Turkey and Greece

The Aegean Disputes

Deniz Bölükbasi

• Publisher: Routledge-Cavendish
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781135328528
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: International Law
• Index: Law

The Aegean disputes between Turkey and Greece represent one of the longest-standing contemporary conflicts in existence.These disagreements encompass a wide range of issues, including the seabed, maritime areas and airspace of the Aegean. The territorial status of a number of islands and rocks, as well as specific demilitarization conferred upon Greek islands in the Eastern Aegean under international treaties, is also a matter of dispute.

The Aegean disputes, which still remain unresolved, are a major source of tension and conflict in Turkish-Greek relations. The stalemate in reaching a settlement is liable to give rise to new frictions resulting in an acute strain on relations. From time to time the disputes have erupted into crisis bringing the two countries to the verge of confrontation. These disputes are immensely complex and involve a broad range of interrelated issues with complicated political and legal aspects.

This study represents the first attempt of its kind, providing in a single volume a comprehensive review and analysis of the legal and political aspects of the Aegean disputes which constitute a unique case study in international law, involving two neighbours in the Aegean that share a unique history and geography.

PART ONE

BACKGROUND HISTORY

1. Turkey and Greece share not only a common geography, but also a common history and common cultural heritage accumulated during a process of 1000 years. They have lived in the same geography for a millennium and in the course of this co-existence they have jointly helped to shape the history, which is common to both.

However this ten century-old togetherness has not resulted in forging common experiences in positive terms. Its main product was deep feelings of mutual suspicion and mistrust. They are neighbours and allies, but perhaps ironically, they remain bitter adversaries over certain issues, in particular related to the Aegean, on the shores of which the two nations have lived for a millennium now. The Aegean remains to be the core dispute in their bilateral relations as they entered the second millennium.

The common history of Turkey and Greece could be considered as one of the main, perhaps the most important, source of their present day contentions. The complicated and tense relations between Turkey and Greece have deep roots in this common history and go back to the birth of the two nation states and even further as far back as the conquest of Istanbul, the capital of Byzantine Empire by the Ottoman Turks in 1453.

It shall be recalled that both Turkey and Greece gained their independence and formed modern nation states as a result of the wars they have fought against each other. There hardly exists any such unique example in the modern history of nations. No other two states on earth were present at each other’s birth to avoid it, or rather to terminate it at delivery. The history of relations between the two nations is truly unique in many respects.

2. The Aegean disputes represent one of the longest-standing conflicts in existence. Before considering the legal aspects of these issues a brief synopsis of the political history will be useful, and indeed indispensable. An historical background will be essential to form a better insight into the present problems and their underlying reasons and sources. The causes of Turkish-Greek disagreements in the Aegean, and not simply their effects, could best be understood in the light of history.

The review of the evolution of Turkish-Greek relations in a broad historical context, as well as the experiences accumulated in this period, will also contribute to form a proper understanding of the political culture and cultural foundations of the two countries’ foreign policies. This will shed valuable light on each nations perception of external events and their probable internal consequences as well as the main elements that influence formation of basic attitudes and reactions vis-à-vis external developments.

First Encounter of Turks and Greeks in Anatolia (Asia Minor)

3. The Turks living in Eurasian steppes of Central Asia entered into Anatolia in the XI.th century. Their first encounter with Christians in Anatolia was in 1071. The victory of Seljuk Turks over the armies of East Roman Empire at Malazgirt in 1071 paved the way for the Turks to set foot in Anatolia where they begun forming colonies and small principalities.⁽¹⁾

The Ottoman Empire, which was one of the greatest and longest living universal empires of the world history was founded by a small Turkish tribe which entered into Anatolia around 1225.

The Byzantine power at that time was on the decline. This gave rise to a long period of struggle to fill the vacuum created by the disintegration of the Eastern Roman Empire. This struggle aimed at inheriting the Byzantine territory resulted in a series of confrontations between the Turks and Franks as main contenders. The Christians, that is the Christians from Western Europe and the Franks in particular waged a holy war (crusade) against the Turks. The crusades came to a halt by the beginning of XII. Century with the victory of the Turks and the question of ownership to the Asiatic territories of the Eastern Roman Empire was settled in favour of the Turks. The western European crusaders contended that the Turks should inherit Anatolia.

This coincided with the foundation of the Ottoman Empire in 1299. The Turks expanded in Western Anatolia gradually. This was due to the victories over the Eastern Roman Empire and crusaders. The colonies formed by the Turks have steadily grown up.

4. In the following period that lasted until 1344, the Aegean basin, in turn, became the main theatre of the ongoing struggle. The peril of the crusades persisted since Western Christendom was still unchallenged on the seas of the Eastern Mediterranean. The struggle centering in the Aegean was between the Italian maritime states which monopolized maritime trade with the overriding commercial interests and the Latin feudal lords on the one hand and the Turks which arrived recently into the scene on the other. In this period, the focus of attention of crusading activities shifted to the Aegean basin. The domination of the Aegean islands and surrounding coasts of the Aegean has become the focal issue by the first half of the XIV. Century.

