January 30, 2012
Greek
Military Intelligence and the Crescent. Estimating the Turkish Threat-
Crises, Leadership and Strategic Analysis, 1974-1996
By
Panagiotis Dimitrakis
University of Plymouth Press (2010), 224 pp.
Reviewed by Chris Deliso
This comparative analytical work discusses two memorable showdowns
between Greece and Turkey, events that exemplified both countries’
balance of power and political and military strategic capacities and
goals in the late 20
th-century. These affairs – the first, a
war of words accompanied by military buildups in 1987 and the second,
the much more serious Imia crisis of January 1996 – occurred in an
environment in which some of the same conditions that applied then apply
still now.
Analysts will thus find a wealth of useful insight in
Greek Military Intelligence and the Crescent,
which will help in assessing the Greek-Turkish relationship today. The
book is, of course, also an engrossing read for the armchair historian
or intelligence buff. The vivid recounting of the decision-making
processes of Greek leaders, civilian and military intelligence, and the
armed forces (particularly the Navy) is peppered with new commentary
from former high-level officials who were active during the period in
question, adding to the book’s appeal.
Introduction
The author, Greek historian Panagiotis Dimitrakis, starts his study
with an introduction discussing themes like ‘key concepts in military
intelligence,’ ‘leadership and intelligence’ and ‘intelligence and
crisis management.’ This is a rather theoretical approach, but
unquestionably it elucidates topics that are crucial to the narrative of
both the 1987 and 1996 events, and thus informs the rest of the text.
The introduction also gives a broad overview of the following six chapters which constitute the bulk of
Greek Military Intelligence and the Crescent.
Readers are thus made aware from the beginning of the overarching
structure of the narrative, which fleshes out the concepts discussed in
the introduction. Thus the book is of value both in the specific context
of Greece and Turkey in the late 20
th century, and in the
general context of military intelligence and diplomacy at work.
Conclusions can thus be applied or at least compared to other similar
situations from elsewhere in the world. Indeed, the forward to
Greek Military Intelligence and the Crescent is written by Sir Lawrence Freedman, Britain’s Official Historian of the Falklands War.
Historical Context: the Importance of Cyprus, the Continental Shelf and Diplomatic Projections
Dimitrakis illustrates from early on the importance Greek military
planners gave to specific formative events and to political/diplomatic
issues that posed the risk, in their view, of a violent confrontation.
The former was of course the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974,
creating a military occupation that still shows no signs of ending
today. The latter refers to diplomatically disputed issues in the
eastern Aegean, chiefly concerning the validity of territorial waters as
compared to the extent of islands and coastline, as well as the
continental shelf. Both Greece and Turkey have made claims for what they
believe to be their rightful property based on differing
interpretations of the international laws, agreements and principles
relating to this issue.
The Cyprus debacle deeply affected Greek military planners. It
proved, for the first time, that NATO ally Turkey was prepared to
violently take over a Greek-populated country, and could reasonably
expect to survive whatever diplomatic fallout such a daring deed might
cause. The events of summer 1974 also caught the Greeks totally by
surprise. This was an embarrassment of the highest order, and it meant
that in future Greek planners considered it necessary to expect
large-scale problems, a view that in hindsight led them to incorrectly
estimate the nature of Turkish small-scale, ‘surprise attack’ hostile
action in 1996.
However, by and large the intelligence assessments (and particularly
from the civilian National Intelligence Service) were that Turkey merely
sought to make low-level provocations in order to force Greece into
bilateral negotiations over ownership of Aegean islands and economic
rights, in particular, drilling for offshore oil. Confident that its
case was legal and just, and having evidence even from Turkish maps
indicating that they had long before accepted the ‘Greekness’ of certain
disputed isles, Athens offered several times to resolve the issue
according to the verdict of the International Court of Justice. However,
Turkey always refused, often resorting to force to advance its
territorial ambitions.
Technical Observations and Dogfights
One enduring aspect of this has been the sometimes fatal dogfights
between Greek and Turkish pilots that still occur regularly over the
Eastern Aegean. The author provides very solid information on the actual
technical factors involved in Greek-Turkish military antagonisms. For
example, regarding dogfights, he explains how Greek military
intelligence estimates evolved over time, from the early 1980s, when
Turkish pilots were considered to be mostly below average and not a
threat, to the early 1990s, when they began flying in whole squadrons
over multiple points simultaneously.
