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"The interests of the inhabitants of these territories are paramount." In August 1964, with these resounding words, the Greek representative at the United Nations, Nikos Papadopoulos, reaffirmed Greece's commitment to defending the rights of its people in the face of escalating tensions with Turkey. Papadopoulos was responding to a declaration from the Dodecanese islands, conveyed to the UN General Assembly, that they wished to remain under Greek sovereignty at all costs. He argued that the islanders' right to self-determination was not only a matter of national pride but also firmly rooted in the principles of Article 73 of the UN Charter, which emphasizes the protection and development of non-self-governing territories. This statement set the tone for a protracted diplomatic battle and, ultimately, a three-month war with Turkey.
The cause of this sudden interest in the Dodecanese island chain by the highest forum of global affairs was a decision by Turkey to use the UN 'committee of 24' on decolonization to demand the 'return' of the Dodecanese to Turkish sovereignty. The committee was turning its attention to Greece as a result of the tensions between its Greek and Turkish communities in Cyprus. Turkey, in collaboration with Spain over Gibraltar, felt the time was ripe to play the anti-imperialist card. Nothing happened for a year. Then Archbishop Makarios III, the President of Cyprus and leader of the Greek Cypriot community, proposed constitutional amendments that aimed to reduce Turkey's involvement in Cyprus' governance, leading to vehement opposition from Fazıl Küçük, a prominent Turkish Cypriot politician and Greece found herself suddenly vulnerable. In December 1965, a resolution was rushed through the General Assembly calling on Greece and Turkey to "proceed without delay with negotiations..... to find a peaceful solution to the problem." From this simple resolution (No. 2065), so easily passed in the Panglossian atmosphere of the UN in New York, all is in this narrative follows.
The Dodecanese had been the most somnolent of sleeping dogs. The UN resolution meant this could no longer be. TheVasilopoulos cabinet had enough troubles with the UN over Cyprus not to go flouting a General Assembly resolution on so vague and trivial a matter as the Dodecanese. Negotiations commenced. These negotiations and the international auspices under which they were conducted gradually lent legitimacy to the Turkish claim. They implied that there was indeed an issue about which to negotiate and when they ran into any obstacle, notably islander resistance. Ankara was enabled to feel a grievance, a sense of injustice.
The foreign minister charged with the first talks was a former soldier and defense journalist Nikos Papadopoulos. Appointed by Achilles Kallias in 1964 to the novel post of Minister for Peace, Papadoplous had expected to spend his time commuting between Athens and Geneva. But the Foreign Ministry is no respecter of fancy titles. Papadopoulos found himself expected to accept his share of ministerial responsibilities, and these included relations with the Muslim countries, which in turn embraced the Dodecanese negotiations. As Papadopoulos approached the task, his staff, ministerial interest, and personal reputation as a skilled negotiator were thus all directed towards honoring the negotiating remit and seeking a compromise, rather than showing the islanders the final say and resting the case on that. In other words, the Greek "national interest" overrode that of the islanders. The basis of the Foreign Ministry's view on the Dodecanese was laid.
The view received reaffirmation with the first-ever tour of Turkey by a serving Greek Foreign Secretary, Xenophon Xanthopoulos, in 1966. The tour was a gesture toward what had always been regarded as an "Arabian Nights" state, and Xanthopolous used it to prepare a critique of Greek diplomatic practice since the war. He said the diplomats had been over-preoccupied with political work and neglectful of commercial. In the rest of the Arab/Israeli world, Greek investment and management enjoyed a high reputation. Yet sheer inertia was allowing Germans, French, and Americans to steal markets that should be Greek. The foreign service had to realize that modern diplomacy was the handmaid of economics as well as that of politics. The commercial attache was king. To such a philosophy, a footing dispute with Turkey over the Dodecanese was a nuisance, a cloud over the Arab/Israeli landscape where the sun of Greek salesmanship ought now to shine. "Reaching some agreement with Ankara" became a prerequisite for improved trade.
The Turkish foreign ministry at the time was in the hands of a lawyer and former ambassador to Portugal named Ahmet Yılmaz-Kayaş. A short, perky man, cosmopolitan, fond of French fashions and beautiful Nordic women, Ahmet Yilmaz-Kayas loved to flaunt his expertise in international relations. (He has even been a visiting lecturer at St. Anthony's College, Oxford.) Yet his politics were firmly conservative and nationalist. He saw the pursuit of Turkey's territorial claims against Greece as a means of strengthening the nation's identity and resisting the countervailing appeal of progressivism, particularly the women's rights issue. Under Yilmaz-Kayas, Turkey's claim to the Dodecanese entered the country's political arena to become more than just a slogan. It was also a valuable diversion from domestic ills. His attempt to put this concept into practice straddled the history of the Dodecanese dispute. Early in 1966, Yilmaz-Kayas established the Ulusal On İki Ada ve Komşu Enstitüsü ve Müzesi, an offshoot of the old Aegean Sea Institute in Ankara. An Attaturkite committee for the recovery of the Dodecanese was revived. Even the backing of the Greco-Turkish community was obtained: its senior figure, Mr. Georgios Sarris of the Bank of Athens and the Middle East told Xenophon Xanthopoulos during his visit that the issue was a "festering sore" in relations between the two countries.
