Turkey

[Filikieteria1821]

They want to have talks though ..... I think we all know talks will either not happen, or if they do they will result in the capitulation of Greek positions, and not on the battlefield, but at the table.

Greece should immediately suspend any talks citing the reopening of Varosha, as well as this exercise. I would go a step further and announce the immediate extension to 12 so these kinds of exercises can no longer happen in the middle of the aegean

[Reaper]

I think the most insidious thing I have seen Greece do since Cyprus is refuse to give the aegean a 12 mile EEZ. The courage required to cede the Aegean to Turkey is immense and yet Mitsotakis has done it. This live fire exercise in the heart of the Aegean is a game changer. Greece will allow it too. Greek media wont touch the story.

Turkey truly is experiencing a renaissance of conquest.

[Reaper]

Turks start walking through their conquered Varosia:

[aek66]

I think the most insidious thing I have seen Greece do since Cyprus is refuse to give the aegean a 12 mile EEZ. The courage required to cede the Aegean to Turkey is immense and yet Mitsotakis has done it. This live fire exercise in the heart of the Aegean is a game changer. Greece will allow it too. Greek media wont touch the story.

Turkey truly is experiencing a renaissance of conquest.

i believe this is a turkish bluff only to cancel, to 'look good'. if i'm mitsotaki, i immediately call for a summit with france and macron and invite the heads of state around the e.med. the morale of greek forces is at a high level. force turkey to make the wrong decision. a catastrophic decision. the usa is ready to ditch the turks...force turkey to use s-400 radars against american military fighters. i also push for quicker deliveries of weapons and equipment...those that are looking over the financial numbers to figure out how much they can divert to their private swiss bank accounts need to give way for once.

as far as insidious, do you mean the run-up to the 1974 invasion or do you mean that greece offered very little military resistance? i believe greece could not have fought turkey in cyprus in 1974. we would have gotten our clocks cleaned in cyprus and turkey would have taken the whole island. logistically impossible in 1974 for greece to fight turkey in cyprus.

[Reaper]

i believe this is a turkish bluff only to cancel, to 'look good'. if i'm mitsotaki, i immediately call for a summit with france and macron and invite the heads of state around the e.med. the morale of greek forces is at a high level. force turkey to make the wrong decision. a catastrophic decision. the usa is ready to ditch the turks...force turkey to use s-400 radars against american military fighters. i also push for quicker deliveries of weapons and equipment...those that are looking over the financial numbers to figure out how much they can divert to their private swiss bank accounts need to give way for once.

as far as insidious, do you mean the run-up to the 1974 invasion or do you mean that greece offered very little military resistance? i believe greece could not have fought turkey in cyprus in 1974. we would have gotten our clocks cleaned in cyprus and turkey would have taken the whole island. logistically impossible in 1974 for greece to fight turkey in cyprus.

I think Mitsotaki with the help of the Greek media will do nothing and this live fire exercise will go ahead.

As for Cyprus - the coup with no intention to defend what was started was insidious.

[Don Giovanni]

Urgent talks with France first. They're the only ones who can really help us. We need help to get the best possible outcome. I think too this is the time for Greece to finally declare the 12 mile EEZ after this stunt Turkey has decided to pull. Their casus belli can go to hell.

My only concern is Erdogan felt capable of doing this because he has the backing from one or more of our "allies" to pull this off. It could just be Erdogan has finally gone off the rails with his delusion, but it's possible someone else may be secretly rooting for a war in the East Mediterranean and Southern Caucasus.

[Reaper]

Urgent talks with France first. They're the only ones who can really help us. We need help to get the best possible outcome. I think too this is the time for Greece to finally declare the 12 mile EEZ after this stunt Turkey has decided to pull. Their casus belli can go to hell.

My only concern is Erdogan felt capable of doing this because he has the backing from one or more of our "allies" to pull this off. It could just be Erdogan has finally gone off the rails with his delusion, but it's possible someone else may be secretly rooting for a war in the East Mediterranean and Southern Caucasus.

