Question:
On 8/10/2020, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu revealed that a new agreement had been reached between his country and Greece. According to the Turkey Now website, the minister stated: "He agreed with his Greek counterpart, Nikos Dendias, to conduct exploratory talks between the two countries. This came in statements following his meeting with Dendias on the sidelines of his participation in the Bratislava Global Security Forum held in Slovakia. He explained that Turkey will host the talks, while Greece submits proposals for their dates..." (Turkey Now, 08/10/2020). This was preceded by Turkey significantly escalating its relations with Greece, challenging it by sending Turkish drilling ships accompanied by warships... What is the reality of this crisis between Turkey and Greece? What is the reality of international positions regarding this crisis? Is America behind this, or is Turkey acting on its own? Furthermore, what is the explanation for the great tension that existed initially and then ended with the acceptance of negotiations? Thank you.
Answer:
Looking at the Turkish-Greek crisis must be from the perspective of its causes, its local repercussions in Turkey, as well as its economic and international dimensions. To understand this, the following matters must be reviewed, starting from the Treaty of Lausanne in the first quarter of the last century:
First: The Treaty of Lausanne
Turkey possesses the longest coastline on the Aegean Sea and the Eastern Mediterranean. However, the Treaty of Lausanne, signed on 24/07/1923 by representatives of the criminal of the age, Mustafa Kemal, in the name of the Government of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey in Ankara—which had split from the Khilafah (Caliphate) in Istanbul—is what confined Turkey in the Aegean Sea. It can hardly leave its shores because the islands within the Aegean Sea became entirely or mostly Greek! This happened when Mustafa Kemal sent his representatives to Lausanne, Switzerland, offering the Allies that his government in Ankara, having split from the Khilafah in Istanbul, could sign with them—meaning the Allies—the treaty they wanted! Thus, the Treaty of Lausanne was signed in Switzerland between the representatives of Britain, France, and other countries and the representatives of Mustafa Kemal, headed by Ismet Inonu, in the name of the Government of the Grand National Assembly in Ankara.
The treaty contained astonishing matters agreed upon by Mustafa Kemal and his representatives. This includes what was stated in Article 12, whereby almost all the Aegean islands became subject to Greece, even though some of them are about 600 km from the Greek mainland while they face the Turkish mainland at a distance of only two kilometers in some cases, such as the island of Meis (Kastellorizo) opposite the city of Kaş in the province of Antalya. This treaty is what gives Greece the "legitimacy" to demand that Turkey refrain from drilling off the Turkish coast because it is an exclusive right of Greece under the Treaty of Lausanne! Then Article 15 states that Turkey renounces in favor of Italy all rights and titles over the following islands: Stampalia (Astropalia), Rhodes (Rhodos), Calki (Kharki)... etc. Likewise, Article 20, by which Turkey recognizes the annexation of Cyprus by the British Government, announced by Britain in November 1914. Also, what was mentioned in Article 23, which stipulates that the "High" Contracting Parties agreed to recognize and declare the principle of freedom of transit and navigation, by sea and air, in time of peace as in time of war, in the Dardanelles Strait, the Sea of Marmara, and the Bosphorus! Thus, Turkey, with the longest coastline in the Eastern Mediterranean, lost its freedom of movement around the islands in these seas. This is what Erdogan remembers today as his stolen "Blue Homeland" (Mavi Vatan)! He complains about it while the image of the criminal of the age, Mustafa Kemal—who approved these concessions in Lausanne—looms over his head. Despite all this, he does not dare to mention Mustafa Kemal with a single word that might harm him! Instead, he tickles the feelings of the Turkish people by naming the drilling ships after great Ottoman leaders: Fatih (the Conqueror) and Kanuni (the Lawgiver), despite his policies being far removed from these great leaders! He announces that ("Everyone realizes that Turkey is politically, economically, and militarily capable of 'tearing up the unjust documents and maps based on immorality and provocation against it.' He adds that his country is ready to clarify this 'by going through painful experiences whether at the negotiating table or in the field'..." Al Jazeera, 5/9/2020). But he settles for this rhetoric, thinking he is doing well! Perhaps the Turkish people saw that Greece, which hardly has an influential army, sent its soldiers to the island of Meis, knowing that the Treaty of Lausanne stipulates it be demilitarized; yet, he did not confront Greece with the force it deserved!