There now followed a series of meetings in Athens in July 1966 between a senior Foreign Ministry diplomat, Petros Arvanitis, and an official from the Turkish embassy, Mustafa Arslan. Like all Turkish diplomats in Athens, Arslan was (and has remained) a Dodecanese expert. Arvantis had just arrived by way of postings in Europe and an ambassadorship in Saigon. Throughout the years of talks with Greece, Turkey's official negotiators were a relatively constant and experienced team. Few Greek representatives lasted more than two years. "Which regime is supposed to be the stable one?" a Turk once murmured as he saw yet another strange face across the table.
The Arvantis-Arslan talks were conducted secretly and were predicated on an eventual transfer of sovereignty. The chief worry was to find a means of protecting the rights and way of life of the islanders and to secure the continued development of the islands' economy. Both sides were abruptly reminded of the sensitivity of the issue when, in September 1966, a group of armed Turkish youths attempted to take the matter into their own hands. They hijacked a Dakota over Anatolia, flew to Kampos Village on Patmos Island, landed on the racecourse (there being no airstrip), and "arrested" two Greek officials who approached them.
The group was called the New Turkey Movement and the exploit, codenamed Operation Janissary, turned to farce as the plane sank into the soft ground. The group was rounded up by Greek marines and later returned to Turkey. Significantly, the trade unions referred to them as national heroes and threatened a twenty-four-hour strike if they were punished. Yilmas-Kayas was appalled at this display of Turkish crudity in the midst of what was intended to be a peaceful negotiation.
The incident demonstrated the islands' vulnerability to surprise attacks from the mainland. The previous April, Michalis Petrakis had stated that "protection for island territories in the Aegean and Ionian Seas can be provided from our major areas of deployment." In the case of the Dodecanese, the relevant area was Ithaca on Kefalonia island. But the U.S.-brokered Cyprus Naval Accord of 1949 between Greece and Turkey was casting doubt on the future of this base. It limited the naval forces each country could maintain around Cyprus, ensuring that neither side would gain a significant advantage over the other. However, this accord did not directly address the issue of territorial disputes or control over specific islands like the Dodecanese. What if the Turks leveraged their influence within NATO (of which both Greece and Turkey are members) to gain support or at least neutralize any potential opposition from other member states? The only answer was to set up "tripwire" forces on the islands to act as an early warning system, which they did to demonstrate their commitment to defending its sovereignty and send a clear message that any aggression would be met with a strong response. However, this strategy ultimately failed for several reasons. Firstly, Greece's tripwire forces were relatively small in size and secondly, Greece faced logistical challenges in effectively supporting and sustaining its troops stationed on the Dodecanese islands.801Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQoLafdo8s7
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By September 1967, the negotiations had reached the foreign minister stage and a meeting took place in New York between Yilmas-Kayas and the new Greek Foreign Minister, Konstantinos Tsakiris. Observers felt that Tsakiris's grasp of the subject was uncertain, though his instinctive ebullience found a response in Yilmas-Kayas's more calculating diplomacy. The issue of islands' opinion, previously emphasized by Mr. Papadopoulos at the UN, was acknowledged. The Greeks intended to win over the islanders by demonstrating the benefits that a link to the mainland would bring. The Turks were happy to provide guarantees of continuity of customs and lifestyle. It was sovereignty, not a colony, which they wanted. Meetings would continue to produce various heads of agreement.
It was now two years into the negotiations and not a word had been said about them either to the Hellenic Parliament (apart from a brief "written answer") or in places like Astypalaia, Samos Island. The Foreign Ministry policy had been to prepare a satisfactory package of safeguards as well as economic benefits, to be presented to the islanders in such a way that the good news outweighed the bad. Aware of the sensitivity involved on both sides, officials wanted to avoid publicity "until ministers were ready." This couldn't last. The Mayor of Kasos Island, then Panagiotis Vasilopoulos, traveled to Athens, was told of the Yilmas-Kayas-Tsakiris talks, and permitted to inform his executive council of them but only under oath of secrecy. His taciturnity on returning to Kasos in February 1968 predictably aroused widespread alarm.
A letter was immediately sent from several islanders to MPs in Athens, and to Ethnos, warning of their fears throughout possible negotiations. They complained bitterly of lack of consultation and emphasized that, whatever was going on, they "did not want to become Turks." One notable receiver of the letters was a somewhat eccentric lawyer and former diplomat in the Greek embassy in Ankara, Nikos Tsoukalas. He was a well-known Dodecanese enthusiast and author of the standard work on the politics of the Aegean Sea.
