Turkey, Greece Threaten War Over Aegean Rights

Turkey and Greece placed their military forces on alert and threatened to go to war Friday as a Turkish oil exploration ship prepared to move into the Aegean Sea with a naval escort, although Turkey later said the vessel will stay out of disputed waters if the Greek military does the same.

Greek Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou had warned Turkey against sending the research ship Sismik-1 into a hotly contested part of the Aegean, saying “hostilities” could erupt, and ordered a U.S. Navy communication base near Athens to suspend operations until the crisis was over.

In Ankara, Turkish Prime Minister Turgut Ozal said the exploration ship would remain in territorial waters and “wait for them (Greece) to make the first move. If the Greeks intervene against our ship, we will intervene in exactly the same way. This may be cause of a war, which we do not at all want.”

The ship, which sent the two countries to the brink of war a decade ago with a similar voyage, had been reported at the Dardanelles Strait ready to sail into Aegean waters today with an escort of Turkish warships.

Papandreou blamed Washington for the crisis.

“The Atlantic Alliance, and especially the United States, bear the responsibility for the Aegean developments because they increasingly support Turkish military might,” Papandreou said.

A government spokesman said Greece decided to suspend operations at the U.S. base at Nea Makri on the eastern coast of the Attica peninsula, 20 miles from Athens, after a 45-minute meeting between U.S. Ambassador Robert V. Keeley and Foreign Under Secretary Yiannis Kapsis.

The base, which monitors shipping movements in the Aegean Sea, is linked to the U.S. 6th Fleet and bases in Italy and Spain. Greece apparently wants to shut it for fear of information leaks through its connection with a facility near Izmir on the Aegean coast of Turkey.

Naval Patrols Ordered

Papandreou threatened earlier Friday to close all four U.S military bases and a Voice of America transmitter in Greece if war broke out and said he might not wait that long. He also ordered naval patrols to cruise off the Greek islands of Samothrace, Limnos and Lesbos near Turkey.

This latest flare-up in tensions prompted NATO ambassadors to call an emergency meeting in Brussels to head off a dispute like the one that erupted 10 years ago. Now, as then, the dispute is taxing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, since Greece and Turkey guard its southern flank.

The NATO ambassadors said that “the present situation damages the interest of Greece and Turkey and of the alliance as a whole.”

NATO Secretary General Lord Carrington then issued a statement urging the two sides to refrain from any action or statement that might aggravate the crisis.

As the Brussels meeting got under way, Greece warned both NATO and the United States that if they had a part in orchestrating the crisis to force Greece into negotiating with Turkey, the Greek government would not accept it.

U.S. Urges Restraint

In Washington, State Department spokesman Charles Redman said the United States received the Greek request to suspend operations and it was under consideration. Other Administration officials said privately that the base continued functioning normally.

“We regret any rise in tensions between two friends and allies,” Redman told reporters. “We have urged both sides to exercise restraint and to avoid any actions that could exacerbate the situation.

“We are actively consulting with the parties and with other interested allies,” he said.

Redman said, “We are trying to establish all the facts. The United States recognizes the Aegean questions involve important issues for both countries.”

‘Trying to Avoid Flash Point’

Another State Department official said, “We’re trying to avoid a flash point, trying to get both sides to tone down their rhetoric and actions.”

Meanwhile, U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar appealed Friday for both sides to exercise maximum restraint in their dispute.

The U.N. chief, who met earlier in the day with Greek Ambassador Mihalis Dountas, said in a statement that he is following reports of the deepening Aegean dispute “with growing concern.”

Dountas, acting on instructions from Papandreou, delivered a letter to Perez de Cuellar blaming Turkish “intransigence” for blocking a negotiated settlement of the dispute.

The letter said Greece is “ready to enter immediately into negotiations with Turkey” to reach a compromise.

The two countries have longstanding disputes over areas of the Aegean and the presence of Turkish troops in Cyprus.

The latest row erupted after Greece said it will drill for oil off the Greek island of Thasos in the northern Aegean.

Turkey announced Thursday that it would likewise explore for oil in international waters around the Greek islands of Samothrace, Limnos and Lesbos.

However, the area to be explored includes parts of the continental shelf that Greece claims as national territory.

Warship Escort

The Turkish announcement said the ship would be joined by a “sufficient number of warships,” and the Turkish armed forces, including ground and air force units, “are on alert and will take every necessary measure to protect our national rights and interests and activities of the research ship.”

In apparent retaliation, Papandreou warned about the closure of U.S. bases if hostilities erupted and said he was also considering closing down a Voice of America transmitter site as the result of the Aegean dispute.

Papandreou’s Socialist Party has pledged to push for removal of the four major U.S. bases in Greece as well as about 20 smaller installations.

Previous Conflict

A decade ago, NATO helped resolve a similar problem that resulted in the so-called Bern Agreement, which divided the sovereignty of the Aegean Sea and its airspace. Greece later renounced the accord and claimed all of the sea’s continental shelf.

Both countries have brought pressure on the United States to try to influence the debate. This week, the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet said the Ankara government, which has been outgunned in the lobbying battle in Washington, has tried to recruit a new ally--the Israeli lobby.

The newspaper said, “Since the number of Turks in the United States does not represent a pivotal force in the elections, we have to find powerful allies with the U.S. political scene.

“Our most powerful candidate as an ally within U.S. domestic politics is the Jewish lobby,” the newspaper said. “The improvement of our relations with the Jewish lobby in the United States depends on the normalization of our relations with Israel.”