A crucial visit that seals German support in Greece for Greek-Turkish.
It was not a trip that was limited to formal formalities, photos and smiles. A crucial visit that seals German support in Greece for Greek-Turkish.
Usually the end of July is not the period chosen by German politicians for critical visits abroad, the German government goes on vacation, the parliament is closed, big decisions are postponed until the autumn. However, this did not happen with the Green Foreign Minister Analena Burbok.
Her three-day trip to Athens, Istanbul and Ankara was more crowded than ever, experienced diplomats and political correspondents who have been covering similar German missions abroad for decades told DW. “Analena Burbock is different, the Greens are different,” was pretty much the constant comment heard at every opportunity in the Pressroom.
And while everyone initially expected that due to the critical geopolitical situation, top topics on the agenda of Burbok’s contacts would only be the war in Ukraine, the energy crisis and the threat of a food crisis – with Turkey already taking a role in mediating the transport of Ukrainian grain – eventually the agenda took another turn: at the center of the contacts in both countries were – along with refugee and human rights issues – Greek-Turkish relations and in particular the issue of Turkish questioning of Greek sovereignty over the islands of the eastern Aegean.
Challenging Greek sovereignty is not just a “show”
The issue of Turkish claims in the Aegean, as shown by discussions with top German diplomatic sources and experienced analysts on the sidelines of the contacts, is an issue that until recently the German side has downplayed or hoped that it is just a political show for domestic consumption of Tayyip Erdoğan ahead of the 2023 presidential elections and for an aggressive rhetoric of the Turkish president that stops short of words.
Now, as we were told but also as it became more than clear – and from Burbok’s statements in the two press conferences in Athens and Istanbul – that the Turkish doubts should be seen in another light: as a conscious strategic choice of Turkey in the field of foreign policy towards Greece and the EU as a whole, with the aim of disrupting security and stability in the eastern Mediterranean, potentially endangering peace in the region.
Bearing in mind the recent example of Russian revisionism and its implementation in Ukraine, with the aim of drawing new borders, one can no longer overlook corresponding revisionist tendencies observed in Turkey, such as, for example, the recent “red maps” of the Aegean that show as large Turkish islands, such as Rhodes, Lesbos, Kos and Crete. This is, one might say, the central finding of the German side.
No doubt about the German attitude
The most important statement for the Greek-Turkish language was undoubtedly made in Athens, with Analena Burbok putting an end to the “equal distances” between Athens and Ankara regarding the questioning of the Greek territorial integrity of the islands. Aegean.
“No one has the right to question it,” he said characteristically, provoking the angry reaction of Turkish Foreign Minister Cavusoglu, who accused Germany of bias, expressing his deep disappointment at the end of the “neutral and balanced” policy of previous governments (referring mainly to Angela Merkel). However, the same position was repeated by Ann Burbok in Istanbul, without reservations or loopholes, in response to her Turkish counterpart’s “regarding Greek and Cypriot propaganda, of which Germany is a victim”, condemning the policy of escalation in the eastern Mediterranean.
The issue of the Aegean islands and Hellenic relations was even on the agenda of the contacts Analena Burbok had with representatives of opposition parties (Republican People’s Party CHP, People’s Democracy Party HDP and Good Party IYI). What emerges from the closed-door talks with them, is that despite the different positions of the Turkish opposition parties, the common position is the condemnation of “war rhetoric” and the escalation of tensions in the Mediterranean and the Aegean by Tayyip Erdogan, considering that the differences should be resolved through dialogue and on the basis of international law.
This is not a bilateral but a European issue
However, what Analena Burbock emphatically underlined in Istanbul is that the issue of Greek sovereign rights in the Aegean is not only a bilateral-Greek-Turkish issue but ultimately a European issue, given that Greece’s borders are also external borders of the EU. this is exactly why Germany is now upgrading the issue to its agenda as a question of European borders.
According to diplomatic sources on the sidelines of the meetings, the message in all directions, with an eye on Greece and thus the external borders of the EU, is one: Germany, as an EU member state, is closely monitoring the situation and, if necessary, is ready to activate all the means and mechanisms at the disposal of the EU.
Of course, this does not only apply to Greek-Turkish but also to the field of refugees and any illegal practices and violations of human rights recorded at the “gates” of the European borders.
Dimitra Kyranoudis, Berlin
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