We must remember something key. The Causi Belli was originally for any expansion of Greek eez - anywhere in Greece - including the Ionian! Turkey was actively telling Albania Greece can't extend Ionian eez because of their causi belli with Greece.

When Mitsotakis increased the Ionian eez to 12 miles, Turks immediately dropped the ridiculous causi belli for the ionian and stated it was only for the aegean. However at the time, I stated clearly - that by Mitsotakis not increasing the central aegean/ Crete eez to 12 miles too - Turkey will now pitch their tent in a causi belli for the entire aegean.

What Mitsotakis has to do immediately is declare a 12 mile eez for the central aegean and crete. The dodecanese can be for negotiations and can be related to Turkey's causi belli.

It is simply nonsensical that Mitsotakis refuses to declare a 12 m eez in the central aegean and crete. By not doing this, Mitsotakis is destabilising the entire region and because he refuses to do this, Turkey once again will fill the gap and will now create precedent with their live fire exercise in the central aegean.

[Don Giovanni]

I can only figure Mitsotakis wanted to appease other allies by not extending it in the Aegean. Weak? Yes. A mistake? Perhaps. You make a very good point, but that would have given Turkey an excuse to claim Greece was acting in bad faith and I think we all know which side the Germans would pick, thus weakening our hand in the East Med. What Greece did in the Ionian was hammer out a deal with Italy first and signal that they intended to the same with Turkey in the Aegean.

Now it's Turkey acting in bad faith and testing the patience of everyone else. This might be exactly the shot in the arm we needed to finally force this solution through.

The only problem? That Turkey might have secret support to conduct itself this way and it's probably all tied together with Syria, Armenia, Libya, and anywhere else the Russians are involved. I fear among our allies there is quiet support for Turkey's belligerence and as a reward, Erdogan is being given a free hand in other matters to shore up his support domestically and continue policies in disturbance to Russia, to drag them into quagmires at a time when America is withdrawing. That too is a double-edge sword. Erdogan can be left abandoned and made to fall if France has the conviction to come to Greece's aid.

[Reaper]

, but that would have given Turkey an excuse to claim Greece was acting in bad faith

Turkey is claiming that anyway, constantly/ The reason Mitsotakis has not claimed a 12 mile eez in the central and Western Aegean is more along the lines of low IQ than deep strategy. The Turks have cleverer leaders sadly - the Turks don't have to be geniuses - they just need to be slightly smarter than Syrians, Libyans, Greeks, Kurds, Armenians etc and they are.. this is not in doubt.

Mitsotakis put the Aegean on the table when he gave the ionian islands a 12 mile EEZ. Fascinatingly, when Syriza was contemplating the same move a few years ago, ND said the plan was suicide because anything other than a unilateral 12 mile eez would tell the Turks the aegean is on the Turkish menu. Seems the ND are just clueless buffoons like the leadership of Armenia.

I have read lots of the classics and I remember reading one ancient Greek historian describing the fall of Athens. He said quite plainly - Athens ran out of great men. After Kimonas, Themistokles, Perikles etc had passed on - there was no one of their caliber to replace them. Athens literally ran out of IQ at the top level. The glut of genius leadership brought great fortune and its total loss reversed everything. A nation is only as strong as the intelligence of its leader.

If we pause and look at modern Greece, there is a severe IQ deficit at the top level. Since Venizelos (and before him, characters such as George I, Kapodistrias, Kolokotronis etc) - since them, there has been no body. No one with what I would describe as having an IQ over 110. Mitsotakis is like a small kid often bullied who hides his valuable baseball cards in his socks and is working on a stronger relationship with his teachers to report a bully throughout the years. His father, allowing half of Albania to flood into Greece, was also a complete moron. Interestingly, this for once is not about right or left. Remember it was a leftist Turkish leader who successfully split Cyprus in half.

