The irony that Greece is a member of the same alliance that includes the single greatest perceived threat to its sovereignty has been an inconvenient truth for NATO for decades, but so long as an uneasy status quo is maintained in the Eastern Mediterranean, the alliance has largely been able to ignore the historical animosity between Greece and Turkey. However, tensions between Athens and Ankara periodically reach such high temperatures that they threaten to lead to a flashpoint or even an open conflict in the region. In recent years, tensions have again reached this boiling point, not seen since the two nearly went to war over the uninhabited islets of Imia/Kardak in 1995.

Yet, history may have repeated itself a second time. In 1999, when bilateral relations between Greece and Turkey were immensely poor, earthquakes struck both countries in quick succession. The Greek and Turkish governments responded by dispatching aid and assistance to one another and a dramatic turnaround in relations was achieved. In February 2023, Turkey was again struck by earthquakes and Greece quickly responded with humanitarian assistance as it had done in the past. Now, a dramatic shift in the tone of relations appears to have occurred once more. Could this second era of “earthquake diplomacy” lead to a sustained betterment of bilateral relations, or is any progress toward rapprochement as doomed to impermanence as in previous decades?

Earthquake Diplomacy

The devastating earthquakes which struck Turkey and Syria on February 6 this year, prompted an outpouring of sympathy and support from Greece to Turkey. Just one day later, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan conversed with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis over the phone for the first time in months. Reportedly, the pair had not spoken since March the previous year.

Greece promptly dispatched emergency response teams to Turkey. A visit to the affected areas by Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias followed on February 12, where he was accompanied by his Turkish counterpart Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu. The pair met again in Brussels on February 20, where they agreed to support each other’s foreign affairs aspirations. Turkey will support Greece’s candidacy for a position as a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council in 2025-2026 and Greece will support Turkey’s push to hold the General Secretariat for the International Maritime Organization.

In April, Greek Defense Minister Nikos Panagiotopoulos met with his Turkish counterpart Hulusi Akar in Turkey’s earthquake stricken Hatay Province. It was the first visit of a Greek defense minister to Turkey since 2002. The pair voiced hopes that détente between their respective countries is possible, with Akar expressing a desire to turn the Mediterranean into a “sea of friendship” and Panagiotopoulos noting that “tragedies and disasters actually act as a catalyst in terms of reducing tensions.”

Considerations for NATO

For NATO, and by extension the US, rapprochement between the two members of the alliance would certainly be welcome. Incidents in the air and on the sea between the two are alarmingly frequent. For example, in January this year, just weeks before the earthquakes struck Turkey, Greek and Turkish coast guard vessels were involved in an incident which led to the firing of warning shots and an attempt by one vessel to ram the other. Given the atmosphere of high tensions between Athens and Ankara, any one of these incidents could become a major flashpoint for a potential conflict, as was the case in 1995. Naturally, any outbreak of hostility between two alliance members could seriously undermine the integrity of NATO.

NATO has sought to implement measures to minimize the risk of a serious incident leading to military escalation. In October 2020, a bilateral military de-confliction mechanism was established after meetings were held between Greek and Turkish representatives at the alliance’s HQ in Brussels. Given the complexity of the dispute between the two members, any attempt on NATO’s part to resolve the root causes of the issue would require a significant investment of time and energy, without any guarantee of success. A more realistic and timely approach therefore calls for the introduction of measures to mitigate the worst-case scenario.

All things considered, the apparently sudden turnaround in bilateral relations following the earthquakes this February are a welcome turn of events for NATO, whose chief concern is now the war in Ukraine.

US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken noted as much during a visit to the region in February. “It’s profoundly in our interest and I believe in the interest of both Greece and Turkey to find ways to resolve longstanding differences,” he told reporters in Athens, not long after he had also paid a visit to Turkey.

Of course, for NATO the bigger question is that of Turkey’s alignment. Turkey’s decision to purchase the Russian S-400 missile system against US wishes and subsequent expulsion from the F-35 program raised concerns about Ankara’s intentions. More broadly, Turkey’s strategic interests deviate significantly from the majority of NATO’s members. Ankara might well benefit from the emergence of a multipolar world order if this enabled it to act more assertively as a regional power, whereas most NATO members generally see themselves as beneficiaries of the US-led order. Nevertheless, Turkey’s geostrategic position, straddling the space between Europe and Asia makes it an immensely valuable member of the alliance, and any indicators that Ankara is willing to improve its relations with other members of the alliance will surely be welcomed.

