The Greek-Turkish Interstate Rivalry and the likelihood of War

 The Greek-Turkish Interstate Rivalry and the likelihood of War 

by Konstantinos Travlos, PhD

In this post I am going to go over the reasons why I argue that a Greek-Turkish war is over-determined. This post is based on a review of a large body of scholarship in the study of international relations. But it is not a scholarly post. References are indicative, not exhaustive. The analysis is based on the explanatory framework of The Steps to War developed by Paul D. Senese and John A. Vasquez (The Steps to War, 2008, Princeton University Press).  Before starting let me explain what I mean by over-determined.

An event is over-determined when the majority of associated variables for which we have a grasp, foster the occurrence of an event. This does not mean the event will happen, only that it's aversion is now based on factors which we do not grasp yet.

So over-determined does not mean inevitable.

Also, even if the following factors do not push the Greek-Turkish Interstate Rivalry to war, they can push it to a deterioration of relations that can increase the likelihood of war. While the Greek-Turkish Interstate rivalry falls in the Severe Rivalry category of the Goertz, Diehl and Balas Peace Scale (The Puzzle of Peace, Oxford University Press, 2016), which is the most conflict prone type of interstate relation,  there is variation within that category between .for example, severe rivalries of the USSR-USA Cold War type and the Iran-Israel type. Thus the danger in the Turkish-Greek interstate relationship is that the same factors that foster war, can foster further deterioration of relations, that later increase the likelihood of war.

So what are the factors that push for a Greek-Turkish War?
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At the foundation of my analysis is the fact that this is a dangerous dyad. Many of the factors that scholarship, starting with Stuart Bremer, has found multiple indicators that foster the onset of war are present in the Greek-Turkish interstate relationship (Stuart Bremer,1992, Dangerous Dyads, Journal of Conflict Resolution, 36 (2)).

There is a severe inter-state rivalry with all the associated ideational and behavioral aspects of enmity. These include repeated disputes and crises (for a summary see Deniz S. Sert and Konstantinos Travlos,2018, Making a Case over Greco-Turkish Rivalry: Major Power Linkages and Rivalry Strength, ULUSLARARASI iLiŞKiLER, 15(59)).

There is an over-arching conception of enmity. For example Greeks and Rums (term used in Turkey for Greeks speaking, orthodox Christians), were the second most targeted group of hate speech in the Turkish press after Armenians, and before Jews (see Hrant Dink Foundation Media Watch on Hate Speech January - April 2018). Greece is seen as an enemy in polling (See the CTRS TDP2019 survey by Kadir HasUniversity, 53.5% of respondents consider Greece a threat to Turkey), while in Greece polling shows Turkey as one of the major concerns among Greeks (see the διανεοσις/dianeosis 2020 survey Τι Πιστεύουν οι Έλληνες/What Greeks Believe, 64.7% of responded have negative view of Turks and it was the third most popular threat for the future of Greece among respondents after immigration and demographic decline). 

“Patriotic” regions of the political spectrum in both sides see the other as the main obstacle to their countries reaching a better position in international relations and as tools of capitalist imperialism (see for example the rhetoric on Greek-Turkish relations of the nationalist-leftist movements Vatan Partisi in Turkey and Ardin-Rixi in Greece).

There are ongoing territorial disputes on a state level (Military occupation of part of Cyprus by Turkey, Turkish EEZ claims-see the work of Sara Mitchell and Andy Oswiak on how EEZ claims are associated with behaviors that foster war, that more often are associated with terrestrial territorial disputes, Owsiak, A. & Mitchell, S. (2019). Conflict Management in Land, River, and Maritime Claims. Political Science Research and Methods, 7(1)). 

To these we can add latent territorial disputes pushed forward by elements of civil society and political constituencies (Turkish claims on Greek islands or on Thrace, Greek claims of making the Aegean a closed sea. On the role of such latent territorial issues and the hardliners who promote them see Boaz Atzili & Burak Kadercan, 2017, Territorial designs and international politics: the diverging constitution of space and boundaries, Territory, Politics, Governance, 5(2) and Li, M., Leidner, B., Euh, H., & Choi, H.-S. ,2016, The Contagion of Interstate Violence: Reminders of Historical Interstate (but Not Intrastate) Violence Increase Support for Future Violence Against Unrelated Third-Party States. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 42(8)).