Greeks in general - mostly those on the left - are acutely unaware of how precarious Greece (a nation with openly disputed sovereignty) is. Greece appears to Turkey as a giant pussy waiting to get fucked and Mitsotakis the buffoon is flirting heavily and putting everyone in danger.. He is the one destabilising the Aegean, not the Turks. Once Erdogan leaves NK a graveyard he will turn his attention to Greece and Mitsotakis's deranged pro europeanism will be worth nothing. The Greeks are still those idiots praying for the Pope to come with his armies to break the Ottoman siege of Constantinople. They still think Europe will save them. All they had to do it learn from Israel but instead they embraced progressivism.

[Don Giovanni]

Mitsotakis is Harvard educated. His father wasn't. Erdogan has experience and is willing to take risks. He's not smarter, he's just a bigger asshole. That's the difference.

That isn't to say some stupid mistakes continue to be made on our part. In dealings with the NATO chief, Greece hasn't done a great job. And in-person meets with Turkish counterparts should not be seen as "jovial."

In any case, the Turkish arguments are a problem when Europe chooses to accept them. Turkey offers more geostrategic and economic value to them than Greece does, so they would prefer to accept the Turkish positions if left to a choice. To get political points, Greece must at least appear nice and open to negotiation, while Turkey must continue to act in a way that threatens not only Greek interests, but wider interests.

What Greece did in the Ionian with Italy set the stage for Turkey to sit down with Greece and sort out the Aegean through bilateral agreement. It's a charade because we all know there will be no such agreement, but it doesn't matter so long as Greece goes through the motions and Turkey continues to agitate for a war.

Now I'm not going to say I actually disagree with you because I do think you make a very valid argument. The problem is inexperience and unwillingness to take risks, but Greece has a damaged reputation in recent years also. We're the problem child of Europe. Things have improved, but we have not done ourselves many favors and that's where the low IQ argument you make really comes in.

If we play our cards right and Turkey does something rash when trying to conduct these drills, France could back us up and that would spell game over. The reality is Turkey needs a war because their claims aren't valid and at The Hague, Greece would get the more favorable outcome.

[aek66]

Turkey is claiming that anyway, constantly/ The reason Mitsotakis has not claimed a 12 mile eez in the central and Western Aegean is more along the lines of low IQ than deep strategy. The Turks have cleverer leaders sadly - the Turks don't have to be geniuses - they just need to be slightly smarter than Syrians, Libyans, Greeks, Kurds, Armenians etc and they are.. this is not in doubt.

Mitsotakis put the Aegean on the table when he gave the ionian islands a 12 mile EEZ. Fascinatingly, when Syriza was contemplating the same move a few years ago, ND said the plan was suicide because anything other than a unilateral 12 mile eez would tell the Turks the aegean is on the Turkish menu. Seems the ND are just clueless buffoons like the leadership of Armenia.

I have read lots of the classics and I remember reading one ancient Greek historian describing the fall of Athens. He said quite plainly - Athens ran out of great men. After Kimonas, Themistokles, Perikles etc had passed on - there was no one of their caliber to replace them. Athens literally ran out of IQ at the top level. The glut of genius leadership brought great fortune and its total loss reversed everything. A nation is only as strong as the intelligence of its leader.

If we pause and look at modern Greece, there is a severe IQ deficit at the top level. Since Venizelos (and before him, characters such as George I, Kapodistrias, Kolokotronis etc) - since them, there has been no body. No one with what I would describe as having an IQ over 110. Mitsotakis is like a small kid often bullied who hides his valuable baseball cards in his socks and is working on a stronger relationship with his teachers to report a bully throughout the years. His father, allowing half of Albania to flood into Greece, was also a complete moron. Interestingly, this for once is not about right or left. Remember it was a leftist Turkish leader who successfully split Cyprus in half.