Aware of the gap, Turkish military planners had increased training,
which notably involved participation in Israeli and American exercises.
Thus “the Greek interception success rate decreased to 60%, compared to
the 98% of the mid-1980s” (p. 94). Once again illustrating the shaping
factor of Cyprus was the fact that Turkish airspace violations only
became truly “massive” following the Greece-Cyprus Joint Defense Space
Doctrine of 1993.
Assessing Hostile Intent
A key aspect of the book is its discussion throughout of Greek
security planners’ understanding of Turkish intentions, on both the
political and the military level. The author notes that “Greek
intelligence had to assess the wording of hundreds of seemingly
aggressive public statements and articles by Ankara’s active and retired
politicians as well as by its military and diplomatic personnel and to
try and make some real sense out of them” (p. 82). This led on occasion
to some exaggerations, particularly in the more heated moments between
the two countries, but findings from other, secret intelligence often
balanced these views.
The cumulative assessment of Turkey’s likely military actions
depended on factors such as arms procurement programs, force deployment,
violation of Greek air and sea space and hostile propaganda from
Turkish officials or media. The likelihood of military adventurism
tended to be pointed out by the military, but downplayed by the civilian
intelligence officers and diplomats, something that is probably true in
most countries.
Indeed, Dimitrakis quotes a former NIS officer who stated in the
early 1980s that although Turkey had real offensive capabilities, it did
not intend to use them “despite the high nationalist and semi-fascist
rhetoric of Turkish politicians and generals” (p. 86). There was a
sentiment that NATO or the US would step in at the last minute of any
conflict, thus leading to an estimation based on Turkish reaction to any
crisis, “and not on the hypothesis of a strategic surprise” (p. 86).
This belief would be proven incorrect in 1996, when Turkish commandos
briefly occupied the uninhabited Greek islet of Imia.
The Role of Turkish Domestic and Foreign Policy
Another of the historic Greek intelligence estimates was that
Turkey’s internal politics often dictated its rhetoric and military
footing against Greece. By 1991, Prime Minister Turgut Özal was calling
for a foreign policy akin to a “New Ottoman Empire” and “claimed that
the Dodecanese should not have been called ‘Greek’ but ‘Aegean’ islands”
(p. 100). The construction of new military bases on the Aegean coast
opposite Greece seemed to confirm the Greek military’s suspicions over
such rhetoric. However, at the same time it appeared that the Turks’
desire to preserve good relations with Washington would prevent them
from provoking a serious conflict.
One galvanizing factor (again, dating to the 1974 Cyprus experience)
was the temporary imposition of an arms embargo on Turkey as a form of
punishment for the invasion. Ankara attributed this to the power of the
Greek-American lobby, and thus during the 1980s and particularly the
1990s built up a lobby of its own that today is possibly the second-most
powerful in the US, after that of Israel. The embargo also led to a
policy in Ankara to gain military superiority as soon as possible, and
to develop an internal industry of its own. Both were to happen. As the
author notes, “from 1992-1996, Turkey was second only to Saudi Arabia in
arms procurement and first among the NATO countries (p. 83).”
The internal political factors that Greece perceived to be a threat
included the Kurdish insurgency, which Turkey believed Athens to be
supporting. But the major internal issue that the author notes is the
animosity between the nationalist regime of Tansu Çiller, Turkey’s first
female prime minister, and her Islamist adversary, Necmettin Erbakan.
On December 24, 1995, Çiller won re-election and, seeking to build a
coalition that did not include his Islamist Welfare Party, turned up the
volume on the “Islamist threat” to the traditional secular state, while
murky conspiracy theories were spread that Greece had a secret plan to
divide Turkey. During this period of political gamesmanship, a crisis
situation was being prepared that might popularize the prime minister
and the military, with Greece as the target.
