Athens in the face of Yerevan-Baku war
Over the last few years, numerous European politicians have appealed to xenophobic and Islamophobic political discourses, including a racist discourse of anti-Turkism. In Austria, Holland, Germany and Sweden anti-Turkish and anti-Erdoğan discourses constituted one of the central columns of the electoral campaigns of far-right political parties. What is more, these European countries prevented the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) from organizing its electoral campaigns in European cities. During the referendum and the presidential elections, political discourse against President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan pervaded the German press.
In 2015, political discourses by two terrorist organizations, the PKK and the Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ) took a similar anti-Erdoğan stance. Along with the so-called “religious” and bloodthirsty terrorist organization Daesh, the Stalinist-nationalist PKK and the global spy ring and pro-junta gang FETÖ shared the common goal of overthrowing Erdoğan’s legitimate government, which was elected by the Turkish people.
Unfortunately, several European political leaders now adopt the anti-Erdoğan political discourse of these terrorist organizations. When French President Emmanuel Macron announced that Paris is against Erdoğan rather than the Turkish people, he confused Turkey with the former colonies of France.
Macron assumes that we are ignorant enough not to know that the democratically elected Turkish president represents in the international arena no one other than the Turkish people themselves and that when he attacks our president, he directly attacks Turkey.
In the East Mediterranean, Greece assumes that the United States and members of the European Union would pursue its political campaign against Turkey without arguing. Instead of facing Turkey’s regional power with its strong army, growing economy and young population, the prime minister of Greece put his trust in the support of third parties, demanding an unjust treatment from the U.S.
When the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991, the ArmenianAzerbaijani war erupted at the end of which Armenia occupied 20% of Azerbaijan’s land. Despite that this military occupation has been recorded as an open violation of international law by the United Nations, Armenia recently attempted to realize new military occupations in Azerbaijan.
However, Azerbaijan’s counteroffensive has already devastated the Armenian fronts. While Armenia unsuccessfully attempts to drag Russia and France into war via an antiTurkish political discourse, Azerbaijan will not cease its offensive until the Armenian army leaves the occupied lands.
As the brilliant German military theorist Carl von Clausewitz famously claimed, war is “the continuation of politics by other means.” Therefore, Greece must take lessons from the Armenian-Azerbaijani war by realizing the fact that each country prioritizes its own national interests and that international politics is determined not by political images but by power and balance of power.