In this struggle over the legacy of dissolving the Byzantine rule in eastern Aegean, the Turks expanded in the mainland shores of the Aegean and launched attacks on the islands: i.e. Rhodes, Chios and Mytilene.

This marked the beginning of the encounter of the Turks with the Aegean world.

The Genoese, Venetians and the Hospitallers emerged as chief rivals of the Turks in the Aegean basin. The Turks continued to launch raids into Byzantine and Venetian possessions in the Aegean and formed a series of alliances for this purpose. (i.e. with Catalans of Athens). The Byzantine and Venice, in turn, formed an alliance, an Aegean League with a view to solve the urgent problem of Turkish expansion by a general crusade.

5. The Turkish campaign in 1331-1332 reached Gallipolis, Thrace, island of Samos Thrace, Greek territories in the Morea and Thessaly.

The Byzantine rulers, having failed to check the Turkish expansion and in the face of constant Genoese threat against Aegean islands, sought reconciliation and alliance with the Turks against the Latins in the Aegean. This alliance resulted in the recognition of the Turkish suzerainty rights over the island of Chios. This development has accelerated the establishment of the Turkish rule in the Aegean. The Turks consolidated their reign in the Aegean by making local Christian principalities their tributaries and allies (i.e. payment of annual tribute).

6. On the other hand reconciliation with the Byzantines opened new avenues for the Turks in the Balkan region, the Europe.

Before the seizure of Istanbul (Constantinople) in 1453, for more than a century the Ottomans had been extending their rule over most of Balkan Europe and the Western reaches of Anatolia. In 1371 Ottomans reached the Adriatic and in 1387 they defeated Serb-led Balkan alliance at Cosovo. The Ottomans controlled the Straits between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, captured Thrace, Macedonia as far as Albania and Bulgaria; they conquered central and southern Greece and then Thessaly and Larissa by 1389. The Turks thus had set solid foot on the European Continent and made significant advances in achieving supremacy in the Aegean world.

Jason Goodwin in its well-praised book, “Lords of the Horizons”⁽²⁾, on the history of the Ottoman Empire depicted this period as follows:

“Between 1320 and the 1390s the Ottomans moved like a ripple through the shallows of Byzantine power, beyond Bursa and Nicaea in Anatolia, and across the Dardanelles into Europe; to Bulgarian Plovdiv, in the Maritsa valley; to Varna on the Black Sea coast, and the isthmus of Greece, and through Nis, the gateway to the upper Balkans; right up to the banks of Central Europe’s great defining river, the Danube. They moved so fast, and so suddenly, that they swerved beneath the eye of chroniclers, and no single battle can be dated with precision before 15 June 1389, when they shattered the Serbs at Cosovo, on the Blackbird Field. South-eastern Europe, the homeland of Byzantine Orthodoxy, was looking for a conqueror”.

The Fall of Byzantine Empire

7. Finally, in 1453, Constantinople was captured by the Ottoman Turks and became Istanbul, the imperial seat of the Ottomans. The conquest of Istanbul brought an end to the Eastern Roman Empire and sealed the Ottomans as the sole inheritor of the Byzantium.

Thus, Ottoman Empire possessed entire territories of the Roman Empire in Anatolia as well as in the Balkans. The Ottoman Empire, by 1480, in a mere two centuries after its foundation, reached almost the same frontiers that the Eastern Roman Empire had attained in the XI.th Century, the period when the Turks entered into Anatolia.

The Ottomans continued to expand into Europe and the Aegean and in 1523 they captured Rhodes and all Dodecanese islands became Ottoman territory. Likewise, in 1543-1554 Cyclades islands were conquered and in 1571 Cyprus was captured from its Venetian rulers. By 1566 the Ottomans acquired possession of all Aegean islands with the exception of Crete, which was conquered later in 1699.

It should be noted that the present Greek territories, including all islands in the Aegean were conquered by the Ottomans during the XV.th and XVI.th centuries. At that time no Greek state or even a Greek identity was in existence. For generations before the Greek war of Independence, in 1820s, the whole Aegean with all the present territory of Greece and of the islands were under the sovereignty of the Ottoman Empire. Until the 1820s, the Aegean has been a “closed Ottoman sea”.

The Greeks Under Ottoman Rule

8. The Greeks lived widely distributed through the Ottoman Empire, forming sizeable populations in the coast towns of the Aegean and the Marmara Sea, as well as in the shores of the Black Sea. After the conquest of Istanbul, Sultan Mehmed II, the Conqueror strengthened the Greek element in the city by moving the Greeks living in provinces to the capital.

