Greece and Turkey at war?

I don't think anything other than they're all the same at this point with exception of the following statistics: Greece: 90% Christian. Turkey: 99% Islam. The only real difference is the "people who inhabit what was Greece" (you couldn't torture me enough for me to call them Greeks), will turn the other cheek. Only upside is with the endless wars the other side calls for hopefully they'll clear each other out and the original inhabitants can return someday. Unlikely though.

I shouldn't complain however, nor choose sides. The original Europeans they cleared from their lands accepted and proudly owned their execution of Jesus (those that didn't were summarily executed by their own, save for the few that got away). That divine curse will follow and leave them disadvantaged wherever they run to or no matter whose land they try to take next. Only hope is to try and save the children and hope one day they can grow up free and one day be forgiven. Then again so are the Muslims. And most of "the rest". Everything is cursed basically, and what little that aren't are persecuted because of it. Which only strengthens the severity of the curse. Why do you think our teeth rot, yet we're told cavemen (who didn't have knowledge of oral hygiene) ate nuts and meat off the bone throughout their life? It doesn't make any sense, and it doesn't have to- because people don't think. Beyond what is needed to get the next shiny object or thing someone else has.

Quoting Franz Liszt

I am Greek

Im Spanish and I love your country. Mediterranean friendship.

Quoting Franz Liszt

Will 2023 be an important year between Greece and Turkey?

As you explained previously. Yes it will be an important year. But the circumstances have changed a lot. Europe is really different from 1923.
First of all if paradoxically Turkey declare the war against Greece they will be totally lost. Not only Europe Unión supports Greece but all the occidental powers (NATO I guess). So it will be totally lost of time to Turkey and Erdogan.
Secondly, it looks like they really want be part of European Union. Somehow they are always trying to. If somehow they threat Greece nobody will open their arms to Turkey.

About Cyprus. This point is interesting. I remember that this island is not only geographic important but for taxes. I remember Cyprus was a secret bank/tax haven country. So yes I guess European union also wants Cyprus with them.

I mean, they are forced to lost so Erdogan would be crazy if he tries something with Greece.

Quoting Franz Liszt

By international law, every treaty expires after 100 years of use.

Every treaty? I've never heard of this. Please give a reference or link if this is true. You see, a lot of treaties would be expiring otherwise (the Geneva conventions, peace treaties etc).

It's very unlikely that these two NATO countries (Yes, Turkey is still in NATO) will go to all out war. What they could do is have a low-level conflict where tensions get high and both sides engage in a diplomatic fight and show their military muscles. Likely in this kind of "conflict" asymmetric "warfare" is used. The use of proxies (naturally the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus). Even with the case of Cyprus, one should note that the island state is member of the EU. Turkey successfully invading the Republic of Cyprus would likely have huge trade and political consequences for the country. It simply is a bad idea. Yet border disputes or disputes over maritime economic zone could happen (and do exist now). Again these kind of disputes wouldn't likely just escalate out of control. There is still ample amount of intelligence both in Turkey and in Greece to keep any quarrel contained. It would be different if Turkey wouldn't be a member of NATO and for example allied with Iran or Russia.

The asymmetric way to push your agenda would be more likely to happen. We've already seen this when Erdogan opened up their side of the border again for refugees and the Greek government closed the borders (just prior to the pandemic last year). The EU stood with Greece then and likely, finally, has learned how to respond to this kind of asymmetric pressure.

(Pawns in the game. Photo from March last year.)


Of course these tensions aren't a new one. The invasion of Cyprus happened in the summer of 1974. Even this short documentary below about the Greek-Turkish tensions is from 2019, two years ago (if this conflict is totally new thing to people):

Reply to ssu

In accordance with international law, any treaty expires after 100 years

- Global village space (not the best site I apologise)

Reply to ssu
https://www.globalvillagespace.com/turkey-beyond-2023-a-new-geopolitical-reality/

In accordance with international law, any Treaty expires after 100 years.

- Daily times

https://dailytimes.com.pk/381845/which-way-will-turkey-go/

Sorry, none of these sites are the most prestigious.

Reply to scientia de summisThank you for giving the references. Still a bit strange, I have to say. 100 years is such a brief period of time in international relations.

