War Between Greece and Turkey Is Now a Real Possibility

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/war-between-greece-and-turkey-now-real-possibility-165465

36 46 6 years ago

Seems to at least one paragraph repeated in this article? Very strange writing.

For Greece, the reasons for conflict are the same that used to be in the battle of thermopylae? Is it the same ancient culture conflict still responsible for these wars?

madaxe_again• 6 years ago

No, it’s a populist nationalist government in Turkey that’s continuing to destabilise the region. Greece has no desire for conflict, but if they are invaded, which is what one nation’s military entering the territory of another nation uninvited is traditionally called, they are within their rights (and duties as a NATO member) to respond.

cobbzilla• 6 years ago

They’re both NATO members.

Clearly that fact won’t change Greece’s response, but what does it mean for the rest of NATO? It’s like a “civil war” within the organization.

rvense• 6 years ago

Hardly. Turks arrived in Turkey a millenium or more after Thermopylae, and to say that Greek culture of today is "the same" as that of the group of people who lived there in the Bronze Age is quite obviously false.

robinduckett2• 6 years ago

I applaud the author for going out of his way to make his writing look like GPT-3 output madness.

_Understated_• 6 years ago

Funny you should say that but I couldn't help thinking while reading that article that it wasn't written by a human.

Some of the grammar is... odd!

I can't put my finger on it (apart from some grammatical mistakes) but it just seems off and kind of had no real point to make.

Maybe I'm looking into it too much...

IshKebab2• 6 years ago

I assume you are talking about this:

if Turkey pushes forward with its plans to survey for has in Greece’s exclusive economic zone

I was actually thinking that GPT-3 wouldn't make such a mistake and would probably make a pretty great grammar checker!

T-A• 6 years ago

It's just a single-letter fat-finger typo: "has" ---> "gas".

mlgarrett• 6 years ago

Not a native speaker, so some grammatical mistakes may elude me. But in general this is pretty much an opinion piece that could be found in any print publication before 2000.

Everything is dramatized of course, but that is pretty much the pre-Internet version of buy-a-magazine-at-the-kiosk bait.

The Economist had a lot of these pessimistic prediction articles.

robinduckett2• 6 years ago

Well now I feel bad! So this is an actual prediction of war or just politics being dramatised?

marmaduke• 6 years ago

Would GPT-3 mistake a noun for a verb? For instance the author used "coincide" when "coincidence" is what they obviously meant.

andor• 6 years ago

How can we prevent such narrow-minded, narcissistic people from gaining positions of influence?

If humanity were able to do what's best for everyone's future, including the rest of the biosphere, that would be a next step in our evolution.

cblconfederate5• 6 years ago

How can we prevent such narrow-minded, narcissistic people from gaining positions of influence?

Talking specifically about Turkey: "traditionally", its military is seen as the guardian of its secular character and would, overthrow (with a military coup) leaders that were dangerous. Erdogan botched that attempt a few years ago. Paradoxically, without that protection, Turkey's democracy is now sliding to autocracy.

bobthechef• 6 years ago

Sorry, but that kind of kumbaya, “humanity” eco-religious, can’t-we-all-just-get-along sentiment betrays a superficial grasp of the forces at work in the world. Geopolitically, when the Ottoman Empire fell, so did the caliphate. Nothing since the OE has taken the place of that caliphate (ISIS had made an attempt). The Arab states can’t form that sort of caliphate because there’s too much infighting, so the Turks are the only realistic option from a historical perspective. Secular Turkey is not a stable or long term solution and a century is not a very long time.

All of this is to say that the past century long interlude is actually unusual for the Islamic world so we’re really returning to the historical norm. Islam lost the battle in WWI, but it does not accept having lost the war. It cannot because then it would not be Islam.

sunseb• 6 years ago

When I was young, I thought we would have flying cars and all live in peace/harmony by 2020. Guess what? In 2020, we are almost back into the crusades.

Also, there is this nice serie on Netflix about the fall of Constantinople/Istanbul:

https://www.netflix.com/ch-en/title/80990771

pts_• 6 years ago

When I was young I was subjected to Terminator 2 just saying.

cblconfederate5• 6 years ago

No it isn't. Dogfights happen every day, literally, it's nothing new. Turkey has decided to become the new ISIS in the region so they are desperately going after anything and anyone, from syria, to coddling the government of Libya, to threatening French ships in the mediterranean , to oil research expeditions (at a time when oil prices couldn't be more tanked), to making Agia Sophia a mosque. It's sad to watch Turkey sliding further and further into international marginalization, but this is theater, or at worst, will lead to another incident/accident between two NATO countries.

onetimemanytime3• 6 years ago

difference this time is that Turkey wants to drill for oil in x zone and their navy ships will accompany the driller. So, Greece has to decide

diminish• 6 years ago

The author is a non-trustable convicted plotter of coup d'etat "Michael Rubin" - nothing he writes holds water. he provokes greece to start a war to "demand" 100% of the sea rights, because of some tiny islands.