Although this treaty was a treacherous deal concluded by Mustafa Kemal with the Allies, he signed it in the name of the Government of the Grand National Assembly in Ankara. Britain was not satisfied with that; it wanted him to complete the conditions it had set for him, the most prominent of which were the total abolition of the Khilafah and the establishment of a secular state. Mustafa Kemal responded, and thus it was done on the morning of March 3, 1924, when he announced the abolition of the Khilafah and the separation of religion from the state. On that same night, Mustafa Kemal sent an order to the Governor of Istanbul for Caliph Abdul Mejid to leave Turkey before dawn the next day. He left accompanied by a garrison of police and army personnel to the Caliph’s palace at midnight, where the Caliph was forced to board a car that carried him across the border toward Switzerland. Two days later, Mustafa Kemal rounded up all the princes and princesses of the era and deported them out of the country. All religious offices were abolished, Muslim endowments (Awqaf) became state property, and religious schools were converted into civil ones under the control of the Ministry of Education. By this, Mustafa Kemal implemented the four conditions that Curzon demanded: the total abolition of the Khilafah, the expulsion of the Caliph across the borders, the confiscation of his wealth, and the declaration of a secular state. Consequently, the Lausanne agreement, which existed before the abolition of the Khilafah, was confirmed and implemented after the abolition of the Khilafah! Thus, the Treaty of Lausanne was crowned with the abolition of the Khilafah; the countries recognized Turkey's independence, and the British withdrew from Istanbul and the Straits. Following this, a British MP protested to Curzon in the House of Commons for recognizing Turkey's independence. Curzon replied: "The issue is that Turkey has been finished and will never rise again, because we have destroyed its moral strength: the Khilafah and Islam." Thus, the British succeeded in destroying the Khilafah and Islam through Mustafa Kemal, despite the will of Muslims all over the world in general, and despite the will of Muslims in Turkey specifically. Thereby, ruling by what Allah has revealed vanished from all parts of the earth, and ruling by other than what Allah has revealed remained—the rule of Kufr (disbelief), the rule of Taghut (tyranny) alone—which controls all people and is implemented throughout the world!
Second: This is the treaty signed
by Mustafa Kemal's representatives in the Swiss city of Lausanne, where Turkey was restricted in the Aegean Sea, and its islands and shores were given to Greece, thus preventing Turkey from drilling in it! This situation has lasted for about a hundred years with Turkey being submissive to it, so what moved Turkey now? Anyone who ponders the course of events will see that this crisis is driven by two factors: an internal factor due to Turkey's economic conditions, and an external factor behind which is the United States of America:
1. The Internal Factor:
a- Turkey is an energy-consuming country and not a producer. Recently, its oil production reached 53,000 barrels per day (Anadolu Agency, 25/7/2020), which is a very small figure compared to its consumption of one million barrels of oil per day (Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, 22/4/2020). It produces about 475 million cubic meters of gas and imports more than 45 billion cubic meters (Al Jazeera Net, 31/8/2020). Thus, Turkey faces a huge bill for imported oil and gas, which reached $41 billion in 2019, down from $43 billion in 2018 due to the relative decline in global energy prices (Turkish Daily Sabah, 27/2/2020). This factor heavily burdens the Turkish economy.
b- Because Turkey is located between the oil-producing countries in the Arab region, Iran, and Azerbaijan, and the consuming countries—the European countries—it has built much of its energy strategy on being a "transit country." The Turkish port of Ceyhan became the export port for Azerbaijani oil, and a network of pipelines was established in and through it, the latest being the TurkStream to transport Russian gas to western Turkey and then to Europe, which was inaugurated on 8/1/2020. Despite the fees Turkey collects as an energy transit country, the oil and gas bill remains highly costly for its economy.