There are mutual military buildups, though the recent economic troubles of Greece have dampened it's ability to keep up with Turkish military buildups (see this blogpost for a graphical representation of the increasing capability asymmetry). That said Greek decision makers are seeking to make up for this with a closer association with the US and potential transfer or material.

Finally, while there are no official opposing alliances, there are opposing alignments (on the concept of alignment see Gennady Rudkevich, 2014, Correlates of Political Alignment: Jumping off the Balancing Bandwagon, Dissertation University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign). Greece and Cyprus are aligned with Egypt, Israel which are seen as regional opponents of Turkey, while Turkey is aligning with Albania and North Macedonia which are seen as threats to Greece. This goes as far as Libya, were Greece is friendly to LNA warlord Haftar, while Turkey to GNA executive Al-Sarraj, of the UN recognized government. In Greece there are calls for normalizing relations with the Assad government of Syria.

Further push factors are the deteriorating US-Turkey relationship. The increased Greek alignment with the US is seen in many circles in Turkey as an act of enmity.  If US-Turkish relations become worse, Greek-Turkish relations will become worse.

The there are further ideational factors. The presence and growing dominance of the Mavi Vatan strategic myth among Turkish elites and the attempts to disseminate this among the people (recent calls for including it in the school curriculum), which if brought about would render the Greek Aegean islands exclaves (on the deleterious influence of strategic myths in international relations see Jack Snyder,1991, Myths of Empire, Cornell University Press). 

In Greece this has led to attempts of movements and individuals in the “patriotic” right to promote a counter strategic myth, not a dominant yet, calling for fully changing the Aegean to a Greek sea (indeed making it the central component of the Greek state) and the major EEZ claims south of Casterlorizo (see the opinion pieces published at slpress.gr and infognonpolitics.gr, one associated with journalist Stavros Lygeros, the other with ex-Greek military intelligence officer and now publicist Savvas Kalenteridis. It would be a mistake to consider these fringe voices, though they are nowhere close to the official state sanction Mavi Vatan has in Turkey).

There is also the underlying ideational enmity captured in the work of Alexis Heraclides (see for example Heraclides, Alexis, 2019, “The Greek-Turkish Antagonism: The Social Construction of Self and Other.” In Greece and Turkey in Conflict and Cooperation, Routledge. For a general discussion see Rumelili, Bahar, 2015, “Identity and desecuritisation: the pitfalls of conflating ontological and physical security.” Journal of international relations and development, 18(1)). 

Both countries have ready-made historical concepts that can be triggered by the activity of the other in order to rationalize escalatory behavior. In Greece, the foreign policy of Turkey is more and more equated to that of Italy or Germany in World War 2, with Turkish President Erdogan called a modern Mussolini (or Hitler) triggering the activation of the national myth of unity and national resistance to Axis Forces  before the Italian threat of 1940.

In Turkey, Greek policy and alignment to what many Turks call the Imperialist Powers (Israel, USA) or the many regional adversaries (Armenia) triggers the narrative of the Turkish War of Independence or of the resistance of the battle of Gallipoli/Chanakalle.

National stereotypes are activated in the press and even rhetoric of decision makers. Greece is seen as proxy of other powers, a weak state with a puffed up ego. Turkey is seen as criminal, genocidal, piratical state seeking the annihilation of the Greek nation.

The above are those factors that we as scholars know tend to foster the onset of war (especially in the Steps to War explanatory framework). The next is a factor that has an ambiguous influence.

The “Balance of Power” between Greek and Turkey has been eroding over the last decade in favor of Turkey. We know from multiple indicators found by scholarship that asymmetrical dyads tend to experience less wars than those characterized by parity (the classical argument that a balance of power is conducive to peace is wrong. See John A. Vasquez,2012, The War Puzzle Revisited, Cambridge University Press). This is a dampening factor. However!

