Erdogan hails Ottoman era in warning to Greece
President says Turkey ‘will take what is its right in the Aegean’ amid fears over military confrontation
AS WARSHIPS bristling with 21st-century weapons systems prowled the eastern Mediterranean, Turkey’s president drew on a rather earlier era to underline his latest round of sabre-rattling towards Greece.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan chose the anniversary of a battle that took place nearly 1,000 years ago as an opportunity to warn the Greeks that they would be swept aside if they stood in the way of Turkish ambitions in the region.
At the Battle of Manzikert in 1071, the Turkish Seljuk Empire beat Christian Byzantine forces, capturing the Byzantine emperor and forcing entry into the great hinterland of Anatolia.
The battle is celebrated as marking the birth of the state of Turkey; nearly a millennium later, Mr Erdogan, the president, was in bellicose mood.
“Turkey will take what is its right in the Mediterranean, in the Aegean and in the Black Sea,” he said during the speech on Wednesday.
“If anyone wants to stand before us and face the consequences, they are welcome to. If not, stay out of our way and we will continue with our work.”
The punchy rhetoric was emblematic of Turkey’s increasingly assertive posture in a dispute which now risks spiralling into military confrontation between two Nato members.
The crisis began earlier this month when Turkey sent a survey vessel, escorted by warships, to prospect for oil and gas in the Aegean.
Ankara argues that the many small Greek islands that lie off the Turkish coast should not be taken into account when delineating maritime boundaries and accuses Athens of trying to grab an unfair share of untapped resources.
Greece was furious, saying that the flotilla was trespassing in its waters and impinging on its exclusive economic zone.
On Aug 14, the confrontation threatened to escalate when a Greek frigate collided with a Turkish warship in waters between Crete and Cyprus.
The Greek ship, the Limnos, was approaching the Turkish survey vessel when it came into the path of one of its naval escorts, the Kemal Reis.
The Greek frigate manoeuvred to avoid a head-on collision and in the process its bow touched the rear of the Turkish frigate, in what the Greeks described as an accident. Mr Erdogan
‘If anyone wants to stand before us and face the consequences, they are welcome to’
seized on the incident to issue an aggressive warning, saying that any “attack” on the survey vessel, the Oruc Reis, would incur “a high price”.
Greece and Turkey have been squabbling over the Aegean for decades. In 1996, they nearly went to war over a collection of rocks, the Imia islets.
But there are two key factors that make the current crisis particularly dangerous. Firstly, Turkey has become more emboldened recently, buoyed by successful military interventions in Libya and Syria. It feels hemmed in and contained by maritime demarcations drawn up nearly a century ago.
Many in the West accuse Mr Erdogan of pursuing neo-Ottoman adventurism to expand its sphere of influence.
“Turkey is meddling in Libya, Syria, Iraq and the Aegean – all areas that used to belong to the Ottoman Empire,” said Angelos Chryssogelos, an expert on the eastern Mediterranean from London Metropolitan University. “What you see is a concerted effort by Turkey to liberate itself from the obligations that it assumed when it was founded. Erdogan is matching nationalist, Kemalist ideas with a neo-Ottoman agenda which has a populist dimension.”
Many Turks do not see it that way. They argue that the current laws about continental shelves and offshore drilling rights are deeply unfair to Turkey.
“There is broad consensus over this within Turkey because it is seen as part of Turkey’s national sovereignty. It’s not politically partisan, it’s almost unanimous,” said Sinan Ulgen, chairman of Edam, an Istanbul think tank.
A second factor is that there are far more countries involved in the dispute this time around compared to 1996.
France and the UAE have sent aircraft and warships to back up Greece, while Cyprus, Israel and Egypt also have a stake in prospecting for hydrocarbons in the eastern Mediterranean.
Turkey upped the ante on Friday night by announcing that it will conduct live fire exercises north-west of Cyprus from this weekend until Sept 11.
Dr Ian Lesser, of the German Marshall Fund of the US, a think tank, said: “With more military exercises and more forces in the region, the risk of something going wrong is there. This is what worries many observers.”