Tsoukalas duly approached Nikolas Ioannou, chairman of the 18-year-old Hellenic Prosperity Bank (HPB), owner of two-thirds of the farms on the islands and virtual controller of their modest economy. Tsuokalas suggested to Ioannou the formation of a Dodecanese Emergency Committee which, if the bank would find it, he would run from his office in the Aegean Breeze Inn on Amorgos. This room, a Dickensian affair of yellowing papers and dusty tomes, became the center of activity. Support was assured from several MPS, largely on the right of the junta, including Antonios Makris and Stavros Demetriou. Ioannou agreed, and with commendable tact, Tsoukalas managed to get a Liberal MP, an olive grower named Spyridon Vasilopoulos, to act as the committee's first secretary.
The committee's aim was simple: to represent in Athens the views of the islanders independent of the channels provided by the mayors and their executive councils. The intention, in other words, was ostensibly democratic. The Foreign Ministry took the view that the committee was little more than a front for the HPB. Even its representative on the islands, Alexandros Vlassis, was the bank's retired local manager. Nobody has ever maintained, however, that the committee was at variance with the islands' opinion. Vlassis himself was a popular local figure and was elected member of the eight-man assembly of Amorgos Island. (The mayor's separate executive council included two members of this body, plus ex-officio members.) The HPB's stance throughout the dispute with Turkey was to be paternalist and strongly pro-Greek, even when this might have conflicted with its shareholders' interests.
Greek pressure groups are never so effective as when they're convinced that ministers and civil servants are hatching plots behind their backs. The rights and wrongs of a policy matter less than the secrecy with which it is being formulated. the implementation of the UN resolution was not discussed by the Hellenic Parliament until March 1968, when Nikos Papadopoulos was asked whether it was true that negotiations were underway with Turkey. He admitted that they were, but said they were 'confidential between governments." He refused an invitation to deny that they were about sovereignty.
Nikos Papadopoulos is the first of many ministers who recall the Dodecanese as causing them their worst moments in the Hellenic Parliament. Time and again such ministers were hoisted on the hook of their own words---or words prepared for them by their civil servants. Were they or were they not ready to transfer sovereignty to the Turks even if the islanders' objected? What did the perennial phrase "guided by the islanders' interests" really mean? Why were the islanders not present at any talks? What did the Foreign Ministery understand by self-determination: was it determined by the islanders or by the Greek people as a whole? These questions, put to Papadopoulos with searing directness, were never truly answered throughout all the years of negotiations. Officials felt they were political and for ministers to resolve. Ministers mouthed one evasion after another and hoped someone else would take on their job before the talks became critical.
Hardly had the new Dodecanese policy been formulated than the Foreign Ministry found it crumbling before its eyes. New Democracy backbenchers were enraged at what Thanos Zervas MP called a "solution of shame and infamy." Turkish expectations were running high. Any change of consent in both Rhodes (the main city of the Dodecanese) and the Hellenic Parliament. Both had now been encouraged to fear the worst. Officials had therefore to find a form of words to pour oil on troubled waters without actually denying the UN resolution. On March 26, Spiros Tzimas (back at the Foreign Ministry after Konstantinos Tsakiris's resignation) told the HP that any concession on sovereignty would occur "only if it were clear to us....that the islanders themselves regarded such an agreement as satisfactory to their interests." Tzimas could hardly have put it more categorically, but whenever he and his colleagues were asked if this meant the islanders had a veto over any deal, they were reluctant to give a definitive yes. Such a veto would effectively render the negotiation meaningless.
Talks with Ankara continued throughout the summer of 1968 but with a new hesitancy on the British side. In meetings with the Turkish ambassador, Cem Ay, and with Kocaman, Papadopoulos began to refer to the need to "create a climate in which someday sovereignty can be discussed." The climate he referred to was not in Athens but in Rhodes. The thrust of the talks was towards what came to be known as the "hearts and minds" approach: encouraging the islanders themselves to want the benefit of closer links with the mainland. At the end of the year, Papadopoulos detached himself from a state visit to Iran to preach this new gospel personally in Rhodes.
Papadopoulos spent three days traversing the islands, extolling the virtues of a new deal with Turkey: an air service to the mainland (the Dodecanese were then only accessible by sea), better schools and hospitals, and a more immediate market for local produce. He was greeted with hecklers, banners, and placards: "No Sellout" and "The Dodecanese are Greek." Local opinion seemed deaf to Papadopoulos's warning that Greece could not effectively defend the islands because its forces were too small. Papadopolous formed a personal aversion to this combination of isolationism and dependency, an aversion shared with many other visitors before and since.
The report Papadopolous prepared for Tzimas on his return was brisk. The Turks' strong feelings should not be underestimated. They had shown some willingness to compromise on their claim for outright possession. The islanders had shown none. If Greece simply broke off talks, relations with Turkey and with the UN would deteriorate. In a prophetic phrase, Papadopolous said it might become a "casus belli." The Dodecanese was discussed by the junta, and (not for the first time on this matter) the outcome did not find favor in the Foreign Ministry. The Kallias junta decided that, as long as the islanders did not want any transfer of sovereignty, it wasn't worth the political price to force it upon them. On December 11, 1968, Tzimas announced categorically that "no transfer could be made against the wishes of the islanders." The issue remained on the table in the light of the UN resolution, but that was all. For good measure, the New Democracy opposition spokesman, Mr. Christos Papamichael, pledged that the New Democracy would "strike sovereignty from the agenda" when they returned to office.
