Al Monitor: Greece’s growing influence frustrates Erdogan

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s threats to Greece that the Turkish army “could come all of a sudden one night” — a phrase he has repeatedly used for Syria — have reverberated at home and abroad. The triggers of Erdogan’s anger, however, go beyond his oft-cited effort to woo nationalist voters ahead of elections next year.

Speaking at a public event on Sept. 3, Erdogan called on Greece to “look to history” and “not forget about Izmir” — a reference to the Turkish recapture of the Aegean city in September 1922 that marked the ouster of occupying Greek forces and the end of the Turkish Liberation War in the wake of World War I. “If you go too far, you’ll pay a heavy price,” Erdogan warned, denouncing Greece’s “occupation” of Aegean islands. “When the time comes, we will do what’s necessary. We could come all of a sudden one night,” he said. He reiterated similar warnings during his Balkan tour this week.

It’s the first time that a Turkish president has accused Greece of occupying islands in the Aegean, where the two neighbors have long been at loggerheads over an array of territorial disputes. The Turks lost the major islands in the Aegean during Ottoman times, and Ankara would not contest the ownership of islands given to Greece under international treaties. The current row has to do mainly with Greece’s militarization of islands and islets there in violation of the 1923 Lausanne Treaty and the 1947 Paris Peace Treaty. The two NATO allies came back from the brink of military conflict in January 1996 over the ownership of the uninhabited Kardak islets (Imia in Greek) after both sides attempted to plant their respective flags there. According to Turkey’s Foreign Ministry, Athens has been attempting to change the status of numerous islets whose ownership was not ceded to Greece by international treaties.

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