The US Congress’s “clumsy” report on Turkey: What it says about the provocation in the Aegean

By Penelope Galliou

Ankara is once again on the sidelines of international condemnation after the Kolafo report of the American Congress in which Ankara-Washington relations are described in black colors while special mention is made to Turkish aggression and overflights in the Aegean.

“The long-standing disputes between Greece and Turkey in the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean marked a major escalation in 2022 amid greater US strategic cooperation with Greece. “Turkey-Greece disagreements over overflights of disputed areas and other long-standing issues in the Aegean have escalated and preoccupied Congress,” the report by the Congressional Research Service emphasizes, while also recording Congress’s express condemnation of Turkish overflights that were included in the United States’ defense budget. States. “We believe that NATO allies should not conduct unauthorized territorial overflights of another NATO ally’s airspace.”

His effort Tayyip Erdogan to juggle between the West and Russia, could not go unnoticed and in this context the report shows the gap between the presidents Joe Biden and Tayyip Erdoğan, with Congress simultaneously expressing concern about Ankara’s close cooperation with Moscow. “President Biden is limiting his meetings with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to the sidelines of multilateral conferences. While the deepening of ties with Russia in some areas remains a cause for concern for the US,” it states.

The American side is equally concerned about Turkish revisionism and Ankara’s expansionist policy, as reflected in various ways both in its neighbor’s aggressive rhetoric and in the challenges on the ground in the wider region. In recent years, Turkey has used its military in the Middle East, the Eastern Mediterranean and the South Caucasus in a way that has affected its relations with the United States and other key players. Turkey’s involvement in Syria since the war began in 2011 has created serious problems in US-Turkey relations.

Despite the suffocating cord created by the concerns of its allies, and the condemnation of its tactics by the international community, Ankara persists in the challenges in the field with new overflights over Oinousses, Panagia and Zourafa. However, he also insists on the provocative rhetoric with Tayyip Erdoğan characterizing Athens as a “shelter of traitors” and unleashing unfounded accusations and lies about the inhumane treatment of immigrants by the Greek authorities. “The countries that leave migrants to die at sea in the Aegean, kill them by deliberately sinking their boats, beat them, rob them, humiliate them and force them to leave their borders, unfortunately these countries are held in very high esteem” he claimed.

THE Athena for its part, it insists on acting institutionally and always within the framework of International Law with the Minister of Foreign Affairs Nikos Dendias responding to the Turkish provocation with a letter to the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borel regarding the incident in Farmakonissi, stressing the need to impose economic sanctions on Turkey. “This repeated Turkish practice creates a dangerous security environment and increases the possibility of an “accident”, which could be used as a tool by Ankara, in order to escalate the tension between Greece and Turkey,” the Minister of Foreign Affairs said, among other things, in his letter .

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