[ad_1]
History has restarted along paths difficult to predict and the placid waters of the Mediterranean, crossed by the winds of war between Turkey and Greece, are the clearest proof of this. The Turkish government has announced its intention to conduct naval military exercises on 1 and 2 September at sea off the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, the only part of the European Union that has been militarily occupied by a foreign power that has it established a “ghost country”, outside of international law and not recognized by any member country of the United Nations.
The Turkish military exercises follow the joint “Eunomia” naval exercises of the navies of Greece, Italy, France and Cyprus that began on August 24 and were born in response to repeated Turkish threats with the illegal exploration of hydrocarbons by the research vessel “Orç Reis”. , escorted by eight Ankara frigates, drones and F-16 fighters.
The object of the dispute is the exploitation of the large natural gas fields discovered in recent years in the eastern and southern Mediterranean by Egypt and Israel, which have drawn Turkish attention to the area.
But Turkey is mostly concerned about the geopolitical implications of the pipeline. “EastMed “, the great project, strongly desired by the European Union, which represents the infrastructure backbone of this strategy: a project of 6,000 million euros and 2,000 km of network, which will link Israel, Cyprus and Greece with our peninsula to gas from recently discovered fields reaching Italy and Europe.
The East-Med gas pipeline is strategic for Italy and for the whole of Europe because it will allow us to increase the diversification of our energy supply sources, reducing dependence on Russian gas and above all creating a safer alternative to the passage of many oil and gas pipelines in Turkey. Erdogan’s, increasingly unstable, Islamist, authoritarian and distant from the West.
One more piece of this strategy was added last January in Cairo at the initiative of Egypt, Italy, Cyprus, Greece, Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian Authority, with the birth of the East Med Gas Forum, which will be able to guarantee the governance of management. Eastern Mediterranean energy.
Ankara’s reaction to Western prominence in the Mediterranean was immediate and the tones of the last few days are very harsh. Erdogan’s authoritarian and Islamist turning point therefore takes a further step towards ultra-nationalist positions that risk testing the stability of the Mediterranean.
“Turkey will take its fair share at sea Aegean, in the Black Sea and the Mediterranean ”, and“ if Greece wants to pay a price, let it come and confront us…. or get out of the way. “These are Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s threats to Greece, which run the risk of producing an uncontrollable escalation.
Greece obtained immediate European solidarity, Macron’s military commitment, joint exercises with Italy and Cyprus and also yesterday four F-16s from the United Arab Emirates arrived at the Souta base in Crete to participate in joint military exercises with the Hellenic Air Forces. .
Already a year ago, the Abu Dhabi Air Force had promoted intense cooperation with the Athens and Tel Aviv air forces in the eastern Mediterranean and the new Turkish assertiveness is also the reason that led the Tsipras and Netanyahu governments to sign. 2015 a very broad military defense and coordination pact between the two armies.
But to fully understand the reasons for the increasingly radical opposition in the Mediterranean and the Middle East between Erdogan’s Turkey, Greece and the West in general, it is necessary to analyze the authoritarian and Islamist turn of the Ankara regime, which in ten years has radically changed. . vision, geopolitical location and strategic alliances of the country.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s “neo-Ottoman” turning point has already drastically changed the entire Middle East, and today Turkey is increasingly moving away from the Atlantic anchorage, pursuing an autonomous project of international projection with unscrupulous alliances between Moscow, Tehran, Damascus. and Tripoli.
The Turkish president is growing weaker at home, following the two sensational electoral defeats in Istanbul, when the secular and secular opposition candidate, Ekrem Imamoglu, defeated the majority ruling party, despite the cancellation of the vote put into march for a magistracy according to the regime. And even two years of multi-wave purges in the military, schools, and judiciary after the coup attempt in 2016 were not enough to completely subject Turkey to the will of the 17-year ruling Truth and Justice party. .
Weakened at home, Erdogan has bet all his cards on an ultra-nationalist and neo-Ottoman option.
First the purchase of the S-300 defense systems from Russia, then the invasion in Syria of the canton of Afrin, the enclave controlled by the Syrian Democratic Force, the best and only ally of the West in the Syrian theater; finally, the ethnic cleansing carried out by the Turkish army and jihadist militias, made up of many exits from al Qaeda, with the second invasion of northern Syria in the fall of 2019; then again the unscrupulous alliances in Libya, all always with an anti-Western function, and finally the demolition of one of the last symbols of secularism and multi-denominational Turkey: the transformation of the Hagia Sophia mausoleum into a mosque.
The progressive demolition of the rule of law, the harsh repression of all forms of dissent, the exile of journalists and free voices, the arbitrary detention of Selahattin Demirtas, the Kurdish leader who obtained more than 13% in the general political elections, the death in the prisons of the regime of lawyers and human rights defenders (the lawyer Ebru Timtik died yesterday after 238 days of hunger strike due to the request for a fair trial), make Erdogan’s Turkey objectively incompatible with the founding values of the Atlantic Alliance. But Erdogan’s recent and further radicalization is also related to his progressive weakening in the race for leadership in the Sunni Arab world.
The recent election of Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, to lead the UAE to a full normalization of diplomatic relations with Israel and at the same time reopen, with a true “horse movement”, the dialogue for the solution of the Palestinian question, has seriously weakened the leadership of Erdogan, Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood in a Sunni world tired of conflict and eager for radical change. The choice of the Emirates, soon to be followed by Bahrain, Oman and other Arab countries, represents an objective weakening of Erdogan’s neo-Ottoman designs.
The lack of innovative strategies on the part of Europe, NATO and the West, or worse, simple inaction, not only runs the risk of not resolving the potential conflict with Turkey, but even exacerbates it, exposing European and Western institutions to blackmail from time to time. by Erdogan on the millions of Syrian refugees or the muscle provocations on the Greek islands.
The solutions are not simple or taken for granted, but a long-term strategy must be developed that can even reopen Turkey’s European integration process directly linked to regime change. Much stronger positions must be expressed on human rights and on the demolition of democratic guarantees in Turkey, also accompanying the complaint with an articulated system of sanctions. We must bet on the secular and secular component of Turkish society that could soon raise its head and resume a European path. The ambition to be able to integrate a great secular and Muslim country into the European institutions should be cultivated again.
After almost twenty years of the Erdogan regime and despite its authoritarian and Islamist turn, Turkey has shown that it still has a lot of democratic vitality. The double victory in the city of Istanbul thanks to the alliance between all democratic and secular forces has shown that stopping the Islamists is a concrete possibility
[ad_2]
