After the Hora crisis in 1976, extensive Turkish and Greek diplomatic efforts resulted in the signing of a secret agreement in Bern, Switzerland on 11th November 1976. Athens and Ankara accepted a 10-article Procès Verbal which provided a framework for the settlement of the continental shelf dispute: Thus, ‘both parties undertook the obligation of avoiding any initiative or act in relation to the continental shelf, that could undermine the negotiations (Art. 6); both parties undertook the obligation to avoid any initiative or act that could downgrade the authority of the other party’ (Art.7).99 Finally in January 1979, the ICJ announced that The Hague did not have jurisdiction over the Aegean Sea continental shelf, although, the Court did not accept the Turkish request to remove the continental shelf issue from its case list altogether.100
The legal arguments and policy positions of Greece and Turkey included hints of strategic intentions to take dynamic measures or to go to war over the disputes in question. Turkey’s argument is based on political merit and Greece’s on legal merit, influencing perceptions of threat assessment. Moreover, the invasion of the Cyprus Republic and the continuation of the occupation, the Turkish refusal to sign a non-aggression pact, Turkey’s ‘casus belli’ declarations and the post-1974 Turkish challenges to the FIR arrangements, established the perception amongst the Greek foreign affairs and defence establishment that Turkey harboured long-term aggressive intentions and showed bad faith.101 Turkish and Greek political and legal arguments have affected the way political leaders, officers and diplomats interpret each other’s decisions and policies. The legal-political arguments and positions on the Aegean Sea dispute created distinct analytical ‘lenses’. Impressions of what was ‘lawful and unlawful’, ‘revisionist and pro-status quo’ affected Greek estimates. For example, the Turkish refusal to submit the continental shelf issue to the ICJ caused anxiety within the Greek government because the perceived weakness in the Turkish argument has indicated an intention to manipulate the dispute through political arbitration or even coercion.
A former Major-General and a law graduate argues that the legal disputes over the Aegean could not have led to a serious crises or bilateral confrontation unless there was a clear three-phase Turkish plan against Greece. He estimates that the first phase of the long-term Turkish strategy in the Aegean incorporates the ‘weakening’ of the Athens FIR responsibilities, by daily Turkish Air Force challenges and intrusions. The second phase involves the division of the Athens and Constantinople FIR in the middle of the Aegean and the third phase the dividing of the sea roughly in accordance with the FIR partitioning. Thus the Greek Eastern Aegean islands would be isolated from mainland Greece and almost placed under Turkish FIR operational responsibilities.102 However Admiral Antonios Antoniadis, the Chief of the Navy General Staff in 2002-2005, strongly dissented with this assessment. He made it clear that throughout the 1980s and 1990s he could not indentify the Turkish threat to Greece and claimed that the FIR dispute and the Imia islets crisis showed just the potential for small-scale hot incidents and not the long-term hostility of Turkey against Greece. He argued that sectors of the Athens FIR that did not correspond to national airspace were not Greek sovereignty areas and should not be treated as such. Antoniadis was clear enough in arguing that for three years he served as a military representative in NATO, for five years as head of the Directorate of Defence Policy at the National Defence General Staff, and later as Vice-Chief of the Defence General Staff and as Chief of the Navy General Staff; but ‘he could not indentify the threat’. He concluded that since for so long he could not see the threat there had to be ‘a gap on how this threat had been defined’.103 Turkey seemed challenging the Aegean status quo (i.e. the FIR and the continental shelf areas claimed by Greece) not because of expansionist strategy; according to Antoniadis, Ankara implement ‘military diplomacy’ just to test Greek politico-military reactions and assumed that Greek legal arguments had not be as strong as presented by Athens.104
A former NIS director warns that when studying the post-1974 Greek-Turkish relations and disputes over the Aegean, we should pay special attention to the chain reactions caused by the decisions, declarations and actions of Turkish and Greek diplomacy. By identifying which action caused which Greek or Turkish reaction, we may be able to fully define the real threat Greece faced in the 1980s and 1990.105 This book shows that Greece was not afraid of a Turkish invasion or military adventurism. Turkish politicians projected their national interests in the Aegean and created the impression that Ankara aimed to overrule the 1923 Lausanne Treaty, using force if necessary. However the majority of Turkish generals were unwilling to follow the ultra-nationalistic stance taken by politicians against Greece and engage in military adventurism.
photograph © Courtesy of the Hellenic Navy General Staff 2010
Chapter II Turkey: Greek Strategic-Intelligence Estimates
The 1974 Cyprus invasion was, in one sense, the Greek ‘Pearl Harbour’. Up to the last minute in July 1974, Greek military intelligence in Athens had not predicted any Turkish offensive. The warning provided by the KYP station in Cyprus was disregarded by KYP headquarters, thereby making any attempt to defend the island futile. This chapter begins with the testimony of a KYP officer in Cyprus during the days of the invasion and continues with military estimates of Turkish intentions in the 1980s and 1990s. The Greek intelligence assessment was that Turkey had a long-term expansionist strategy against Greece. Nonetheless, both Greek and Cypriot intelligence did not predict an invasion of the Cyprus Republic despite of the overwhelming capabilities the Turkish military had been sending to the occupied northern territory. A belief prevailed among Greek policy-makers and military strategists that Athens and Nicosia would not face a surprise attack by Ankara (on the pattern of the Yom Kippur War) given Turkey’s intention of joining the EU and achieving international recognition for the ‘Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus’. However Turkey’s arms procurement after the end of the Cold War, her open propaganda, the daily Greek-Turkish dogfights over the Aegean and Ankara’s attempts to use the Muslim minority in Greek Thrace as a ‘political tool’ raised Greek concerns about Turkey’s true strategic intentions. In Thrace, covert Turkish actions were assessed as long-term, non-violent operations against Greek sovereign rights and security.
Until 1974, Greek intelligence data on both the Turkish order-of-battle and Turkey’s diplomatic intentions towards Greece was of poor quality. Despite the occasional crises and clashes between Turkish and Greek Cypriots in the 1960s, Greek intelligence operations were concentrated against Warsaw Pact Bulgaria and Yugoslavia, isolationist Albania, the USSR and domestic Greek communists. The surprise Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974 caused a change in the priorities of intelligence targets and analysis. The analytical mindset of the Greek Cold-War generals towards ‘the threat’ changed literally overnight after the Turkish offensive,106 while their staff officers prepared contingency plans for the island’s defence. According to a Vice-Marshal of the Air Force, interviewed by the author, the change in mindset and contingencies in the mid 1970s went as far as to issue the Tactical Air Command top-secret orders which amounted to authorising the launching of air strikes against Turkey without explicit prime-ministerial authorisation in times of imminent conflict. It was a rare case of pre-delegated authorisation that still remains highly classified.107
The first operational study of the Turkish armed forces’ performance in battle was completed in September 1974. This rare document gives us an insight into Greek perceptions of how the Turkish military employed personnel and war material in the operation in Cyprus. Analysing the Cyprus campaigns, Greek officers concluded that the Turkish military intended to divide the island using paratroopers in a bridgehead. During the operations of July and August 1974, Turkish infantry avoided urban warfare and made no attempt to seize villages and towns; those that posed some resistance, like Karava and Lapitho, were bypassed.108 Only after the stabilisation of the front did Turkish military gendarmerie and commandos undertake