c- Since 2009, the Zionist entity and international companies have been issuing new announcements about the discovery of massive quantities of gas in the Eastern Mediterranean. In the Tamar field, 80 km west of Haifa, 9 trillion cubic feet of extractable gas were discovered. A few months later, the Dalit field was discovered in the west of the central occupied Palestine with 500 billion cubic feet. In 2010, quantities beyond imagination were discovered in the Leviathan field west of Palestine, amounting to 16 trillion cubic feet. The American Foreign Policy magazine said at the time, "It is the largest discovery of natural gas in the world in a decade."
d- Therefore, Turkey took the initiative to reserve and purchase a modern and large drilling ship from South Korea, the Fatih, to sail for the first time in 2011 and begin drilling for oil and gas. After that, a series of crises began between it and Cyprus and Greece on the claim that Turkey was drilling in the exclusive maritime zones of Cyprus. Turkey was using the Turkish Cypriots and their rights as a pretext. However, in recent months, Turkey increased the pace of drilling after purchasing another drilling ship (offshore drilling) from Britain, giving it a reasonable fleet of offshore drilling and geological survey ships capable of searching and drilling simultaneously in the Black Sea, west of Turkey's shores, and south of Cyprus in the Eastern Mediterranean.
e- Thus, Turkey needed to fix its economic situation by exploring for oil and gas. It should also be mentioned that the Turkish economy is suffering from major blows, manifested in the continuous decline of the Turkish currency, the "Lira." This prompted President Erdogan to increase the pace of gas exploration in hopes of finding a glimmer of hope for this economy, through which he could maintain his plummeting popularity following the Lira's fall and the rebellion of leaders from his party against him, who formed opposition parties that eat away at Erdogan's base. Therefore, Turkish drilling operations covered the Black Sea and were not limited to the disputed areas with Greece in the Mediterranean.
2. The External Factor:
a- The United States supports these Turkish efforts from two angles: First, locally, meaning its man in Turkey, "Erdogan," will be in a better position if he can remove economic obstacles, increase his popularity, and return it to high levels as it was before 2014. This makes it easier for him to implement American policies, as in his intervention in Libya, where he can spend on his regional interventions for the benefit of America. Second, while America does not want Europe to be under the political influence of Russian gas, it also does not want it to be independent in the matter of gas. Greece and Cyprus are members of the European Union, and the pipelines from them lead to Europe; all of this does not please America. Therefore, it supports the threat to European independence in the matter of gas via Turkey. This means that Turkish President Erdogan is threatening Greece and drilling in what it considers its exclusive maritime zones without an agreement with it, supported by hidden American backing. Thus, American military ships participated in Turkish military maneuvers; the Turkish Ministry of Defense announced the participation of the American destroyer USS Winston S. Churchill in those maneuvers (Turkey Now, 26/8/2020). All of this occurred despite the intense American embarrassment of supporting a country within its NATO alliance against another European country also within NATO. This was in response to France's participation—another NATO country—in the Greek military maneuvers. Those maneuvers, some military mobilizations, and the tone of defiance created a dangerous situation in the Eastern Mediterranean that threatened the outbreak of military confrontations between NATO countries—between Turkey, supported by America from behind the scenes, and Greece, supported openly by France—were it not for the subsequent containment of this matter.
b- From another angle, America's allowance of a major conflict that almost developed into military actions between two member states of the NATO alliance it leads, without throwing its full weight to solve the crisis, indicates its preoccupation with its internal problems such as the Coronavirus and the election issue. It currently delegates these actions toward Europe, especially Greece, to Erdogan while supporting him in ways that consider American embarrassment, given that Turkey and Greece are members of the North Atlantic Alliance led by America. Therefore, America participates with Turkey in military maneuvers as support for it in these circumstances. On the other hand, Pompeo made a flying visit to Greek Cyprus, and RT reported: (Pompeo called on Turkey to withdraw its forces from the Eastern Mediterranean, where a Turkish exploration ship supported by military frigates is active. RT, 13/9/2020). This means that America, which supports Turkey, found itself in great embarrassment before its European allies and was forced to ask Turkish President Erdogan to withdraw the drilling ship, which happened, and then head for dialogue and negotiations with Greece, because Greece made the withdrawal of the Turkish drilling ship a condition for dialogue.