An eroding balance of power can also trigger preventive war motivations from the power that is losing. This has already been the case among certain constituencies in Greece that have access to the military establishment and have been pushing for the official incorporation of the call by scholar Panayotis Kondylis, for a preventive first strike, as the desperate solution to the collapsing ability of Greece to deter Turkey (See the επίμετρο/appendix in Παναγιώτης Κονδύλης/ Panayotis Kondylis,2004, Θεωρία του Πολέμου/Theory of War, Εκδόσεις Θεμέλιο/Themelio and the 2nd Issue of the Greek academic journal Strategein/Στρατηγειν). These preventive motives are not yet common among Greek decision makers (though I have been told that Deputy Defense Minister Alcibiades Stefanis when still in the military had called for preventive war) but their hold on the military and part of the foreign policy and defense constituency has been growing.

Another ambiguous factor is the role of the NATO alliance. Being part of the same alliance can have differential impact on war-onset depending on the historical era (see the work of Brett Ashley Leeds, and the summary of findings by John A. Vasquez in What do We Know about War, 2^nd edition). While many see the alliance as a dampening factor, by default for both Greece and Turkey this is a form of grouping alliance, in which case a state allies with it's biggest threat in the hope that this will provide it with some control over the successes of the adversary. The problem is that grouping alliances are extremely dangerous and more often than that have been associated with war (for example e the Austria attempt to group Russia in the 18^th-19^th century, or the British attempt to do the same in 1910-1914. For the definitive historical treatment see Paul Schroeder,1994, The Transformation of European Politics, Oxford University Press.). Furthermore, the US-Turkey adversarial relationship may weaken any conflict dampening effects of common membership in the NATO alliance.

There are finally some factors present in the interstate rivalry, that dampen the push to war or deterioration of the severe rivalry. Greek decision makers in general seem to still prefer a cautious accommodationist policy based partly on trying to turn the Greek-Turkish issues into multilateral issues (they are savaged as appeasers by the "patriotic" press in Greece mentioned above). The constituencies pushing for most hardline approaches in both countries are not yet fully dominant (especially in Greece). Strictly maritime issues are not very war-prone. Those of the issues of the two states that are maritime issues, territorial waters length, continental shelf are the types of issues that are less likely to lead to war (see Hensel, P. R., McLaughlin Mitchell, S., Sowers, T. E., & Thyne, C. L.,2008, Bones of Contention: Comparing Territorial, Maritime, and River Issues. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 52(1)).

Neither Greece or Turkey might be able to afford a war, diplomatically or financially. The trend in international relations is that while the incidence of war may not have declined (see Bear Braumoeller, 2020, Only the Dead, Oxford University Press), in general over the last twenty years, wars have become something that only major powers can afford (49% of interstate wars in the 1816-1997 included a major power participant, i.e almost half of the wars fought in the last 200 years, were fought by at least one of 12 major power states-compared to the more than 150 non-major power states, see Vasquez, J., & Valeriano, B. ,2010, Classification of Interstate Wars. The Journal of Politics, 72(2)).

That said, one should keep in mind that

I) the most important effect of interstate rivalry is to turn accommodationists to hardliners, or replacing them by hardliners (for an example of this process see Christopher Clark, 2012, The Sleepwalkers, Harper).

II) Issue linkages may render “safe” issues into dangerous issues (for example linking territorial waters to EEZ), and Turkish foreign policy vis-à-vis Greece right now is to promote package deals that indeed foster issue linkages (See John A. Vasquez, The War Puzzle Revisited).

 III) The economic and diplomatic consequences of war can be overcome by strategic thinking that argues for war as the last desperate tool to defend national independence, sovereignty or territorial integrity, or national honor. Poor countries have fought and have been able to sustain war for periods ranging from a month to two years (see for example the most recent minor power interstate war, the Ethiopian-Eritrean War of 1998-2001).

On the basis of the above review of findings and empirical conditions I would argue that the outlook for the Turkish-Greek interstate rivalry is problematic. Even if the dampening factors can help avert the onset of a Greek-Turkish War at any one point of time, the underlying conditions will continue to foster war, and the deterioration of the severe rivalry to much more dangerous forms like the Iran-Israeli relationship. At some point, luck will run out absent a serious endeavor to move Turkish-Greek relations out of Severe Rivalry conditions, on the basis of the principles of quality peace: security for all, respect for the dignity of all parties, and long-term stability of agreements (see Peter Wallensteen,2015, Quality Peace, Oxford University Press). Unfortunately the prospects for such leadership are unlikely. The combination of accommodationist decision makers in Greece with  hardliners in Turkey while likely to avert war at any one point of time, is not likely to lead to long-term upgrading of relations.