Greeks in general - mostly those on the left - are acutely unaware of how precarious Greece (a nation with openly disputed sovereignty) is. Greece appears to Turkey as a giant pussy waiting to get fucked and Mitsotakis the buffoon is flirting heavily and putting everyone in danger.. He is the one destabilising the Aegean, not the Turks. Once Erdogan leaves NK a graveyard he will turn his attention to Greece and Mitsotakis's deranged pro europeanism will be worth nothing. The Greeks are still those idiots praying for the Pope to come with his armies to break the Ottoman siege of Constantinople. They still think Europe will save them. All they had to do it learn from Israel but instead they embraced progressivism.

i believe the way the turkish 'system' is set up, it's much easier for turkey to pull the bullshit it pulls, compared to what a greek PM can do. turkey was run from a barracks, easier for them to be provocative, poke and probe. now run by a putin 2.0.

we must also take into account that since the greek population is not good at civics (taxes), greece is at the mercy of brussels and what brussels wants, in exchange for eu subsidies.

when turkey can get a few billion euro just from threatening to unleash migrants into europe, compared to greece having to toe brussels' political line to get a few more billion euro in subsidies - says it all.

in the totality of this framework, when it comes to greco-turkish relations - clear advantage to turkey.

[Reaper]

I understand what you are both saying but I cannot share the same thought process because I am cynical and everything I see involves no emotion, only raw logic. For example, When Don says: 'Erdogan has experience and is willing to take risks. He's not smarter, he's just a bigger asshole. That's the difference.'

For me Erdogan is not an asshole and neither are his ancestors that conquered the region and massacred millions of the indigenous populations. The same way a dog is not an asshole for biting another dog, stealing his female or stealing some meat. The same way a tiger walking into a village and attacking the residents is not an asshole. It is how animals behave in the wild. Turks are simply raw animals and have little to no humanity. Erdogan is exactly what you would expect an asiatic Turk to be, a culture whose first action when conquering Anatolia was to build tent cities across the region. However, 100% Erdogan is smarter than Mitsotakis. The Harvard bit is no indication of natural intelligence. The first thing you realise when at university is that there is a severe difference between someone who has natural intelligence and someone who can either muster determination to study hard or simply is good at regurgitating information onto an exam paper. Also one must always question how much intelligence sons of PMs have in the first place to get into these universities and how much pull a name carries..

Over to AEK66. Turkey could over expose itself but it intelligently picks nations to attack and invade that have no friends, are vulnerable and are naturally stupid. Animals in the wild do this too. They attack the weakest in the herd and also move into any gap left or territory conceded by another creature or rival. Turks have positioned themselves beautifully just like a predatory animal would. The 50 US nukes at Incirlik, NATO, Germany (EU controller) full of Turks, Turkey full of German factories, Russia/US vying for Turkish love, a massive ground army, an army of bashi bazouks to do the heavy fighting (now renamed 'jihadists') etc etc. This is the base of which to launch new conquests and it has been carefully crafted over decades all while Turkey successfully convinced the world Turkey was secular and peace loving! This is intelligence not luck.This is thought out. They could easily make massive errors the way Greece does constantly (Greece's constant mistakes: letting in half of Albania, Cyprus, Smyrna, North Macedonia, Tsipras failed EU referendum bluff, hostile environment to Nissan, Muslims in Thrace,constanly bullied by EU etc etc) but Turkey considers each move unlike Greece and thinks a few steps ahead. There is not a single doubt in my mind they have more intelligent leaders. Even their leftist leaders make sure Turkey is always expanding.

As for Turkey having a natural advantage - yes, it does. Population, position, resources etc. It has many natural advantages, but we have seen countless times nations with massive advantages throw away these benefits through raw stupidity. Turkey doesn't and again the Turks do not need to be smarter than everyone else on earth, just smarter than their neighbours and they are, clearly. To show what Greece can achieve - just look at how Venizelos convinced the UK - to beg the US to hand over Smyrna to Greek protection and to give the population of that city a subsequent independence vote - all from no position of no leverage! Even the yanks were utterly amazed at the intricate way venizelos pulled that off. Venizelos used pure intelligence and charm and if the idiot Greeks had not voted him out of power - that city would mostly likely now be part of Greece. So, even with Turkey's size and resources - when a Greek is in power who can match their smarts, Greece can reverse the natural advantages the Turks have. For me it is simply about leadership. Turkey has been vulnerable at stages last century. The break up the Ottoman Empire venizelos took advantage of, financial problems, coups etc. Turkey has had difficulties that a smarter Greek could have taken advantage of. Anyways, nothing to do now but just marvel at how Mitsotakis has left the central aegean - even the coast of mainland Greece.. without a 12 mile eez.. Turkey could not have be given a better Greek PM.