Here's what the American Foreign Policy -magazine says about this:

some Turkish pundits are looking ahead to more serious foreign-policy challenges — like what will happen in 2023 when the Treaty of Lausanne expires and Turkey’s modern borders become obsolete. In keeping with secret articles signed by Turkish and British diplomats at a Swiss lakefront resort almost a century ago, British troops will reoccupy forts along the Bosphorus, and the Greek Orthodox patriarch will resurrect a Byzantine ministate within Istanbul’s city walls. On the plus side for Turkey, the country will finally be allowed to tap its vast, previously off-limits oil reserves and perhaps regain Western Thrace. So there’s that.

Of course, none of this will actually happen. The Treaty of Lausanne has no secret expiration clause. But it’s instructive to consider what these conspiracy theories, trafficked on semi-obscure websites and second-rate news shows, reveal about the deeper realities of Turkish foreign policy, especially under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s pro-Islam Justice and Development Party (AKP).

After defeating the Ottoman Empire in World War I, Britain, France, Italy, and Greece divided Anatolia, colonizing the territory that is now Turkey. However, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk reorganized the remnants of the Ottoman army and thwarted this attempted division through shrewd diplomacy and several years of war. Subsequently, the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne recognized Ataturk’s victory and established the borders of modern Turkey. Lausanne then became part of the country’s foundational myth. For a time it even had its own holiday, Lausanne Day, when children dressed in costumes representing contested regions of Anatolia for elementary school plays.

With the Treaty of Lausanne so embedded in the Turkish state’s ideology, it is no surprise that conspiracies about it are ideologically loaded and vary according to the partisan affiliation of the individual conspiracy-monger. Erdogan’s critics tend to be more focused on the risks Turkey faces when Lausanne expires. Conspiracy-minded secularists have always worried that Erdogan is working with the European Union to establish an independent Kurdistan or perhaps dig a new Bosphorus to secure American ships’ access to the Black Sea, or really doing anything else possible to undermine the sovereignty Ataturk secured for Turkey. Some of Erdogan’s supporters, by contrast, are more optimistic about Lausanne’s expiration, in part based on a strain of recent historical revisionism suggesting that Ataturk actually could have gotten a much better deal during the negotiations had he not been in league with the Europeans — not preserved the whole Ottoman Empire, necessarily, but at least held on to a bit more of Greek Thrace and maybe the oil fields of Mosul. Where Ataturk once criticized the Ottoman sultan for failing to defend Turkish territory in the face of Western aggression, Islamists have now borrowed this charge for use against Ataturk.

In the realm of Turkish domestic politics, talk about “the end of Lausanne” reflects the fears of some and the hopes of others that with former prime minister, now president, Erdogan’s consolidation of power over the last decade, Turkey has embarked on a second republic — what Erdogan calls “New Turkey.” Supporters believe this new incarnation of the Turkish state will be free of the authoritarianism that defined Ataturk’s republic; critics worry it will be bereft of Ataturk’s secularism.

Still, the persistence of the end-of-Lausanne myth shows the extent to which New Turkey will be indebted to the ideology of the old one. Turkish Islamists have certainly inherited the conspiratorial nationalism found among many secularists, complete with the suspicion of Euro-American invasions and Christian-Zionist plots. (Is it any coincidence Lausanne is in Switzerland, a center of world Zionism?) While the secularist fringe speculated that Erdogan was a secret Jew using moderate Islam to weaken Turkey on Israel’s orders, many in the AKP’s camp now imagine that all Erdogan’s problems are caused by various international conspiracies seeking to block Turkey’s meteoric rise.

In the realm of foreign policy, though, these conspiracies belie a deeper truth: Despite the current violence to Turkey’s south, the borders enshrined in the Treaty of Lausanne are more secure than they have ever been. And the AKP was the first government to fully realize this. While Erdogan has often stoked nationalist paranoia for political gain, as when he claimed foreign powers were behind popular anti-government protests, the AKP’s foreign policy was the first to reflect a serious awareness of Turkey’s newfound political and economic power, not to mention the security that comes with it. Beneath all the bizarre rhetoric and paranoia, the AKP realized that Turkey has finally moved beyond an era in its foreign policy defined by the need to defend what was won at Lausanne.

See article Notes on a Turkish Conspiracy in Foreign Policy, 2017.