The Israeli software Pegasus also knows Greek. “Why shouldn't we spy on Muslim deputies?”, the vice president of the Athens Parliament defended himself out loud the day before yesterday. The words of Charalambos Azanasiu, which add fuel to the case of listening to opposition leaders and journalists, have once again generated a scandal in Greece.
The leftist Syriza has asked for Azanasiu's head "for today" to President Kyriakos Mitsotakis, from the same party as the aforementioned politician, for "his unacceptable statements." The vice president of the chamber, who was Minister of Justice with Nea Demokratia, has questioned the loyalty of three elected representatives of a minority to which only 1.25% of Greeks belong, but which adds up to a third of the population in parts of the northeast neighboring Turkey. "Potential agents", Azanasiu insisted, while Syriza proposed with a small mouth to cut the vacations of the Chamber to debate at length about espionage to representatives of sovereignty.
The vice president of the chamber explicitly referred to the risk that these deputies "could pass information about the border to Turkey", whose consulate in the region is often accused of interference by Athens.
Irregular immigration, which Turkey has not hesitated to use as a lever before it became a hot political issue among its own electorate, worries many Greeks. But the erosion of democratic parameters since the right-wing New Democracy won the absolute majority in 2019 is also disturbing.
Even before the scandal of wiretapping journalists and leaders like the socialist Nikos Andrulakis broke out last fall, Reporters Without Borders had already spectacularly downgraded Greece in its ranking of freedom of expression. Mitsotakis has acknowledged that the head of the Socialists was spied on during the last three months of 2021 -when he was competing for leadership in PASOK, which he won- and that he would not have allowed it "if he had known", but that in any case he he did so "legally, with the permission of a prosecutor".
The Muslim minority is the only officially recognized minority in Greece. However, because of the Ottoman history, which still conditions the present, the situation is seen as abnormal from other countries. Especially from neighboring Turkey, which tends to regard all Muslims in Western Thrace as Turks. In Thrace, as in Istanbul, there was no forced exchange of population according to religion a century ago, unlike what happened in other parts of Greece and Turkey.
From Greece, in addition, it is criticized that Turkey describes the "Greek Muslims" as "Turks". Not only to those who may be ethnically - or whose families speak or spoke Turkish - but also to the no less numerous Pomaks - Slavic converts of the Bulgarian language - and even Muslim gypsies. A distinction that in Turkey makes no sense, since the republic was founded as the home of the Ottoman Muslims, without distinction of mother tongue.
So the Greeks have their grievances and so do the Turks. Greece, home to countless mosques inherited from more than three centuries of Ottoman rule, officially had one between 1830 and 2020. Less than two years ago, Athens opened its own, a dingy gray building with the outward appearance of a supermarket - no minaret- paid for by the state and where the sermon can only be done in Greek.
Likewise, it is not necessary to imagine what stung in Greece, that same year, the conversion of Justinian's Hagia Sophia into a mosque, decided by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan without even popular demand for it.
To the cocktail of tension must be added the Turkish gas prospecting in disputed waters, the Turkish occupation of northern Cyprus or some recent antics, such as the presentation, a few weeks ago, of a map of Turkey that included Crete, Rhodes or Lesbos, for part of a far-right associate of Erdogan.
Turkey, for its part, denounces the militarization of Greek islands in many cases almost attached to its coast. This climate has created the conditions to justify not only a resounding increase in the Greek military budget - which is still several times less than the Turkish budget - but also an unprecedented multiplication of facilities for the United States Armed Forces, on the island of Crete. or in Alexandroupolis.
Erdogan has ironically referred to them. "Does anyone really think they are targeting Iran?" Meanwhile, the Turkish president is following his skillful positioning in Ukraine with the aim of not being tainted by the war and at the same time attracting funds, investments and tourists from Russia, in competition with the United Arab Emirates, Israel and a few other countries.
The Greco-Turkish pulse will continue until June or July of next year, when both Erdogan and Mitsotakis will have to face each other at the polls. In the case of the former, keeping swords theatrically raised with Greece - a NATO partner - can serve as a counterweight to the need to do the complete opposite with respect to Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria, which has endured for a decade all the direct or indirect attacks from Turkey.
A call between Erdogan and Asad could take place in the coming days, according to some Turkish media. Everything indicates that Turkey would prefer a Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) close to the Asad family regime - as in its origins - rather than rearmed by the United States of America.