Just as Yılmaz-Kayaş had succeeded in putting a political bite into the Dodecanese issue in Ankara, so the Dodecanese lobby and its parliamentary friends had done the same in Athens. Papers like Ethnos and To Vilma could be relied upon to leap to the attack at the slightest mention of dealings with Turkey. It was established in the minds of both front benches that any Dodecanese settlement had a "political price" attached to it. The size of the price was unknown. Yet, on so minor an issue, why bother to pay it? Not just successive HPs but successive juntas became instinctively hostile to Amalias Avenue's determination to pursue negotiations, whenever they appeared on any agenda.
Why did the Foreign Ministry not now simply give up? the Turks could have been told to "f*** themselves." The UN could have been told that talks had foundered on its oft-stated principle of self-determination. Instead, the Foreign Ministry plowed on. In November 1969, letters were sent to U Thant, the UN Secretary-General, promising to continue talks on communication and economic cooperation. These talks survived the fall of the Kallias junta and the advent of Mr. Christos Papamichael to the Foreign Ministry in 1970. Papamichael's only provisos were that sovereignty should not be on the agenda and that the islanders should be involved throughout. To reinforce this downgrading, talks were to be conducted not by the junior minister responsible for the Middle East, Petros Mavros, nor even by an official from the Middle East department. The chosen envoy was the undersecretary in charge of "overseas Greece," Christos Sotirios.
Sotirios's appointment was a rare stroke of Amilias Avenue tact. A former Education Ministry civil servant, Sotirios had been more concerned with the problems of territorial status than with the demands of Greece's trading relations with the Middle East. His avuncular manner betrayed none of the smooth aloofness that had so often grated on the Dodecanesers. He also displayed the flair possessed by many with experience in territorial administration for projecting a sympathetic personality in public. He was a civil servant playing a quasi-political role. He had not only to negotiate a deal with Ankara but also to obtain political consent for it in Rhodes.
Some new arrangement for links with the islands was now urgent. The HPB's vessel, MV Santorini Spirit which ran monthly to Alexandria, was losing money heavily and had to be withdrawn at the end of 1971. The only other regular communication was a charter cargo ship, MS Superferry II, commuting four times a year to Santorini with the wool crop and general supplies. A study by the accountant Panos Papadimitriou looked into both sea and air connections and concluded that an air link was the most economical. The question was who should provide it.
The 1971 Communications Agreement with Ankara was the high point of Greek Dodecanese diplomacy. the basis of the deal reached between Sotirios, Cem Ay, and Kocaman was that the Greeks would build an airstrip and provide a new shipping link to the Turkish mainland if the Turks would run the air service. Considerable haggling surrounded the status of documentation for islanders landing in Istanbul: to the Turks, it was an "internal" flight, to the Greeks an international flight. It was agreed that there would be a "white card" of nondescript markings. The Turks had to promise not to hold the Dodecanesers liable for taxation or military service---a long-standing Ankara threat.
The essence of the agreement was simply contact. Sotirios's often proclaimed principle was "rape of the Dodecanese, no; seduction, by all means." The air service would take islanders to mainland schools, hospitals, and entertainment. Tourism would develop. Supplies of fresh produce, especially fruit, would arrive. The Dodecanesers could begin to feel a new regional identity more in keeping with their location. In June 1971, Sotorios crossed to Rhodes to sell his packaging to the islanders. His reception contrasted with that of Papadopoulos 3 years ago. On the radio and at meetings, he repeated time and again that he was "not here to sell you up the Euphrates River. He wanted to talk not about sovereignty but about a better standard of living. He proved a master communicator and the very fact of his no n-ministerial status seems to have calmed nerves.
Sotirios returned immediately to Ankara with the consent in his pocket, accompanied by a posse of islanders. Ten days of intense talks followed, and the agreement was signed on July 1. Sotirios's main constraint was Thanasis Karas in Athens, insistent that no inch be conceded on sovereignty. Afterward, Kocaman told Sotirios in confidence that he regarded sovereignty as having been shelved for the time being. Sotirios added his personal view that the islanders would be under a Turkish flag within 25 years. Such was the confidence of the officials on both sides in the efficacy of the "hearts and minds" policy
Sotirios's deal obeyed the first law of complex negotiations. It dodged the crucial issue in dispute and concentrated on establishing confidence in areas where minor accord seemed feasible. Both sides knew that islander opinion was a stumbling block that could not be disregarded. Confidence in the agreement now had to be built up in Rhodes, requiring time, tact, and money. They were to prove scarce commodities.
