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The Southern Flank of NATO: A Wing in Disarray
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12942 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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5 / 1987 |
3,618 Words |
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Nikolaos A. Stavrou
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On March 12, 1947, President Harry S Truman delivered a short speck before a joint session of Congress that altered the course of history and firmly established the United States as a superpower and defender of democratic ideals. Historians recorded that speech as "the Truman Doctrine," whose 40th anniversary is barely mentioned, let alone celebrated this year. Regardless of efforts by modern-day revisionists to belittle Truman's vision, the fact remains that what he set in motion in 1947 saved Europe from economic bankruptcy and checked the Kremlin's expansionism.
Greece and Turkey were test cases of a broader policy. The president asked for an immediate sum of $400 million to help these two countries resist ruthless Soviet efforts to convert them into satellites. In the case of Greece, an insurrection supported by three Soviet satellites, Albania, Yugoslavia, and Bulgaria, was in full swing. There was little doubt in the minds of Greek and Turkish politicians at the time that without American assistance the chances for survival of democratic pluralism were bleak indeed.
With massive material assistance, supported by a broad domestic consensus, Greece and Turkey successfully frustrated Soviet attempts to impose the rule of tyranny over them. In 1952, both countries requested membership in the NATO alliance, an organization that gave meaning to Truman's promise to "support free people who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or outside pressure." Yet, 40 years and many billions of dollars later, neither Greece nor Turkey can be considered staunch or grateful allies committed to safeguarding "the freedom, common heritage, and civilization" of its members, as the charter of NATO proclaims, from totalitarian threats. If anything, these two pivotal countries have drifted apart during the past 30 years, causing a massive gap in the southern flank of Western defenses, and by acts of omission or commission, have facilitated Soviet penetration of the vital eastern Mediterranean region.
Unsettled historical disputes, ideological fragmentation of the Greek and Turkish societies, revival of narrow ethnicity, rise of Muslim fundamentalism within Turkey, and carefully orchestrated Soviet projection of power have combined to disrupt relations between Greece and Turkey and have reshaped their attitudes toward NATO and the United States. Fear of the Soviet Union, a compelling factor that induced the two countries to beg for Western support in 1947, has been replaced by a transparent eagerness to court Moscow in the hope of increasing their leverage on their Western allies. Neither Truman nor Western strategists who conceived the grand plans for the defense of democracy in postwar Europe could have foreseen a time when Greece and Turkey would compete for Soviet favors. Postwar American foreign policy perceived both countries as critical for the defense of Europe and each relevant for the survival of the other. As Secretary of Defense James Forrestal put it then, "Turkey and Greece are each a function of the other."
Issue contention
Although many factors have influenced events in the eastern Mediterranean and contributed to the complexities of the Greek-Turkish conflict, three issues stand out as primary causes of the current state of affairs: the 1947 invasion of Cyprus by Turkish forces; attempts at a redefinition of the legal and political status of the Aegean; and military developments on each side of
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