We understand better how significant Turkey’s objections to Finland and Sweden’s NATO membership are in the big picture, with Greece’s attitudes that have turned into aggression in recent months.
So how?
While the new restructuring that NATO wanted to realize from the top down in the east of Europe drew Russia into the war through Ukraine, it started to create different effects in the geography where Turkey is in the center.
To put it simply, the US is arming Greece, establishing bases, and persistently provoking this country against Turkey, on trivial grounds. Therefore, Greece is rapidly being added to the field of conflict with our NATO ally, the USA, over Syria.
This country does not need much effort to produce hostile attitudes. From his departure from the Ottoman Empire to the heavy defeats he received from the Turkish army under the leadership of Atatürk, he has a lot of accumulated anger.
Now NATO’s main actor is acting irresponsibly in the air, at sea and wherever possible.
Because he is whispered that the final border in the east of NATO is Greece, not Turkey.
Going back to the very beginning, Turkey’s objections to NATO’s eastward expansion policy should be seen not only on the basis of its sensitivities to terrorism, but also on the dimension that the map intended to be created is aimed at excluding itself.
It is not credible to say that NATO removed the message it published about the 30 August victory with the Greek reaction. It’s almost as if this message was put in for removal.
Thus, Ankara was told how “neutral” NATO’s stance would be in possible crises.
LEARNING A LESSON FROM UKRAINE
There are a few more points about Greece that I should mention. The first is the tendency of this question to be underestimated in our own public opinion for some reason. We confuse expressing Turkey’s power and asserting our self-confidence with underestimating problems.
In connection with this, the second point is that, in some circles, Turkey is the main actor that escalates the tension due to political concerns, even if it is not mentioned out loud. Let’s make a note of the festival thesis for these houses.
Third, the inadequacy of our perspectives on the essence of the matter.
It would be a grave mistake to see Greece’s provocation as a simple distraction or a search for a temporary crisis.
Let’s not lose sight of the fact that what is happening in Ukraine is an important example for all of us with this dimension. Greece doesn’t care in the least of its provocateurs. The enthusiastic applause of the Greek leader in his speech in the USA means nothing more than the fictions of those who put him on the field.
We don’t know how likely it is for Athens to be aware of this. It is very valuable that Turkey maintains the balanced yet determined policy it is currently pursuing.
FROM EUROPE TO THE USA, WHAT NOW?
Despite all the hypocritical attitudes of the alliance, I did not defend a thesis regarding Turkey’s exit from NATO. I can easily say that there is no dominant view in this direction within the Turkish state.
However, a stronger approach as of 2021 is pushing Turkey towards a different place than it was in the unipolar period during and after the Cold War.
Turkey, which transformed its own political and cultural codes with the influence and hand of England and France in the same order before 1950, turned its face to the USA with the end of the great war and the Democratic Party government.
After all this time, can we say that we are getting closer or drifting towards a pole where Russia is located, by looking at, for example, Greece, Syria and the role we have taken in the Ukraine crisis?
There have always been those in Turkey who thought that Russia and the powers that formed alliances with it on different grounds were the future of the world. There is today too. However, they are not strong enough to carry such a process.
In addition, it is highly controversial how meaningful and explanatory it can be to express the relations between Turkey and the West under the title of “exclusion”.
I’ve been trying to argue this for months.
Unless we discuss Turkey’s new role and place in the world by going beyond daily concerns, it becomes difficult for us to progress.
We are not in the same place as the story of Russia and Iran’s exclusion from the west. It makes more sense to continue the discussion without losing sight of it.