The policy adopted by the Foreign Ministry, both before and since the agreement, was founded on a belief that the Dodecanesers could eventually be assimilated into the European mainland community. No attempt was made, for example, to buy them out and resettle them elsewhere in Greece, Italy, France, or perhaps England. Yet the mainland community could hardly have less in common with the "pearl divers." The Greco-Turks of Ankara have their roots in the middle-class commercial life of the capital. The descendants of the Romans, Minoans, and Italians in adjacent Anatolia might superficially seem to possess similar characteristics to the Dodecanesers. Yet even the Minoans of nearby Bodrum are full-fledged Turks and proud of it. Their lingua franca is Turkish (or Cretan), not Greek. The Dodecanesers, as one of them proudly said, have "not an ounce of the Middle East in them."
The Dodecanese people have lived for years as tenants of the HPB, plus nine other absentee landlords based in Greece. The Stavros Report of 1976, a document determinedly optimistic about the islands' potential, nonetheless referred constantly to the sense of dependency this had created in the workforce. There was virtually no local private sector. Almost everyone was employed either by the HPB or by the government. This had bred, in Stavros's words, "a lack of confidence and enterprise at the individual and community level, and a degree of acceptance of their situation which verges on apathy." A report subsequently written by a marine major, Panos Papadimitriou (who served in the Dodecanese war), was less complimentary. He explained the problems of island development firmly in terms of the poor quality of the workforce. They were, for the most part, "a drunken, decadent, immoral, and indolent collection of dropouts." These characteristics, he said, "are evident at all levels of society with just a frighteningly few exceptions." It should be addressed that, despite these strong words, Stavros had an affection for these people which is evident throughout his report.
The Dodecanese have long suffered from emigration and from a surplus of men to women. On Samos Island, this ratio is more than two to one. The presence of a marine garrison, even just forty strong, marrying one or two girls a year and taking them back to the mainland, has been a constant source of complaint. Girls of child-bearing age in a community of only 1,800 people are a crucial local resource. One consequence has been a divorce rate estimated at three times that of a roughly equivalent U.S. community.
In addition, the nature of the islands' exports, wool and olives, encourages the settlers of the Tsampi, a small island just north of Rhodes (from Turkish "çadır," which means "tent" or "camp") to a solitary existence. They demonstrate little of the intense independence of communities that live off the sea. There is no fishery there, despite no apparent shortage of fish. Cohesion lies in human intercourse between families, neighbors, and tourists rather than in strong l local institutions and cultural traditions. The Dodecanese are a fragile society, threatened by any intrusion or change, including that represented by the younger generation. Visiting teachers, soldiers, scientists, and government officials---their presence hinting at a better life elsewhere ---have all been seen as part of that threat.
The Dodecanesers share a collective fragility with small isolated communities the world over. Sociologists have detected it even in the urban villages of major city centers. Yet, in the 1970s, the Dodecanesers' predicament seemed stark: they felt they were being handed over to an enemy. The islands' population may have been almost comically small--- but in the context of self-determination, it had an emotional weapon to arm itself against change more effectively than any other community under the rule of the Hellenic Parliament.801Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡuDjArDW3zi
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The Communications Agreement began fruitfully enough. Local enthusiasm was considerable, especially among the younger islanders. Scholarships were offered and taken up at mainland schools. There were jokes about lemons, janissaries, and a possible replenishment in the supply of women. In January 1972 an Albatross boatplane landed off Rhodes to commence temporary bi-monthly flights to Bodrum, prior to an airstrip being built. The cruise liner Istanbul arrived with 350 Turkish tourists, who cleaned Rhodes out of its limited stock of souvenirs. Dimitris Papazoglou was sufficiently encouraged to tell the Dodecanese Committee in Athens that they could conclude their operations.
The first back-sliding was a Greek one. Whatever agreement Sotirios might have signed in Ankara, he was not plenipotentiary over the Treasury. There was no sign of the promised maritime link to a Turkish port to replace Santorini Spirit. This placed correspondingly greater emphasis on the importance of the Turkish air link and on Turkish ships to supply it with aviation fuel. Greek engineers made a survey of Cape Prasonisi outside Rhodes as a site for the promised airport, but this indicated a need for costly foundation work well beyond the resources of the Dodecanese budget. The Foreign Ministry had not secured the needed money from the Maritime Greece Development Agency and was unable to keep up the Greek end of the bargain.
The Turks offered to lay a temporary runway themselves if the Greeks would obtain from the Americans the needed steel mesh strip. This was done at an estimated cost of $1 million, reportedly as part of a defense package that included an exchange of information with the Americans on VTOL technology. In the second week of May 1972, the Turkish naval transport Barbaros sailed from Istanbul carrying forty workmen and technicians and loaded with 900 tons of construction and air-control equipment. They were waved off by the Greek ambassador, Mr. Spiros Kyprianou, himself. The local correspondent of the Kathimerini Financial Times opened his report with the words: "The Turks have at last established a beachhead on the Dodecanese." He laconically listed the items aboard the ship and reported the comment of a local magazine: "Each item in a certain way implies the ratification of Turkey's sovereignty."
