"Why Turkey Wants to Invade the Greek Islands" Topic

"There is one issue on which Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its main opposition, the Republican People's Party (CHP), are in complete agreement: The conviction that the Greek islands are occupied Turkish territory and must be reconquered. So strong is this determination that the leaders of both parties have openly threatened to invade the Aegean.

The only conflict on this issue between the two parties is in competing to prove which is more powerful and patriotic, and which possesses the courage to carry out the threat against Greece. While the CHP is accusing President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's AKP party of enabling Greece to occupy Turkish lands, the AKP is attacking the CHP, Turkey's founding party, for allowing Greece to take the islands through the 1924 Treaty of Lausanne, the 1932 Turkish-Italian Agreements, and the 1947 Paris Treaty, which recognized the islands of the Aegean as Greek territory…"
Main page
link

Amicalement
Armand

With apologies to Sheldon Harnick and Joseph Stein:

Why does Turkey want to invade the Greek islands?
I'll tell you …
I don't know.
But it's a tradition!

Could be the large reservoir of Oil and natural gas under and around the Islands?

So let me see if I've got this straight.

Turkey is fighting an insurgency against it's own domestic Kurdish minority.

Turkey is also fighting the Syrians, trying to create a defense buffer. A conflict which has, at times, placed it at odds with one of it's more recent benefactors, Russia.

Turkey has been going out of it's way to infuriate its NATO allies over its increasingly undemocratic bent, and its Russian arms purchases.

Despite his espoused affection for Erdogan, Turkey has several times gotten crosswise of the US President, badly enough to get sanctioned.

And now Turkey wants to get in a shooting war with another NATO ally, Greece.

To paraphrase Londo Mollari from Babylon 5, "only a idiot fights a war on 2 fronts. Only the heir to the throne of the kingdom of idiots fights a war on 5 fronts."

Maybe Erdogan should start real estate shopping for a dacha on the Caspian Sea. The world could really use one less autocrat.

Couldn't happen to a "nicer" guy.

Why IS Turkey still in NATO again?

Incirlik.

Turkey is STILL the "sick old man of Europe"…

(smile)

Amicalement
Armand

Years ago, during one of the Cyprus crises, I heard a radio interview of a British Foreign Office official. He said (as I remember), "The problem in that area is that the Greeks think the Turks are bullies, and the Turks think the Greeks are cheats. And, unfortunately, they are both right."

Ha!….

Amicalement
Armand

There are also many, very nice airports in Greece, which is a much more reliable ally, and would appreciate some funds being thrown their way, e.g. Athens, Kavala, Alexandroupolis, Lemnos, Rhodes, Chania, Heraklion, Lemnos, Mytilene, Samos, Corfu, etc., etc..

I suspect if we asked nicely, Israel might be cooperative too.