Conflicting Strategic Interests

Where there is a willingness to facilitate discourse, there is at least a possibility for rapprochement. The recent softening of tensions between Greece and Turkey is encouraging, but there are also reasons to be cautious. Ultimately, the previous round of earthquake diplomacy broke down, and Athens and Ankara resumed their habitual patterns of antagonistic behaviour. Despite a willingness to build a more cooperative relationship, Greece and Turkey failed to reach a compromise on their opposing geostrategic preferences, which severely limited the feasibility of rapprochement. If Greece and Turkey again fail to establish sufficient common ground, the dividends of this new era of earthquake diplomacy will be short lived.

The incompatibilities of Greece and Turkey’s geostrategic interests are most clearly demonstrated by the longstanding maritime dispute between the two countries. The maritime dispute in the Eastern Mediterranean and Aegean consists of several complex overlapping issues. In short, neither side agrees on where the boundaries of their territorial waters and their exclusive economic zones (EEZs) lie. This is complicated further by the frozen conflict in Cyprus. With Athens and Ankara championing the rights of Greek and Turkish Cypriots respectively, a further dispute regarding the territorial waters of the Republic of Cyprus and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), has further enflamed tensions, especially since the discovery of hydrocarbons off the Cypriot coast.

Ankara’s main anxiety is that with only a limited strip of territorial waters in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean, Turkey will be caged within the confines of Anatolia, unable to secure its maritime security, trade, and energy interests. Ankara has repeatedly accused Athens of trying of trying to turn the Aegean into a “Greek lake” and views the Greek belief that the Aegean is a Greek sea as the primary source of tension. Whenever Athens has floated the idea of expanding its territorial waters to twelve nautical miles in the Aegean from the current six, Ankara has reacted strongly, decrying any such notions. In fact, when Greece first declared that it had the right to expand its territorial waters after ratifying the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) in 1995, Turkey responded by saying that any attempt to do so would be a cause for war.

Turkey’s strategic approach to the issue has increasingly been influenced by the “Mavi Vatan”, or Blue Homeland doctrine which has gained increasing prevalence in mainstream Turkish politics. It reflects a belief that Turkey must adopt a more expansive vision of its maritime interests in the region, which does not shy away from the use of its navy for coercive means if there is a perceived need to do so. The conduct of a maritime training exercise dubbed Mavi Vatan by the Turkish military in the Aegean, Mediterranean, and Black Sea in 2019, further confirmed the unofficial adoption of Blue Homeland principles as guiding the Turkish government’s geostrategic approach to the region.

According to proponents of the Blue Homeland doctrine, Turkey’s maritime jurisdiction extends to the eastern half of the Aegean Sea. These claims contradict the claimed EEZs of Greece and Cyprus. Moreover, many Greek islands are situated within this boundary claimed by Turkey. This does not necessarily translate as an intention to annex these islands, but at a minimum, it would confine the Greek islands to territorial waters defined by their current width of six nautical miles.

The growing importance of the Blue Homeland theory in Turkish geostrategic thought further heightens existential fears in Athens that Ankara will attempt to deny Greek sovereignty, potentially by force. Many Greek decisionmakers perceive Turkey as a revisionist power with neo-Ottoman ambitions of re-drawing the map in the region. Erdoğan’s dismissive attitude towards the Treaty of Lausanne, which set the boundaries between Greece and Turkey in 1923, has done little to alleviate Greek fears, nor have political stunts by his allies, like Devlet Bahçeli, who was photographed presenting a map of the Aegean which depicted several Greek islands, including Crete, as belonging to Turkey in July last year. Greece’s security concerns are demonstrated starkly by its defense spending, which is the highest in NATO as a percentage of GDP, at 3.54 percent, according to the latest annual report by NATO.

Regional Competition

To make matters even more complex, several regional powers have been drawn into the dispute, largely driven by the increasingly uncertain balance of power in the Eastern Mediterranean and the potential to profit from the discovery of energy sources. In recent years, Athens and Ankara have both courted potential partners in the region to gain the upper hand on the geostrategic chessboard.

In 2019, Greece together with Egypt, Cyprus, and Israel formed the EastMed Gas Forum (EMGF). The formal charter was signed in September 2020 and legally entered force in March 2021. The purpose of the intergovernmental organization was to foster cooperation between its members on the exploration and production of gas in the region. The exclusion of Turkey and the TRNC is significant for two reasons. Firstly, Ankara argues that Turkey and the TRNC have a right to profit from natural gas in the Eastern Mediterranean, with the Cypriot gas fields being a particularly contentious issue. Secondly, when the EMGF was first formed, each of its members regarded and generally continue to regard Turkey as a geopolitical competitor and potential threat.

The establishment of the EMGF was therefore partially predicated on protecting the interests of its members from the perceived threat of growing Turkish influence and involvement in the wider region. The later inclusion of France, Italy, Jordan, and Palestine as full members, and the EU and US as observers, further isolated Turkey. 