Third: Positions of Other Countries
- France's position was the strongest European position. From the first moment, it announced its support for Greece and acted independently. Its President Macron said: ("I have decided to temporarily strengthen the French military presence in the Eastern Mediterranean in the coming days in cooperation with European partners, including Greece." Turkish Anadolu Agency, 13/8/2020). It conducted joint naval maneuvers with Greece with the participation of Rafale aircraft it deployed in Cyprus. Then it conducted other maneuvers on 26/8/2020, involving Italy in addition to Greece and "Greek" Cyprus. All of this despite having no influence in the region! All of this indicates that it is trying to build significant influence anew. Its military maneuvers with Greece at a time when America participated in maneuvers with Turkey contain a veiled challenge to America. Involving Italy indicates it is mobilizing European countries against Turkey. Additionally, the meeting it held for some Mediterranean European countries (Italy, Malta, Spain, in addition to Greece and Greek Cyprus), and its pressure within the EU and NATO to take strict positions against Turkey: (The French President said: "We as Europeans must be clear and firm with the government of President Erdogan, which today is engaged in unacceptable behavior"... and he considered that "Turkey is no longer a partner in this region." France24, 10/9/2020). Also, (French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said that the next European Council meeting is dedicated to punishing Turkey. He pointed out that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan continues the escalation with Greece to cover up his country's difficult economic situation. Independent Arabia, 7/9/2020).
Despite the boldness of the French position against Turkey and its attempt to break the Turkish President's bone, and despite the fact that President Erdogan is not "the Conqueror" or "the Lawgiver" after whom he named his ships, and that he did not teach France a lesson in the Mediterranean or sink even one of its ships in retaliation for the thousands of miles its ships and planes traveled to break his bone in his backyard... despite all that, French policies remain impulsive and lack depth. Malta rushed to distance itself from its alliance with France. Malta's Foreign Minister Evarist Bartolo said during a press conference with his Turkish counterpart Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu: (The EU must look at its relations with Turkey from a strategic perspective. Bartolo added: "I think it's time for the EU to deal seriously with Turkey, especially in trade, human rights, and the fight against terrorism." Turkish Anadolu Agency, 12/9/2020).
- As for Britain, it did not comment on the Eastern Mediterranean tension, which increased France's fears. In fact, since "Brexit," France has begun to look suspiciously at the British role, seeing it sometimes opposing it, as in Algeria. If the huge financial markets in London give Britain a status in the oil and gas markets, especially in pricing due to its link to Brent crude and the subsequent pricing for other types of oil and even natural gas, then France, as it sees Britain leaving the EU, is looking for a place for itself in this internationally vital sector. Therefore, it saw fit to establish a foothold for itself in Greece, hoping this would help it become an actor rather than just a consumer in energy matters.
On the other hand, Britain, looking at what resembles a punitive policy by the EU against it because of its exit, is carving its own path and drawing its own policy. Perhaps it was wary of the sudden rise in tension in the Eastern Mediterranean; therefore, it did not take hostile positions toward Turkey. Greece is worth nothing to Britain compared to its Turkish interests, and no one rides the Greek wave except a blind fanatic like France! Compared to Britain and Germany, France lacks insight, which makes it return empty-handed after the arduous political work it performs. For all these reasons, the Turkish President attacked him strongly, saying: ("Mr. Macron, you will have more problems with me personally." He added: "You do not possess historical information and are ignorant even of the history of France, so stop worrying about Turkey and its people"... Al-Quds Al-Arabi, 12/9/2020).
