Greece has been searching for decades in the global market for an “insurance policy” against Turkey. It is very strange how, a country as proud as Greece, which was moved by slogans such as “Greece belongs to the Greeks,” still suffers from dependency syndromes.
The main “insurance policy” that we thought we could secure concerned the United States. We bought American military equipment and sought the provision of military concessions and bases with the expectation that, in difficult times in our relations with Turkey, Washington would be there. Indeed, the US intervened at certain critical moments, always keeping an equal distance, acting like firefighters in a crucial corner of the Western alliance. We were disappointed and sometimes angry – as we usually are – because we thought we were right, and the US should stand by our side. But we had the certainty that the US’ strong hand would at least intervene in a crisis to restrain Ankara. These semi-certainties have now died as no one knows exactly what the “Western alliance” is, who will pick up the phone in the White House, and what they will say.
We also bought a French “insurance policy,” already from the era of Valery Giscard d’Estaing. It is usually expensive because it is accompanied by a large volume of armament orders. It is of course, also accompanied by verbal commitments or strategic gestures, such as the presence of President Emmanuel Macron and French warships in Cyprus. The French “insurance policy” certainly does not have the potential power of the American one and has never been tested in practice – yet. The problem in this case is that the leader behind this “policy” will be a veteran, a retired politician, in a few months.
