alliances. It also exposes as myths a series of narratives on which we continue to insist. Chief among them is the claim that Turkey is isolated, that its allies have abandoned it and that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s grandiose ambitions have brought it to ruin.
That claim goes hand in hand with another familiar assertion: that the balance in the Aegean has shifted, naturally in our favour, because we are buying the most advanced aircraft and have French President Emmanuel Macron’s verbal assurance, delivered at the Roman Agora, that he will rush to our aid if needed, especially once he is no longer president.
Rather than aiming to improve relations with Turkey, Greek foreign policy in recent years has centred on forging alliances supposedly intended to place Ankara at a disadvantage. The most valuable of these is, of course, the relationship with the United States.
As the director of Politis, Dionysis Dionysiou, stresses in a recent article prompted by Cyprus’s similar overtures, however, closer ties with the US do not amount to an allied guarantee against Turkey. The US can upgrade its relations with Cyprus or Greece without downgrading Turkey. If the interests of Cyprus or Greece clash with those of Turkey, there is no indication that Washington would sacrifice its strategically more important relationship with Ankara.
The same applies to Israel. Defence, energy and security cooperation between Cyprus, Greece and Israel, Dionysiou continues, does not mean that Tel Aviv has made Turkey’s exclusion from the eastern Mediterranean a strategic objective. Israel and Turkey may exchange threats, but when their interests require it, they find ways to cooperate. It is telling that they have begun talks on establishing a mechanism to prevent military incidents in Syria.
As for our ever-faithful Egypt under President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, it too appears to be considering joining the Mecca Agreement.
The only good news in recent days, then, is the ordeal US President Donald Trump is now reported to have faced in Ankara last month. That is what happens to an American president who fails to uphold the traditional 7:10 balance in relations with Greece and Turkey. His successor should bear that in mind.
Source: TA NEA
