‘Spectre of war’ is hanging in the air

Theere is a growing risk of direct confrontation between states in the eastern Mediterranean, said Karabekir Akkoyunlu, a comparative politics scholar at São Paulo University and expert on Turkish affairs.

Akkoyunlu told Ahval’s Yavuz Baydar in the podcast Hot Pursuit that a direct confrontation may occur over competing claims over hydrocarbon exploration rights and maritime boundaries, “even if none of the parties are interested in it.”

Tension between the states in question, mainly Turkey, Greece, Cyprus, Israel and Egypt, may peak and “become impossible to contain,” turning into the sort of dynamics that “may take their own course towards confrontation,” Akkoyunlu said.

Earlier this week, the Greek navy declared a state of alarm and fighter jets were also put on stand-by as a total of 18 Turkish ships were en-route to the tiny Greek island of Kastellorizo located just 2 km off the coast of the southern Turkish resort town of Kaş.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel prevented a possible military confrontation between Turkey and Greece on Tuesday evening, German newspaper Bild reported.

“Proxy wars are already going on in Syria, and we talk about possible evolution of direct confrontation between Syrian and Turkish armies there – which to an extent already happened,” said Akkoyunlu.

The posturing in the Aegean Sea and Libya is “not necessarily a sign of wishing to have a direct war,” on the part of Egypt or Greece, he added, but something that becomes inevitable. “The spectre of these types of confrontation is more present than before,” he said.

Tensions are rising again between Turkey and Greece over the neighbours’ competing claims to hydrocarbon drilling rights in the eastern Mediterranean. Turkey maintains that both itself and the breakaway Turkish state in the northern third of Cyprus are entitled to larger territorial waters and exclusive economic zones.

Turkey’s current aggressive militarist tendencies are reminiscent of 1990s, Akkoyunlu said. “Some of the ideologues from those years are also back at the game,” he said.

Political Islamists, proponents of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and a wide spectrum of Turkish nationalists, have formed a bloc that is ruling the country, according to Akkoyunlu. “It is a very opportunistic coalition, based on very fluid conditions,” he said.

If the conditions change, he continued, there could be a quick turnaround among partners of the coalition that would reflect on foreign policy.

“As long as Erdoğan is in power, he will keep doing what he has been doing – so far successfully – to maintain an ultra-pragmatic approach to domestic and foreign policy beneath the Islamist, ideological discourse,” and have it be flexible for domestic politics with regards to alliance-making and breaking.

The Turkish president’s recent decision to re-convert the Hagia Sophia to a mosque from a museum and to hold the first Friday prayers in it on Friday is a “victory for political Islamists who advocated for decades to return the marvel back to a mosque status,” he said, as the date marks the anniversary of the Treaty of Lausanne, which officially ended hostilities between the Allies and the nascent Turkish state that succeeded the Ottoman Empire after World War I.

Akkoyunlu said that Erdoğan is aiming to use the Hagia Sophia decision to reaffirm his position as the leader of Muslims both in Turkey and abroad, and as the leader of political Islam in the world.

“Perhaps it was met with a lot of enthusiasm in other places,” he said, “but in the West, the move created considerable anxiety that will further distance Turkey from its former Western friends.”

On the other hand, Akkoyunlu is unsure what kind of or how much material benefit the government can derive from this move.

“It could prove itself a Pyrrhic victory domestically,” he said. “Erdoğan wanted to use a very important weapon in the arsenal of Turkish government, but it has been used in a way that will not yield the kind of results from the importance of the move.”

The decision might “reflect more of the hegemonic crisis of this government than hegemony,” Akkoyunlu said. “Erdoğan appeared to have attempted consolidating his Islamist base, but using that Hagia Sophia card in this juncture does not make a lot of sense, and I struggle to see the benefits from an electoral perspective.”