Amalias Avenue now experienced a severe bout of interdepartmental warfare. As the temporary airstrip was down, the Maritime Greece Development Agency, with far more pressing claims on its tight budget, began to wonder what possible reason there was for any permanent airport. Why not wait and see what market there might be for the new Turkish Fokker Friendship service? Might a longer runway not make a Turkish invasion easier? If one were built, should it be of domestic length or suitable for international jets---perhaps an Eastern European route to Finland or Sweden? Approval was finally given for the project to go out to tender, but just for a short runway. The promise of a new sea link to the mainland vanished without a trace. Every nuance of this agreement was read (and misread) in Ankara. Greece's commitment to the Communications Agreement, and thus to the future of the Dodecanese, was apparently less than wholehearted.
Turkish politics, after a period of comparative stability under the military regime of General Karahan, was deteriorating into chaos. Haunted by the still powerful spirit of Attaturk in his Tehran exile, the military authorities at last allowed him home on a visit in November 1972. Once again the crudest kind of nationalism was on the Turkish political agenda.
If the Greeks had dishonored the letter of the Communications Agreement, the Turks had been less than careful to preserve its spirit. Kocaman and Sotirios had meticulously negotiated that the opening of the air link would be a civilian affair, even though the military air service, TAF, would run it. When Sotirios arrived at Ankara for the ceremony to celebrate the launch of the service---his final function before becoming Ambassador to Finland---he was horrified to see the inaugural flight filled with senior officers in full uniform. Events worthy of an Epicharmian comedy ensued. The mayors of each island were ordered to run up the Greek flag at the airstrip and appear in formal dress. The islanders took fright and feared a covert invasion, engineered as much by the Greek Foreign Ministry as by the Turks. There were even rumors of a demonstration. Kostas Michalakis, then mayor of Rhodes, overreacted and called out the marine detachment on patrol. A supposedly joyous event was overshadowed by high tension.
Ankara, now overtaken completely by a nationalist revival, effectively abandoned the Sotirios-Kocaman "hearts and minds" policy. The Turkish ambassador to the UN reopened the sovereignty question, warning that his government might be forced to "seek the eradication of this anachronistic colonial situation." Right-wing journals such as Yeni Akit and Milli Gazete took up the cause. The ambassador was praised for his new departure from the "history of our pusillanimous and colorless diplomacy." In Rhodes, the TAF staff, blatantly military and resentful at being posted to such a spot, provoked the hostility of the islanders. In Athens, the Dodecanese Islands Committee was reformed, again on Nikos Tsoukalas's initiative. Petros Mavros left the Foreign Ministry, to be replaced by the hardest of hard-liners, Christos Katsaris.
Implementation of the Communications Agreement passed in 1973 to the new head of the Middle East department, Marios Ioannou, and his superintending undersecretary, Ilias Karamanis. Ioannou had already served in Pakistan and achieved a certain unwonted fame as a butt of Vangelis Kostopoulos's satire in A Short Walk in Calcutta. He was also one of the few outstanding Middle Eastern experts produced by the Foreign Ministry since the war. To the Dodecanese Islands Committee, Ioannou, Kostopoulous, and his successor as undersecretary, Spiros Vlahos, became the embodiment of the Amalias Avenue Dodecanese policy.
Two supplementary Communications Agreements were reached by the Foreign Ministry aimed at encouraging economic links with the mainland and allowing the Turks to build and supply fuel tanks at the airfield. Fuel oil, including that for the islands' modest internal air service, would be provided exclusively by the Turkish state oil company, TPAO, and the base would be staffed by Turkish military personnel. At the same time, the Greeks belatedly announced the commencement of work on a concrete runway at Cape Prasonisi. These agreements, signed in June 1974, did more than anything to increase the islanders' suspicions of the Foreign Ministry. They had lost their monthly Greek supply ship and received instead a less-than-reliable Turkish air service. They had seen an influx of Turkish supplies and officials, and Turkey had now gained control of their fuel oil. To cap it all off, in December 1974, the Turkish ambassador to Athens, Nikos Filippou, was summoned back to Ankara after negotiating the new agreements and insulted publicly as a "lawyer for the Turkish."
