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Arson Claims Spark Controlled Controversy in Greece, Turkey |
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Thursday, 19 January 2012USAK Balkans Expert Mrs. Muzaffer Kutlay commented on Turkish-Greek relations and arson claims for Menekţe Tokyay, Turkish correspondent of Southeast European Times (SETimes), one of the leading news portals of Balkans.
Arson Claims Spark Controlled Controversy in Greece, Turkey
As much as the claim that Turkey intentionally set fires in Greece in the mid-1990s has ignited controversy, it has also highlighted how the two rivals' relations have matured.
By Menekse Tokyay and Andy Dabilis for Southeast European Times in Istanbul and Athens -- 17/1/12
The explosive claim last month by former Turkish Prime Minister Mesut Yilmaz that Turkish agents had a hand in setting fires in Greece in the mid-1990s hasn't enflamed the two countries' relations as expected.
The rivals' response signals just how far the two countries have come in working diplomatically to solve problems.
As evidence of this, Greek and Turkish foreign ministers -- Stavros Dimas and Ahmet Davutoglu -- have spoken by phone three times since the claim broke in the media on December 26th, and Turkish Minister of EU Affairs Egemen Bagis paid a visit to Greek Defence Minister Dimitris Avramopoulos on January 5th.
Yilmaz claimed that former Turkish Prime Minister Tansu Ciller used a discretionary fund between 1995 and 1997 to pay Turkish agents to set fires in Greece in retaliation for Greek set fires in tourist areas of Turkey.
Yilmaz said afterwards that he had been misquoted, and that he was in fact implying the possible involvement of the Greek secret service agents in forest fires in the Aegean region.
"I said that publishing these allegations before they were proved would be wrong for our relations with Greece, and therefore they should be evaluated within the scope of the state," Yilmaz, who served as prime minister three times in the 1990s, was quoted as saying.
"Unfortunately, the issue was totally distorted for sensational purposes," he added.
But Greece is still insisting on an investigation, without letting the allegations tatter bi-lateral relations at the official level.
"These statements and relevant information that have been in the media are important to us and there needs to be a thorough investigation. Turkey should provide us with any findings they have on this," Grigoris Delevekouras, a spokesman for the Greek Foreign Ministry in Athens told SETimes.
"We have sent them a clear message to investigate, and Greek authorities will need to look into this. We have re-opened the files," he added.
But the fallout has reached local governments and sparked nationalist sentiment in Greece at a time of economic hardship.
Dimitrios Stergiou-Kapsali, the mayor of Pendeli, a northern Athens suburb that had a forested mountainous area destroyed in fires several years ago, said he would demand compensation from Turkey.
He said 25,000 acres of forestland were ruined in a fire in 1995 at a cost of almost 47m euros, the Cihan news agency reported.
Meanwhile, Greek Supreme Court prosecutor Yiannis Tentes ordered the country's prosecutors to re-examine evidence gathered about the forest fires of 1995, Athens newspaper Kathimerini reported.
Analysts say the lack of concrete proof against Turkey reduces the possibility that the court cases will result in a ruling against Turkey. Because of Turkey's rapidly growing economy and the economic crisis in Greece, Athens may want to avoid the allegations from becoming an issue in the bilateral agenda that would only lead to a stalemate.
"What has been interesting and telling is the official reaction to the remarks by both countries," says Dimitrios Triantaphyllou, a Greek academic at Kadir Has University in Istanbul. "Though Greek-Turkish relations may become rockier in the future for a variety of reasons, the remarks of Yilmaz have been managed remarkably well by the authorities in Athens and Ankara."
"The improvement of relations with Turkey [since the late 1990s] has a greater value than this compensation," argues Muzaffer Kutlay, a Balkans expert at the International Strategic Research Organisation (USAK) in Ankara.
"Antagonism with Turkey would be the last thing that Greece would need at this worsening financial conjuncture," Kutlay says.
Since the late 1990s, Greek-Turkish relations have come a long way, which Kutlay describes as a framework of "controlled tension".
While co-operation in socio-cultural and economic fields continues to advance, Kutlay explains, "the structural fault lines" remain a key feature of bilateral relations.
Triantaphyllou agrees: "The remarks by Mesut Yilmaz are representative of another era in Greek-Turkish relations when the mutual suspicion between the two countries was higher and, in all probability, both sides tried to undermine the other in some of the ways suggested by the former prime minister."
But, according to Triantaphyllou, the allegations touched nerves among nationalist segments in Greece who worried over the declining fortunes of their country and their strategic posture vis-ŕ-vis Turkey.
Stavros Karkaletsis, who heads the Athens-based Hellenic Centre for European and International Analyses, which specialises in examining Greek-Turkish relations, said that the forest fire story is the least of the worries in bilateral relations.
He's fearful that Turkey will make more aggressive military moves as Greece cuts back on its defence spending in the midst of the economic crisis.
"They burned our forests … everybody here has known for years that it happened," he told SETimes. "Greece today has to worry much more about the stability of the Aegean because Greece doesn't have the same power that it did 20 years ago," he said.
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Thursday, 19 January 2012
Menekţe Tokyay, SETimes
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