[aek66]

an example - germany x great britain mid 1930s up to sept. 1939.

hitler vs. baldwin and chamberlain.

did nazi germany destroy the uk diplomatically? yes. do i believe that hitler was leaps and bounds more intelligent than baldwin and chamberlain? no.

baldwin and chamberlain knew british limitations (parliament and all-volunteer forces). hmmmm, meet the challenge of hitler??? conscription. conscription with the great war still fresh in the minds of voters.....lose elections. hitler was gearing up for war with no domestic handicaps; the reichstag rubber-stamped everything, the gestapo and SS kept the citizens in line.

baldwin and chamberlain were limited in responses. in fact, it can be argued that stanley baldwin was wise enough to offer his resignation during the abdication crisis, which likely spared him the moniker of 'great appeaser', which fell upon his successor.

to me, all this is similar to greco-turkish jockeying.

[Don Giovanni]

There's nothing clever about a man who thinks usury is a Jewish conspiracy. The reason they use jihadis is because they took out everyone in their own military due to paranoia they may hold loyalties to the West. Like aek66 said, Turkey was run from the barracks. Erdogan has jailed the barracks. Now look at Turkey, there isn't a war they won't pick because that joker is in charge.

I don't know how you could say half things you said. Erdogan isn't any better than Hitler. The only thing he has going for him is that he isn't worse than Hitler.

The Venizelos you speak of is Kyriakos' great great uncle. Mitsotakis was always someone who was meant to help restore the Greek economy and he's certainly smart in that way. Maybe he is a bit out of his depth in dealing with Erdogan, but not for a lack of brains. Unlike Erdogan, Mitsotakis doesn't view the Greek people as cattle and cannon fodder. It takes a real asshole to treat your own like that. He's less of a risk taker for that reason and also inexperienced. But you willfully ignore that even if Greece made that declaration in the Aegean as you say, Turkey could still send a ship into the exact same waters and what then? There's no guarantee it stops Turkey, especially a Turkey as you describe her. If Greece fired upon a Turkish ship, what would happen? How prepared is Greece for the risks that entails?

I think we all know Greece needs French support to minimize a Turkish threat of war and if he can secure that the rest will follow. And if we play our cards right, even the Germans, Americans, and Russians will lose their patience with the Turks. There's only so much the Turks can get away with in the end.

[Reaper]

an example - germany x great britain mid 1930s up to sept. 1939.

hitler vs. baldwin and chamberlain.

did nazi germany destroy the uk diplomatically? yes. do i believe that hitler was leaps and bounds more intelligent than baldwin and chamberlain? no.

baldwin and chamberlain knew british limitations (parliament and all-volunteer forces). hmmmm, meet the challenge of hitler??? conscription. conscription with the great war still fresh in the minds of voters.....lose elections. hitler was gearing up for war with no domestic handicaps; the reichstag rubber-stamped everything, the gestapo and SS kept the citizens in line.

baldwin and chamberlain were limited in responses. in fact, it can be argued that stanley baldwin was wise enough to offer his resignation during the abdication crisis, which likely spared him the moniker of 'great appeaser', which fell upon his successor.

to me, all this is similar to greco-turkish jockeying.

You describe the period fairly well but I don't think it has relevance to Greece simply because Hitler had no intention of conquering the UK. That only came after the UK declared war on Germany. For the periods to be similar, Hitler would have to ambitions on conquering the UK from day 1. He didn't. In fact Hitler wanted the UK to join him on his journey as he saw the UK as cousins - the way the Turks see Azerbaijan.. sadly many UK residents, especially in the upper classes also jumped through hoops not to condemn Hitler early on.

Again, I don't see Mitsotakis as cleverly biding his time, I just seem as a low IQed buffoon who is destabilising Greece.