Greek Island Inhabits Choppy Waters: a Lingering Enmity With Turkey

Though the government in Athens often sounds the alarm about Turkey’s aggressive intentions toward Limnos, the people of this Greek island 40 miles from the Turkish coast seem to be unaware that they are a focal point of the two nations’ hostility.

“Limnians are brave, and they trust themselves and their country,” said Yannis Xiradis, mayor of Mirina, the island’s major town. “We are not concerned. We don’t even think about it.”

There is little to suggest to the island’s 17,000 people that this place might become a world hotspot. Even the presence of a brigade of Greek troops and a few jet fighters at the airport causes no sense of uneasiness.

Well-Behaved Soldiers

“The soldiers are quiet and well-behaved, and they’re good for the island’s economy,” said Demetrios Vlachos, a 31-year-old farmer who has branched out into the taxi business to profit from tourists attracted to Limnos’ undeveloped beaches.

Another Limnian scoffed at the notion of a threatened takeover by Turkey. “It’s just politics,” he said. In his view, Greek Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou “needs an exciting issue to keep people distracted from domestic problems he can’t solve, so he raises the Turkish threat.”

“With our history of domination by Turkey and Turkish troops in Cyprus since 1974, it’s easy enough to put across, even if there is no threat,” he added.

Whether or not Limnos and other Greek islands in the Aegean Sea are threatened, the dispute between the governments in Athens and Ankara has had far-reaching effects.

Shift in Priorities

Citing the islands’ vulnerability as well as disputed reports of a Turkish buildup along its Aegean shore and northwest border, Greece has shifted its military priorities from defense against the Soviets to defense against Turkey.

Moreover, the Papandreou government withdrew from North Atlantic Treaty Organization naval exercises after squabbling with Turkey over what role, if any, Limnos should play in the Aegean maneuvers. Greece stopped just short of withdrawing from the military wing of NATO.

So, old hostilities between Athens and Ankara over Cyprus have intensified. “The problem began with the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, and it will remain as long as the Cyprus problem remains,” a Western diplomat in Athens said. “As long as Turkish troops remain on Cyprus, Greece can make a case against what it perceives to be aggression and expansionism. If Cyprus can be resolved, then the Aegean dispute will melt away.”

Greek officials are not so optimistic. And although governments in Athens have been known to raise the specter of a threat from Turkey for domestic political reasons, many Greeks are truly alarmed by Turkish claims to sovereignty over Greek islands--among them Limnos--that lie close to the Turkish coast.

The Turks are concerned, too. They fear that the unbridled exercise of Greek sovereignty over the islands could turn the Aegean into a “Greek lake,” that Turkish ships and aircraft could be restricted in the area.

Greek Deputy Foreign Minister Yannis Kapsis says that the dispute is a real one and that there is no easy solution. “There was no problem until 1974, when Turkey made claims in three different directions,” he contended.

“First, they claimed the islands had no continental shelf (a geographical feature associated with offshore limits of sovereignty). That would mean that the Greek islands of the eastern Aegean, where one-fifth of our population lives, are based on Turkey’s continental shelf.

“Second, through their own interpretation of NATO agreements, Turkey insists they must have air control, including active air defense, of the Aegean islands--which means that the Greek islands are based on Turkish soil and will breathe Turkish air. That makes a very strange geopolitical sandwich, which will only tease the expansionist Turkish appetite.”

Third, he said, “since 1975, Turkey has claimed that Greek airspace extends only six miles, not the 10 miles recognized in international conventions, and they do not recognize the 12-mile territorial limits of the law of the sea.”

Greece’s authority to base military forces on Limnos has also been challenged by Turkey, fueling the dispute over NATO exercises.

Limnos was demilitarized under the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923, but many legal scholars feel that Greece’s full rights to use the island as it wishes were restored by the Montreux Convention of 1936.

Turkey does not think so, and it has consistently refused to allow Greece to include Limnos, or its forces based there, in NATO’s Aegean maneuvers. Other alliance governments, apparently fearful of being caught in the middle of the Greek-Turkish fight over the Aegean, have gone along with Turkey’s demand to exclude Limnos. The Greek response was a boycott and then a complete withdrawal from the exercises.

Kapsis, the Greek deputy foreign minister, complained that for a decade Turkish leaders “have made hundreds of statements (threatening) the use of force.” He said that Turkey has built its forces to unprecedented levels on the Aegean shore, in some cases just a few miles from Greek islands.

However, military officers and diplomats of the Western alliance based in Turkey and Greece doubt that this is the case.

“It’s our impression,” a foreign diplomat in Athens said, “that Turkey isn’t all that concerned about the Aegean front.”

Officers at a NATO facility in Izmir, Turkey, said Turkey maintains an active troop-training unit of division size on the Aegean but that there has been no evidence of a buildup.

But according to Kapsis and other Greek officials, Turkey has assigned its best airborne troops to the 4th Aegean Army, which has 140,000 men. Greece also says that Turkey maintains 147 landing craft opposite the Greek islands.

“It is the biggest landing fleet in NATO,” Kapsis said. “That’s why we insist so much on the 7-to-10 ratio.”

He referred to the ratio of military aid that the United States gives to Greece and Turkey. The Athens government, with U.S. congressional support in the past, maintains that if the ratio drops below $7 for Greece to every $10 for Turkey, then the balance of power between the two nations will tilt--to Greece’s peril.

Greece, by overemphasizing a threat, may have aroused skepticism in the U.S. Congress to the point where the aid ratio is in jeopardy--an uncommon disbelief in a Congress where Greek-Americans lobby more effectively than the Turks have been able to do. On March 20, a House subcommittee recommended $500 million in military aid to Greece, compared to $890 million for Turkey.

It is considered doubtful, though, that the threat of an aid cut will mute the Greek government’s cries of a Turkish threat.

“One major reason why the Greeks hammer on the threat from the East is that the Greek defense budget takes 5% of gross national product, one of the highest percentages in Europe,” a diplomat said. “To justify that, they need a military threat, and as a result, nine out of 10 Greeks now believe the greatest threat is Turkey, not the Communist world.

“Without the threat of Cyprus and the Aegean, Papandreou would be politically up a creek. And even if Cyprus is resolved, he will still need a threat in the Aegean unless he’s feeling very secure in office.”