France has been an especially active supporter of the Greek and Greek Cypriot position in the dispute. When Turkey sent a survey ship accompanied by Turkish naval vessels to explore offshore oil and gas reserves in disputed waters in August 2020, France responded by dispatching its own warships to the Mediterranean.

To counter a growing sense of geopolitical isolation, Ankara has sought to build its own partnerships elsewhere. In November 2019, Turkey and the Libyan Government of National Accord signed a Maritime Boundary Treaty delineating a tract of territorial waters across the Eastern Mediterranean as belonging to the two countries. The intended fait accompli of the deal was to force Greece, Cyprus, Egypt, and Israel to ask Turkey permission for the construction of a proposed gas pipeline which would pass through the waters now assigned to Turkey in the deal. The result of this would be to force the four to cut Turkey in on the proposed pipeline or scrap it altogether. Greece, Cyprus, and Egypt, together with France and the UAE, jointly denounced the deal and argued that it "cannot produce any legal consequences for third States" because it lacked legal legitimacy.

Turkish Elections

Having led Turkey for two decades, both as prime minister and then as president under the new presidential system, analysts forecasting Turkish foreign policy have tended to assume that Erdoğan will continue to be in power in the immediate future. However, his position has been threatened by the Turkish elections held on 14 May, which now look like they will prove indecisive and go to a second round later in the month.

Mitsotakis, whose fate will also soon be determined at the ballot box, has expressed hope that whoever triumphs at the Turkish elections, will be open to a less bellicose relationship with Greece and other Western actors. “I would hope that the next Turkish government would overall reconsider its approach toward the West, not just toward Greece, toward Europe, toward NATO and toward the United States,” said the Greek Prime Minister.

Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, leader of the Turkish opposition, has at times sought to outdo Erdoğan in terms of nationalist rhetoric vis a vis Greece, but overall, Kılıçdaroğlu’s outlook is more pro-Western, and he has indicated a greater willingness to improve relations between Turkey and Western entities like the EU and NATO. If, Kılıçdaroğlu were to win the elections, the competing interests that underpin Greco-Turkish tensions would certainly remain in place, but the Turkish opposition leader seems more likely to rely on diplomatic channels than Erdoğan, who often resorts to rhetorical bluster and implied threats designed to appeal to his nationalist base.

On this hypothetical scenario, the analysis of Evangelos Areteos, a research associate at the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy, appears valid. Areteos argues that if Kılıçdaroğlu is elected, “Ankara’s fixed positions will not change but the atmosphere and climate in Greek-Turkish will change, which, as previous experiences have shown, has the potential to be a very good start.”

The Status Quo

Returning our attention to the broader context of Greek and Turkish strategic competition over the past few years, the status quo remains complex. Turkey has tried to undo its regional isolation by making overtures to states in the Middle East and North Africa like Egypt and the UAE that had grown wary of Ankara’s geopolitical ambitions. Meanwhile, Greece has continued its efforts to bolster its partnerships, both in the region and internationally. For instance, the Mutual Defence Cooperation Agreement updated between Athens and Washington in October 2021, has increased the American military footprint in Greek waters. Although deals like these are far from firm affirmations that respective third parties would aid Greece in the event of a conflict, they have somewhat alleviated fears of facing potential Turkish aggression alone.

Given the sheer complexity of regional competition between Greece and Turkey in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean, the foundations on which rapprochement could be built are incredibly shaky. The prospects for a sustained improvement in relations are even more uncertain now than they were during the previous instance of earthquake diplomacy, given the greater involvement of actors concerned with the regional balance of power.

Crucially, there is also a lack of incentive for either side to compromise on their fundamental positions. The previous period of earthquake diplomacy in the late 1990s and 2000s coincided with a sense of optimism towards the accession of Turkey into the EU. At the time, Greece strongly supported Turkey’s accession bid, further bolstering the betterment of bilateral relations. Now however, the Turkish accession process has largely unravelled, and Ankara’s geostrategic ambition has shifted to positioning itself as a prominent regional power at the crossroads between Europe and Asia. The result is that Athens and Ankara have even less common ground on which to build on.

Ultimately, rapprochement is not impossible. In fact, a sustained improvement in relations between Athens and Ankara will likely continue, at least until upcoming elections in both countries are settled later this year. Beyond that, bilateral relations may warm for a time if it proves politically expedient for the leaders of both countries to do so within a domestic context. As in the previous period of earthquake diplomacy, the natural disaster earlier this year led to a greater sense of mutual warmth between the Greek and Turkish general publics that politicians in both countries may wish to capitalize on. 

However, the underlying contradictions between the strategic interests of Athens and Ankara will make any truly sustainable détente between the two extremely difficult to achieve. Any improvement in relations is therefore likely to be temporary, with the rivalry frozen rather than resolved.