As for Germany, it also did not slide behind the hostile French position toward Turkey and offered mediation, which some interpreted as playing a role that Washington should have played. It continued to distance itself from the French position, mediating and calling for dialogue. Its most eloquent stance against Turkey was stated by German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas during a visit to Athens: ("Regarding Turkish drilling in the Eastern Mediterranean, we have a very clear position... International law must be respected. Therefore, progress in EU relations with Turkey will only be possible if Ankara stops provocations in the Eastern Mediterranean." He continued that Turkish drilling off the coast of Cyprus must stop. France24, 22/7/2020).
As for Russia, it offered to use its good relations with Turkey to mediate between the two parties. However, as usual, it is unable to take any independent action, even though it announced military maneuvers in the Eastern Mediterranean in response to the French maneuvers, perhaps wanting to remind others of its presence: (Russia is scheduled to begin live-fire naval military maneuvers in the Mediterranean next Tuesday, extending until September 22, and another from September 17 to 25, according to Bloomberg quoting the Turkish Navy. Russian Navy spokesman Igor Dygalo said, "We have strong economic and defense relations with Turkey, but our policy is to avoid supporting either side." The Russian maneuvers follow other military exercises carried out by France in the region, where it deployed military aircraft and a warship to support Greece and Cyprus in the dispute. Independent Arabia, 7/9/2020). That is, the Russian position remains marginal, waiting for the signal from across the ocean, but it reminds of its power.
Fourth: For all these reasons, the Turkish-Greek crisis,
if prolonged, is likely to cause a deep rift in international relations. From the perspective of transatlantic relations, European countries want to see their place in a world where America is withdrawing from leadership toward focusing on China and its growing internal problems. These countries have begun looking for a role independent of America. America, under the Trump administration, does not hesitate to threaten European interests using others, as in the roles of Russia and Turkey in Libya today. European countries fear strongly that the Eastern Mediterranean crisis will lead to the shrinking of their dreams of a secure source of natural gas if Turkey controls a large part of it. Because Turkey is supported from behind the scenes by Washington, French policy in the Eastern Mediterranean is trying to reject the roles designed in Washington for Turkey as well as for Russia. This transatlantic dispute is no less than another dispute within Europe itself, as the German position is what prevented France from pushing Europe to punish Turkey. That is, it did not succeed in finding a consensus within the EU against Turkey, so it went and gathered the Mediterranean European countries! Germany thinks a lot about its interests, and even its history with Turkey. Germany and the Ottoman State fought side by side against the Allies in World War I. German relations have remained strong with Turkey, marred only by the "disturbances" of President Erdogan, which are often driven by American policies... in addition to the large Turkish community in Germany.
Fifth: As for whether the crisis has ended or not,
Turkey has announced a significant gas discovery in the Black Sea amounting to 320 billion cubic meters. This pushes it to further drilling in the Black Sea and the Eastern Mediterranean. Turkey's efforts to ease its economic burdens are ongoing, and American support for it continues to harass Europe and pressure it, especially France, so that it does not go too far in opposing and interfering with American policy in the region!
However, what is truly painful is that Islamic lands during the last hundred years after the disappearance of the Khilafah—the true state of Islam and the source of Muslim pride—have become at the tail end of nations. The colonialist disbelievers play with their destinies through their tools among the rulers in Muslim lands!! Nevertheless, the dawn is born after the darkness of the night, especially since Hizb ut-Tahrir is working in its midst to return it, by Allah’s permission, as it was, crowned with pride, victory, and light.
إِنْ هُوَ إِلَّا ذِكْرٌ لِلْعَالَمِينَ * وَلَتَعْلَمُنَّ نَبَأَهُ بَعْدَ حِينٍ
"It is not except a reminder to the worlds. And you will surely know [the truth of] its information after a time." (Surah Sad 38:87-88)
24 Safar 1442 AH 11/10/2020 CE