The Ottomans call the Greeks who inhabit Ottoman territories “Rum”, the kingdom of Greece and inhabitants being distinguished as “Yunanistan” and “Yunan”. These latter words are derived from “Ionia/Ionian”(Hellenes) and “Rum” from “Roman”. In the early centuries of the Byzantine Empire the name “Ellas” was associated with paganism. The Greek-speaking provincials were called “Elladikon”, and the population of the Capital, “Romans”. This name became the general designation of the Byzantine Empire and its inhabitants. However, although all “Orthodox” subjects of the Ottoman Empire irrespective of race were termed “Romans”, there exists a confusion of thought to regard “Orthodox” as interchangeable with “Greek”. The confusion between those two conceptions in the popular mind has been to such an extent that, in the Greek War of independence, the constituent Assembly which met in 1822 proclaimed that “all inhabitants of the Ottoman Empire who believe in Christ are included in the designation of Hellenes”.⁽³⁾ And the Phanariote Pitzipios wrote in 1855 that “the Christian populations of the East are composed, as everyone knows, of Greeks and of a larger part of those who follow the Greek rite and on that account are designated Greeks”⁽⁴⁾. It should also be noted that the Greeks themselves have done nothing to discourage this confusion of thought.

9. It is a historical fact that the Greek subjects of the Ottoman Empire lived relatively peaceful and prosperous lives within the Ottoman society. As will be outlined below, they were allowed to establish their own local councils free from intervention from State authorities. The Greek writers alike admit that Ottomans have not sought assimilation but obedience, military service and tax revenues from its subject peoples living throughout the Ottoman dominions.

The position of the Greeks, particularly in the Capital improved steadily and the quarter called Phanar (Fener), on the Golden horn, had become the residence not only of the Patriarch, but of a Greek aristocracy. These were not the descendants of the old Byzantine nobles, most of whom had emigrated, but successors of the Old Byzantine aristocracy composed of prominent families, half clerics and half merchants, who grew up and established themselves around the Patriarchal Palace.

Many Ottoman subjects of the Empire of Greek origin had been educated and hold high office in the Ottoman establishments. Likewise, many Greeks of Orthodox faith retained their religion while serving the Ottoman State.

In this context, in 1669 Grand Vezir Ahmet Köprülü enlisted the services of the Greek plutocracy of the Phanar Quarter in the Imperial Palace. He appointed his secretary, Panayoti, a Greek of Chios, to the influential post of Dragomen (Translator) to the Sublime Porte (Divan Tercümanı). Another Greek, Alexander Mavrocordato, succeeded Panayoti. He signed the Treaty of Carlovitz as Turkish Plenipotentiary.

Then came the selection of another Phanariote to be Dragoman of the Fleet (Tersane Tercüman). The Secretary of the Capitan Pasha, or Lord High Admiral was appointed to this important post. The Dragoman of the Fleet, in addition to his purely naval functions, was Governor of the Ottoman Territories in the Aegean. He became the intermediary of the Capitan Pasha in all dealings with the inhabitants and authorities of the Aegean Islands. It should be noted that with these appointments, the posts of Dragoman of the Porte and Fleet became that of a Minister rather than of a mere interpreter. Thus, the Ottomans entrusted the foreign affairs, at least as far as the details are concerned, to the Greek subjects of the Empire.

Similar appointments of Phanariote Greeks to high offices followed until the 18^th century. After 1716 the Porte appointed Phanariots, chiefly of the families of Mavrocordato, Ghica, Soutzo and Ypsilanti, as Hospodars(Governors) of the two Danubian Provinces of the Empire, Wallachia and Moldavia.

The Hospodars maintained a quasi-royal state at their capitals of Jassy and Bucharest. They brought with them a train of officials, priests and creditors, and altogether overwhelmed the Rumanian element.

The Phanariots, however, never held the same political position in the Slavonic parts of the Balkan Peninsula as on the northern bank of the Danube, Wallachia and Moldavia Provinces. Nevertheless, they managed in Slavonic provinces a preponderating influence by means of their Church. They made the whole ecclesiastical organization of Macedonia, Serbia and Bulgaria dependent on the Patriarchate of Constantinople. Their bishops made tax-collecting tours, and the dues which they extorted were remitted to the Phanar, and expended on Hellenic objects. Monasteries and their estates passed into Greek hands. Greek literature and Greek schools formed the only available means of education, and educated Serbs and Bulgarians called themselves Greeks. Thus in the middle of the 18^th century Christian provinces of Turkey were in the hands of the Greeks.⁽⁵⁾

Prominent positions held by the Greek element continued even in the decline period of the Empire. When the Ottoman Empire was portrayed as the “sick man of Europe” by the West, the Sultan’s representative at the Congress of Berlin happened to be a Greek, Alexander Caratheodory. In this period of disintegration, Ottoman Ambassadors to London, St. Petersburg and Athens were of Greek origin.

10. The Ottoman Empire was in essence a Turkish-Muslim universal State which maintained the time honored Muslim tradition of treating the non-Muslim peoples, Christians and Jews alike, as being the “P...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Preface
• Contents
• Part One Introduction; Background History
• Part Two Maritime Areas in the Aegean And the Outstanding Issues Related To Territorial Sea
• Part Three the Dispute Related To the Continental Shelf in the Aegean
• Part Four the Aegean Airspace Issues
• Part Five Issues And Disagreements Between Turkey And Greece Related To the Demilitarized Status of the Islands in the Eastern Aegean
• Part Six Disagreement Between Turkey And Greece Concerning the Status of Certain Geographical Features in the Aegean
• Index