Turkish Strongman Erdogan Ramps Up Rhetoric Against Greece As Tensions Intensify
Jose Nino
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On September 3, 2022, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ratchet up his rhetoric against Greece. According to a report by the Associated Press, Erdogan threatened to “come down suddenly one night.”
Erdogan has employed similar language when dealing with Kurdish militants in Iraq and Syria. In those instances, the Turkish state has followed through with special military operations against Kurdish militant groups that it deems to be existential threats.
Erdogan gave a speech at an aerial technology festival in Samsun where Turkey showed off a prototype of an unmanned fighter jet. At this speech, Erdogan took Greece to task for its use of the Russian S-300 missile systems to lock onto Turkish aircraft back in August. It specifically cited Greece’s alleged use of S-300s in Crete to target Turkish jets.
On top of that, Turkey claims that Greek F-16s badgered Turkish jets by placing them on a radar lock while these Greek aircraft were conducting a NATO mission over the eastern Mediterranean. Turkey is in the process of filing complaints with NATO. For its part, Greece has accused Turkey of violating its airspace.
Although Turkey and Greece are members of NATO, they have beef on several issues, which include territorial disputes in the Aegean Sea and disagreements over the airspace in that area. Towards the final months of 2020, Turkey and Greece nearly collided over natural gas deposits in the Aegean Sea.
Turkey believes Greece is acting in violation of international agreements through its militarization of islands in the Aegean Sea.
Until the Greek War of Independence in 1821, Greece was under the thumb of the Ottoman Empire for a good portion of its history. So there’s bad blood between Greece and Turkey.
This growing intra-NATO struggle is another sign of the military alliance’s growing dysfunction. Should these two NATO members end up butting heads, what will the US end up doing? Hopefully, nothing. However, DC has a penchant for always stoking tensions abroad.
All things considered, the US needs to leave NATO. It’s another entangling alliance that will likely have the US involved in a conflict that does not uphold its national interest. For the US to leave NATO, it will need a completely different set of foreign policy elites in power. Namely, elites who hold a foreign policy vision of non-interventionism, realism, or restraint.
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