abdulhaq• 6 years ago

This reads like typical 'think tank' fodder with an axe to grind, but with some sentences that just don't make sense as if written by a Chinese content farm. Weird.

julianlam• 6 years ago

I also noticed this. The weird stilted language and repeated (yet mildly disjointed) thoughts is reminiscent of an algorithm stringing sentences together.

fit2rule2• 6 years ago

Maybe its just a non-native English speaker, whose native language promotes the formation of this kind of sentence structure. To me, it reads a little like Hebrew run through a google translate ..

edna3143• 6 years ago

You can clearly see how in Turkey history repeats itself. Authoritarian clowns like Hitler ultimately need war to legitimize their power. Turkey is provoking war at least in 5 regions at the moment: Lybia (confronting also France), Armenia (together with Azerbaijan), Syria, Iraqi Kurdistan and also Greece. Just a matter of time until a tragedy happens. What also repeats is that the western world tries appeasement politics until it's too late, as you can see in Merkel's reaction. Very frustrating to watch.

kyriakos3• 6 years ago

Same mistake happened with Hitler.

bencollier49• 6 years ago

What's even more concerning about this is that there seem to be some issues in the Balkans at the moment as well. The entirety of the former Ottoman sphere seems to be destabilising.

cblconfederate5• 6 years ago

Uh, no? If anything the balkans are more stable than ever now.

akmarinov• 6 years ago

Nope.

You have mass protests in Bulgaria and Serbia against the current governments, North Macedonia's had its preterm elections, where the ruling coalition is hanging on only 1 vote, which means that likely there'll be more elections in its future soon.

And then you have the coronavirus situation with cases exploding on the Balkans, with Romania having 1200/day, Bulgaria and Serbia with 350ish and rising.

choeger• 6 years ago

The Turkish diaspora in Germany and elsewhere is key here. If Erdogan can excite them in nationalistic explosion, he will be shielded against any military action by the EU. A Turkish uprising would literally burn the industrial heart of Europe down. If he cannot, for instance because Germans with Turkish ancestry consider themselves well-off and do not want to change that, he could very well catch a bloody nose. That would almost certainly be the beginning of the end of his rule. High stakes for everyone.

onetimemanytime3• 6 years ago

>A Turkish uprising would literally burn the industrial heart of Europe down.?

You think that Turks would riot and burn Germany down? Germans are still German deep down ... ;)

fit2rule2• 6 years ago

Its honestly not inconceivable. Here in Vienna, there is a serious contingent of pro-Erdogan demonstrators rolled out to counter any demonstrations against Turkey, and they're not disinclined to violence when things don't go their way. Austria has typically been able to defuse these things, but in Germany the situation may be a bit more volatile due to the scales of people involved.

It could be only a few months of rabble-rousing and suddenly there's an insurgency problem in Germany.

s9w• 6 years ago

89% of Turks living in Germany voted for Erdogan, far more than those living in Turkey.

edna3143• 6 years ago

With less then 50% actually voting.

nanis• 6 years ago

This is such a lazy headline and article. For more than 1,000 years, war between Turks and Greeks has been a real possibility. See

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Greece and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seljuk_Empire

My objective is not to defend one side or the other. The article is lazy and shallow. When I read this:

if Turkey pushes forward with its plans to survey for has in Greece’s exclusive economic zone.

I ask "what is this exclusive economic zone?"

The answer is

https://www.marineregions.org/gazetteer.php?p=details&id=567...

The idea of extending Greek waters all the way to the shores of Anatolia is not new https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0308597X90...

This is an issue that is independent of who is running Turkey. There is no conceivable scenario in which 90% of the population of Turkey would not be against being essentially land-locked by Greece, Israel, and Egypt.

https://web.archive.org/web/20120119043637/http://world.gree...

https://www.arabnews.com/node/1706686/middle-east

I do think, without regard to country, having 200 mile EEZs in an enclosed sea is a disaster both for nature and stability in the region.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediterranean_Sea

cblconfederate5• 6 years ago

But this is about turkey exactly doing oil expeditions 200 miles off their coast. That's OK, but Greece applying international law is not?

mebebil• 6 years ago

I think there are some subreddits you can discuss this at

higeorge13• 6 years ago

Hundreds of countries in the world have EEZs [0], but let's make it a big deal for Greece even though it currently doesn't actually exercise their rightful claim to have one. The stability of the region would not be destroyed by Greece utilizing their EEZ, but from aggressive unstabilizing countries claiming borders they don't have and having military presence in places where they shouldn't be.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclusive_economic_zone

edna3143• 6 years ago

This is an issue that is independent of who is running Turkey. There is no conceivable scenario in which 90% of the population of Turkey would not be against being essentially land-locked by Greece, Israel, and Egypt.

*90% of the nationalist/islamist population which consider Greece, Israel, Egypt enemies.

kyriakos3• 6 years ago

Latest news show that the situation is de-escalating. Not sure how Erdogan will twist it internally cause not sending the research ship out after it was announced will make him look weak to his voters. Most likely scenario is that they'll head for Cyprus EEZ where they won't face a military resistance.

War Between Greece and Turkey Is Now a Real Possibility

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