POLITICS-EUROPE: Turkey Flexes Long Unused Muscles

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Wes Jonasson

ATHENS, Jun 13 2000 (IPS) - Turkish-Greek relations have come a long over the last year.

When some 150 Turkish marines stormed ashore at Kyparissa beach in the western Peloponnese recently they had Greek soldiers storming right alongside them. And Turkish F-16 jet fighters and transport aircraft were deployed to Nea Anchialos airbase near Volos for the first time in 28 years.

Immediately after the first Turkish aircraft landed after flying in from Diyarbakir and Badima, the same pilots who had engaged in mock dogfights with fully armed fighters over the Aegean Sea were seen shaking hands and taking snapshots of each other.

What a difference a few decades and NATO make.

NATO’s largest joint exercise this year – “Dynamic Mix” – brought 10,500 military personnel from 12 countries including Greece and Turkey together for mock battles.

Besides demonstrating NATO’s shift in focus to southeast Europe, Dynamic Mix tested the operation of a new regional command centre at Larissa in Greece which had been a point of conflict between Ankara and Athens for over a decade.

But the 18-day exercise which ended on Jun. 10 went off without any problems between the old antagonists. Defence Minister Akis Tsochadzopoulos stated that Greek-Turkish co-operation had been, in his words, “excellent”.

Turkish group leader Colonel Akin Ozturk described the exercise as a “very serious matter for peace in the region”.

Leaders in both countries were reticent about what this co- operation meant for bilateral relations. Greek Prime Minister Costas Simitis would only say that Turkey must take the first step. While Turkish State Minister Sukru Gurel replied that Greece must first drop its claim to have the right to expand its territorial waters to 12 miles from its shore and end its military presence on its eastern islands.

Both Turkey and Greece are part of peace-keeping forces SFOR in Bosnia and KFOR in Kosovo. In those territories, this sometimes has a way of being translated into Turkish support for the Moslem inhabitants and Greek support for the Orthodox Serbians.

Nevertheless, Turkey’s presence in these military forces means that that country is back in the Balkans for the first time since the fall of the Ottoman Empire after World War I. This time it is there by invitation issued to it by the West

Having established a new base in the Albanian port of Vlore, Turkey now has an opening on the Adriatic. Set up to help train and re-equip the Albanian armed forces, Turkey will have 250 men at Pasa Port — a 10 million US dollar installation.

All this underlines the fact that Ankara again has a voice in the Balkans and is using it. It registered its keen displeasure several months ago when Sarajevo and Skopje both took steps to establish diplomatic relations with the Greek-Cypriot government in Nicosia.

The US administration tends to downplay Ankara’s assertiveness — preferring to stage manage events such as the awards that the East- West Institute gave Turkish and Greek foreign ministers Ismael Cem and George Papandreou in early May.

Largely at the behest of US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Cem and Papandreou were named the institute’s “Personalities of the Year” for their efforts to improve relations between two countries.

Cem and Papandreou were then invited to meet with US Ambassador to the UN Richard C. Holbrooke and Albright, the US ambassadors in Ankara and Athens, as well as former secretaries of state Henry Kissinger and Cyrus Vance not only to talk about the Balkans, but to address sensitive, unresolved, bilateral issues.

It is incorrect to think that Turkey’s new role is without controversy. But with the United States speaking out at every opportunity that Turkey ought to become a full member of the European Union, Ankara is certainly displaying renewed confidence as a regional power.