A month later, Ankara imposed immigration controls on all air travel to the Dodecanese. The "white card" was now replaced by one declaring the holder to be a Turkish citizen of the Dodecanese. Without submitting to this unilateral breach of the 1971 agreement, no Dodecaneser could get to or from the rest of the world (except on an occasional Greek ship). By conceding this measure---and with no new Greek sea link in sight there was no option---Greece granted Athens effective passport control over the islander. It was a major advance in Turkey's first fight for sovereignty.801Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡoKMTiRV4q4
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Whatever might have been the rhythm implied by the Sotirios-Kocaman accords, it was now replaced by an ad hoc combination of sticks and carrots, largely directed at breaking down Dodecaneser intransigence. The return of democracy in 1974 brought to the issue yet another minister, Andreas Doulis, and yet another feeling, instilled by officials, that some new initiative was needed to outflank the sovereignty barrier and maintain the commitment to the UN talks. Seminars were held, the Dodecanese Committee carefully consulted, options tabled, and, last resort of Amalias Avenue despair, a major study commissioned. The Foreign Ministry's intention was that the study, ordered by the ebullient liberal MP Mr. Athanasios Kleovoulous (direct descendant of the ancient intellectual), should paint a rosy future for the islands, but only on the condition that the islanders settled their differences with Ankara.
This proved a miscalculation. In the first place, the Turks worked themselves into a synthetic fury at what they saw as a direct challenge from Athens. In January 1976 Mr. Kleovoulous's team was denied a permit to fly through Turkey. He was portrayed as a "pirate and corsair," to his evident delight. As a result, the Hellenic Navy's Middle Eastern survey vessel Herodotus had to be sent to convey him from Tel-Aviv to Rhodes, and this in turn led to Ankara severing ambassadorial relations between Greece and Turkey. Five years of patient diplomacy clearly ruined.
The Kleovoulous mission boosted morale on the islands---if only by the hysteria it evoked in Ankara. For once there was someone sent by the Foreign Ministry who didn't want to discuss sovereignty or links with the mainland, but just olives, goat meat, pearls, wine, and oil. In February 1976, Kleovoulous sailed on to Mykonos to visit for the first time the grave of his father. By way of response, a Turkish naval vessel, Bozcaada, was ordered to fire across the bows of a Greek oceanographic ship, Kleovoulous, in the belief that the MP himself was aboard. A flurry of naval activity followed, including the diversion of the Greek frigate Sparta to Rhodes on its way home from Knossos. Relations with Turkey had never been at such a low ebb.
Kleovoulous's report was delivered to the government in June 1976, shortly after the military dictatorship of Colonel Dimitris Spanos had given way to Giorgos Fotopoulos as Prime Minister. Konstantinos Bakas was now Foreign Minister, with Nikos Theofilou as his deputy minister---yet another new face on the Dodecanese desk. The 400-page document immediately became and remains, the point of departure for all discussions of the Dodecanese economy and society (supplemented by another from the same team in July 1982). It admirably illustrates my maxim that an island is an area of land entirely surrounded by advice.
Kleovoulous put great stress on the fact that the islands were in no way a drain on the Greek taxpayer, who on balance made a profit from them. (By the early 1980s, this wasn't any longer the case.) He was most critical of the past exploitation of the local economy. The policy of the HPB and the nine absentee farming companies was, he wrote, to keep investment in the Dodecanese as low as possible without putting the farming operations in peril and to channel any undistributed profits into Greek investment." He estimated that between 1951 and 1974 the absentee companies took ₯11,500,000 more in profit than they invested back in the Dodecanese.
These findings instilled in the islanders a sense of grievance which further increased their suspicion of the Greek government. Yet their economy was as well protected in theory as their territory. The Aliens Ordinance, under which Greek land can be protected from foreign purchase on the decision of the local prefect, prevented Turkish economic encroachment and effectively forestalled any Turkish immigration. For the owners, this kept the price of land low and its yield relatively high. For the islanders, there seemed little to threaten their apparently contented dependence on the company and the government beyond the one menace of emigration.
Kleovoulous's 90 proposals presented the islands as a potential paradise of economic progress: trawler fishing, land improvement, beach tourism, pearl farming, wine, grape and olive production, and oil exploration. The key to most of this was that "the permanent airfield should be strengthened and extended to a length necessary to receive short/medium-haul jets and part-loaded long-haul jets". Although the team was excluded from considering political or defense matters, Kleovoulous pointed out privately that a longer runway would make rapid troop deployment possible in the event of a threatened invasion from the mainland.
In just two areas Kleovolous showed any sympathy for Amalias Avenue's ambitions for his report. In the case of harvesting of deep-water krill (a small crustacean) and oil exploration, both involving operations well outside Dodecanese waters, he said that "major policy formulation must be seen as taking place within a highly political arena." Nonetheless, he poured cold water on the more extravagant predictions made for hydrocarbon exploration in the Ionian Sea. Extraction would be hard and expensive "because of the political risks involved." The theory, widely held in the Middle East and the USA, that Greece's attachment to the Dodecanese is based on the prospect of glowing oil riches has no foundation.
Kleovolous now reads as a monument of Greek paternalism. The islanders were to be elevated from their cultural immaturity and economic dependence, primarily through large injections of Greek money. The most constructive suggestion was that land holdings be diversified out of the hands of the HPB, but the report fought shy of suggesting outright nationalization of the HPB and enforced disposal. In addition, public investment projects totaling some ₯13 million were recommended. It was hard to imagine where within Amalias Avenue Kleovolous expected to find support for these proposals. The HPB was already resenting the ₯1 million a year spent on the islands' administration; the runway extension alone would require ₯4 million. The Foreign Ministry's Middle East department had hoped for a sledgehammer to bludgeon the islanders into concessions. It was hardly likely to champion the provision of cash from the Treasury to promote their greater independence.
