Turkish Coalition Partner Bahçeli: You Can’t Think of Dodecanese Without Turkey

The latest inflammatory and belligerent rhetoric officially expressed by a top Turkish politician against Greece, a fellow NATO member-state, erupted on Tuesday in the person of Devlet Bahçeli, the head of the ultra-nationalist and extremist MHP party and an Erdogan government coalition partner.

Bahçeli revisited one of his favorite irredentist “narratives”, namely, Greece’s Dodecanese islands, located in the southeast Aegean and close to the west Anatolia coast. Among others, he was quoted saying that one “cannot think of the Dodecanese without Turkey” – essentially an allusion to the roughly four centuries of Ottoman rule over the Greek Christian populated islands.

“There’s no benefit for any country from the aggressive policy followed by the other side of the Aegean … Turkey will never abandon the ‘Blue Homeland’,” he said, with the last part referring to an expansionist and revisionist policy unveiled by the successive Erdogan governments over the past decade.

In continuing in “saber-rattling” mode, Bahçeli said Turkey “has the courage and resilience to decisively take a decision for each heading of problems and to intervene outside its historical borders.”

He then immediately switched to a thinly veiled anti-West tone: “We’ve strengthened our defenses against scenarios by a dark imperialism, which has assembled around us.”

“If Greece aligns itself with the West and pursues a strategy contrary to Turkish interests, it should expect a war, which will be like a ‘wedding banquet’ for Turkey, similar to 103 years ago… Turkey will never be the obvious loser who relies on the language of war and weapons, when peaceful diplomacy and good neighborly relations should be considered as a given.”

The far-right Turkish leader had earlier zeroed in on the Dodecanese islands’ defense, calling Greek defenses a “provocation” against Turkey and a cause for tension in Aegean.

“Greece’s preparations for the deployment of missiles on the Aegean islands with a range of 30 to 300 kilometers are not only completely contrary to international law, but also reckless steps that will cripple the pursuit of good neighborliness. The militarization of the islands, by design, is a provocation for Turkey and will drag the Aegean, which we wish to see as a sea of peace, into a maelstrom of tension and confrontation. For Greece to display these weapons under our nose, especially in the Dodecanese, which are the closest islands to Anatolia among the seven different island chains in the Aegean, is not only a strategic mistake, but also a tragic mistake that will have serious historical, military and political consequences,” Bahceli warned, before launching a final diatribe: “stealing the Dodecanese from their original owner, the Turkish nation.”

The latest displeasure by a Turkish lawmaker over defensive military systems on Greek territory comes in light of Athens interest in acquiring and fielding the Israeli-made SpikeNLOS missile system and the PULS multiple rocket launch system.

Immediate Greek reaction

Although Athens had ignored the inflammatory comments by the Bahceli, Tuesday’s rhetoric was deemed as extreme even for a Turkish nationalist.

In a statement, Greece’s foreign ministry noted that

“The status of the Dodecanese Islands is determined by an international treaty, namely the Paris Peace Treaty of 1947.

Greece, as a sovereign State, does not relinquish its legal and inherent right to self-defense, enshrined in Article 51 of the United Nations Charter. All the more so since Greece is threatened with war (casus belli) in case it exercises a right deriving from its sovereignty in accordance with International Law.

Maintaining peace requires prudence and responsibility, not hostile statements. Issues pertaining to sovereignty lie outside the scope of any discussion and any revisionist views are categorically rejected.”