The 1987 Incident and the Imia Crisis of 1996: Fundamental Differences
Although both major incidents recounted in
Greek Military Intelligence and the Crescent
are too complex to be fully discussed, a basic outline of the
differences between them can be presented. The first, in March 1987, was
largely a war of words that began when Turkish exploratory vessels,
escorted by warships, conducted ‘scientific work’ in international
waters, but also circled several Greek islands very far from Turkey.
Such a provocation had occurred previously, in 1976, when Athens
perceived it to have been meant to damage Greek EEC ambitions, while in
1987 it came as a direct response to Greek plans for oil drilling with a
US company, Denison.
While the author devotes considerable attention to the tactical and
strategic intelligence work that helped Greek planners get through the
crisis, he also notes the qualities of then-Prime Minister Andreas
Papandreou, who was capable of pleasing the public with speeches
condemning Turkey, and the US for allegedly supporting it, while at the
same time keeping channels open with Washington, with which he
cooperated more often than not. At the same time, his practically
authoritarian leadership streamlined the decision-making process, making
disagreement and failures in the chain of command less likely than in a
more democratic regime.
By contrast, the political setting for the Imia crisis came when
Papandreou was on his deathbed and considerable infighting between
prospective PASOK successors was gong on. The new prime minister, Costas
Simitis, was frequently not informed on time of key developments in the
crisis and was distracted by party leadership battles. Further, Simitis
seemed to have suspicions of his own intelligence officials, which
sometimes manifested in disinterest or just discounting of advice. He
was thus caught by surprise when events overtook him, unlike Papandreou.
Without central leadership, Greek reactions became more susceptible
to intelligence failures, which were exacerbated by weather and other
tactical conditions affecting the timely flow of information. Following a
war of rhetoric and flag-planting on the uninhabited islets of Imia,
the Greek government was thus surprised when Turkish commandos occupied
one of the islands, considerably upping the ante. (However, the author
notes cryptically that a Greek-American lobbyist, perhaps informed by US
intelligence, had accurately predicted the hour and place of the
landing).
Another key difference, on the tactical level, between 1987 and 1996
was weather conditions. In the latter case, this hampered accurate
intelligence collection and communications for both countries and thus
knowledge of what was going on in ‘the field.’ An example of Dimitrakis’
depth of detail in providing context for this is his technical
discussion of typical geographic, climatic and sea conditions that tend
to effect SIGINT technology in the Eastern Aegean. Such background
information gives the reader a better appreciation of the operative
conditions.
The 1996 incident reinforced Greek suspicions that Turkey was
following a strategy of exploiting ‘grey zones,’ maritime areas where
the ownership of similar islets could be questioned, and by force if
necessary. This seemed to be confirmed when Omer Akbel, MFA spokesman,
stated that the Imia example could be extended to “hundreds of little
islands, islets and rocks” the status of which remained unclear due to
the lack of a supposedly necessary “bilateral agreement.” A few days
later, on February 3, outgoing Prime Minister Çiller (who had failed to
form a government) raised this number to 1,000 islands and rocks that
Turkey should claim.
Another part of the reason why a hostile confrontation was not
expected, and definitely not from Europe, was that it had partially been
caused by morbid Turkish suspicions that an innocuous EU conservation
project in the Eastern Aegean islands was really a covert means of
advancing Greek and European interests against Turkey. For intelligence
prediction in general, this reaffirms the need to consider local
realities and mentalities in assessing possible triggers: in this case,
the chronic Turkish tendency to indulge in dark conspiracy theories was
forgotten, with unfortunate results.
As in 1987, Turkish actions in 1996 resulted in a massive naval
mobilization from the Greek side, and the media in both countries
increasingly whipped up a frenzy, making it harder for diplomacy to
succeed. The tense standoff was only resolved due to heavy US pressure
on both sides, after President Clinton was made to realize that the
future of NATO and the whole Western alliance system was in jeopardy.
Indeed, on January 30, Prime Minister Simitis was handed, but “seemed
uninterested” in, a personal letter from CIA Director George Tenet. It
had been passed on to NIS Director Leonidas Vasikiopoulos from the
Athens CIA station chief. The letter stated Tenet’s view that “it would
be disastrous for Greece, Turkey and NATO if war broke out due to
escalation of the [Imia] incident” (p. 159).
Conclusions: Applicability for Today’s Situation
....
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