A long history of conflicts

The Turkish research vessel, Oruc Reis, anchored off the coast of Antalya on the Mediterranean Sea, Turkey, is the last butterfly. (AP Photo / Burhan Ozbilici)

Istanbul (AFP) – Both NATO allies Turkey and Greece are facing one of the fiercest disputes in months over natural gas reserves in the eastern Mediterranean.

It is not the first time that tensions have erupted between the two troubled neighbors. Here’s a look at their difficult recent history.

Maritime boundaries

Turkey and Greece have been at loggerheads over territorial boundaries at sea for decades.

Much of the tensions around the Mediterranean can be traced back to their dispute over Cyprus, which Turkey invaded in 1974 in response to a coup orchestrated by Athens, which sought to unite the island with Greece.

The dispute has now expanded to encompass a number of issues including the continental shelf, airspace, as well as islands.

Greece argues that international law gives it the right to extend its territorial seas to 12 nautical miles from the current six, but Turkey fears that this will cut off its access to the Aegean continental shelf and its wealth of energy deposits.

The Aegean Sea has a complex geography with more than 2000 islands, most of them Greek.

The two countries were on the brink of war in the 1990s over two small, uninhabited islands known collectively as Cardak in Turkish and Imia in Greek.

But these tensions were put aside with the so-called 1999 earthquake diplomacy – Greece quickly responded to a devastating earthquake in Turkey.

Immigrants

The Syrian war has caused an influx of refugees, especially to Turkey, which is a transit point for many seeking to reach the prosperous European Union. Turkey now provides home to nearly four million refugees – the majority of them Syrians.

More than a million refugees arrived in the European Union in 2015.

The crisis can only be resolved one year after Ankara signed a historic deal with the European Union to stem the flow in exchange for incentives including financial aid.

But President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has long used the threat to open Turkey’s borders to immigrants as a way to extract concessions in disputes with Brussels.

In February, refugees were allowed to cross into Greece, which led to border skirmishes.

People visit Hagia Sophia from the Byzantine era, one of Istanbul’s main sights, on June 25 (AP Photo / Emrah Gurel)

Hagia Sophia and churches

The disagreement over how to deal with Byzantine heritage inside Turkey opened up an ancient divide between the two countries.

Fears were compounded after Turkey last month reconverted Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia from the Byzantine era into a mosque and stripped its status as a museum – which had been in existence since the 1930s, as the new Turkish republic sought a more secular path.

Greece has criticized Ankara’s move to reopen the UNESCO World Heritage Site for Islamic worship, and Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis described it as evidence of Turkey’s “weakness”.

Erdoan was focusing more on the lavish celebrations marking the defeat of the Byzantine Christians at the hands of the Muslim Ottoman Turks.

This month, he ordered another old Orthodox church in Istanbul, which was a museum, to be converted into a mosque.

Minorities

Turkey claims that Greece has failed to respect rights, including the education rights of the Muslim minority in western Thrace, a region of central Greece.

Erdogan has often accused Greece of mistreating Muslim minorities and Turkish speakers on its soil, and has identified Athens as the only European capital without an official mosque.

Athena, in turn, is pressuring Turkey to open a school for Orthodox clergy on an island off Istanbul. Also, Ankara does not recognize the “ecumenical” title of the Greek Orthodox Patriarch in Istanbul.

The failed Turkish coup

The flight of Turkish military soldiers after the 2016 attempted coup against the Erdogan government has become another source of contention.

In 2017, a Greek court rejected Turkish demands for the extradition of eight former Turkish military officers.

The eight fled to Greece by military helicopter on the night of the coup, which Turkey says is the mastermind of which is the Islamic preacher, Fethullah Gulen, who lives in the United States.

By Fulya Ozkan © AFP

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