Assessing the Turkish Threat

Assessment of the potential military threat from Turkey has long been a key concern of public opinion and the topic of constant debate among Greek security planners. The issue's urgency is rooted in the 1974 Cyprus crisis, which can be regarded as a turning point in post-World War II Greek security orientations. The alarm caused in Greece by the Turkish military intervention was the stimulus for a general reevaluation of national security doctrine.

Since the invasion, periodic nationalist declarations by radical factions in Turkey, which usually make headlines in Greek newspapers, have intensified Greek fears. A second factor in Greece's fear of turkey is the program of armed forces modernization that Turkey has undertaken since 1991. Greece's perception of Turkey as a threat to national security has long been used to justify increased military expenditures and weapons procurements by Greece. But a continued, major expansion of Greek arms procurement is something the Greek economy can ill afford.

Greek military planners envision that the Turkish threat might take one of several forms: a Turkish attempt to extend its Cyprus occupation zone; to take over Greece's easternmost islands in the Aegean Sea, control of whose continental shelf is a burning issue; and/or to "protect" the Muslim minority in Thrace.

In late 1994, the issue of territorial waters between Greece's Aegean Islands and the Turkish mainland assumed greater urgency, at least on a rhetorical level. From the Greek perspective, a major concern is the prospect of a Turkish seizure of Greek islands in response to a de facto Greek extension of the territorial waters limit of its islands from six to twelve miles. Such a move would be in accordance with the Treaty on the Law of the Sea, which went into effect for most of the world in November 1994, but would in effect give Greece control of sea access to ports on Turkey's west coast and to the Black Sea to the north. Turkey has repeatedly warned that such an act would be considered a casus belli (see Turkey , ch. 4). The Greek position has been that Greece has the right to extend territorial waters at some time in the future, but that Greece has no immediate intention of doing so. When the treaty went into effect for signataries in November 1994, Greece and Turkey both were holding naval maneuvers in close proximity to each other in the Aegean, and the rhetoric of both countries escalated.

A related source of Greek-Turkish tension is the dispute over the airspace above the Aegean. The issue, which surfaced in 1931, when Turkey refused to recognize the ten-mile territorial air limit first claimed that year by Greece, gained intensity after 1974. In the early 1990s, mock dogfights occurred frequently between Greek and Turkish pilots, whose interpretation of appropriate use of airspace differed. The frequency of these incidents plus the speed of the aircraft and the compactness of the airspace markedly increase the probability of a real air engagement with potential for escalation. Moreover, resolution of the airspace issue is a key to gaining both Greek and Turkish support for funding of NATO airbases at Larisa in Greece and at Izmir in Turkey.

Greek policy makers also view the Muslim population of northeastern Greece (Greek Thrace), estimated at 120,000, as a potential threat to national security. The Muslim population is composed of 50 percent Turks, 34 percent Pomaks (Muslim Bulgarians), and 16 percent Roma (Gypsies). By mutual consent of Greece and Turkey, the status of this minority has been tied to the fortunes of the Greek population in Istanbul and on the offshore islands of Gokceada (Imroz) and Bozcaada (over 200,000 strong in 1923 but only about 3,000 in 1994). The gradual depletion of the Greek minority in Turkey has changed the balance of this understanding, however. The demographic strength of the Muslims, coupled with pro-Turkish activity in Greek Thrace, occasionally has created tense relations between Christian and Muslim citizens in Greece.

Occasional threats by Turkish nationalist extremists such as the Bati Trakya organization to intervene in Thrace "to liberate their oppressed kin" have not been echoed by responsible Turkish authorities, nor have they attracted significant attention outside the immediate region. Nevertheless, Greek planners take potential Turkish aspirations in Greek Thrace seriously. In addition, in the Greek view, Bulgaria's treatment of its own Turkish minority, which the communist regime of Todor Zhivkov attempted to Bulgarianize in the 1980s, could play a role in ethnic conditions in Thrace because of that region's close proximity to Bulgaria's Turkish communities.