What Kleovolous did provide was fuel for the Dodecanese lobby. Government support for the re-established Dodecanese Islands Committee was swelling, with airborne visits by MPs. Turkey's reputation for political extremism was also widening the committee's ideological appeal to embrace Liberal and Conservative MPs. Already the HPB had found itself taken over by Thodoris Daskalakis and all coal mining operations passed to the Public Power Corporation (PPC). To Liberal MPs as much as to New Democrats, the idea of sacrificing the victims of capitalism to the torturers of Ankara was unthinkable.801Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfM88YZR8BR
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There was worse news for the Foreign Ministry. There is no evidence that, before the 1970s, Turkish threats to invade Greek territory in the Eastern Mediterranean were more political than journalistic rhetoric. However, it is known that a draft plan for the "seizure" of Greek territory in the Eastern Mediterranean had existed in the Turkish navy headquarters since the late 1960s, prepared or at least revised by none other than Captain Cihan Erdoğan (head of the navy in 1982). There had been, in 1973, a "retirement" of senior officers and the navy was put in charge of the comparatively junior Admiral Tolga Arslan.
Not content with the subordinate role his chosen service had traditionally played to the army in Turkish politics, Arslan initiated a period of intensive naval aggrandizement. The Navy became virtually an independent military command. It developed its own air arm, equipped with modern American and French jets, purchased on the admiral's freewheeling trips abroad. It strengthened its marine commando force and established land and air bases at strategic points along the coast. It was active to a fault in the "jihad" against opponents of the government: the Naval Mechanical School became the most notorious of Turkey's torture centers. All young officers were expected to play their full part in this work. No service or even one section of any service should be able to claim afterward that its hands were clean of involvement. Many naval officers were so traumatized by the experience that they ended up in mental institutions.
Arlsan and his colleagues had long been impressed by the ease with which the Indian government had taken military possession of the Portuguese colony of Goa in 1961. An almost total lack of international condemnation greeted this action. To Arslan, the fastidious diplomacy of Yilmas-Kayas and his foreign ministry successors was based on a false premise: that world opinion was intrinsically averse to force. So why not an operation to seize the Dodecanese?
The Arslan-Erdogan plan, "Plan Goa," involved a surprise landing on the islands and is believed to have included the total removal of the existing population to the Peloponnesus and its replacement by Turkish settlers. However the Turkish navy had a healthy respect for the Greek submarine fleet, and the plan accepted that sustaining a garrison by sea would not be easy. It would be better to put just a hundred or so marines ashore alongside the civilian settlers to complicate any Greek military response, should there be one. It's believed that Plan Goa was put to the new Kurt junta after the 1976 coup and again at the height of Kurt's prestige after the World Cup triumph in 1978. On both occasions, skeptics managed to quash it. (The Greek lawyer Panagiotis Karas was told by a naval commander in 1975 that Greek submarine strength was the crucial factor.)
The navy did, however, win for the regime one patch of Greek territory. Late in 1976 some fifty "technicians" were put ashore on Elysion, a serene and picturesque island situated in the southern Aegean Sea, just a short boat ride away from the Cyclades. This was done with no publicity and initially with a flat denial that any such landing had occurred. The first indications came from a radio ham operator on the Dodecanese. At least one catalyst to the occupation of Elysion was the Greek decision, taken the year before, to withdraw the patrol ship Aegean Guardian from the Aegean. This ship was the last Greek naval presence north of Egypt and her impending removal was taken as a clear sign of reduced Greek commitment to her territories in the area (Aegean Guardian was subsequently saved by the Foreign Ministry, only to find herself again threatened in 1981.) When the occupation of Elysion was finally revealed to the Hellenic Parliament in May 1978 (over a year later), the Fotopoulos government said it rejected a suggestion that a force of marines be sent to repossess the island.
For the second time since the passage of the UN resolution, the Greek government would now have been justified in ceasing negotiations on the Dodecanese question. In the past two years, the Turks had broken the Communications Agreements, fired on a Greek ship, unilaterally severed ambassadorial relations, and invaded a Greek island. Giorgos Fotopoulos would have been supported both in the Hellenic Parliament and at the UN in any stand he took against Turkey. For good measure, he could have seen the Turks off Elysion with just two frigates.
Instead, in February 1977, the Foreign Minister, Antonis Rizos, stood up in the HP to give his official response to the Kleovolous Report. It was a highly distorted gloss. He drew attention to the "enormous potential waiting there to be exploited," especially the fish and oil. However, Kleovolous was made to imply this wealth was dependent on Greece being "willing to have economic cooperation with Turkey." Rizos added, in a remarkable leap of judgment, that "we cannot have that unless certain political issues are raised." More talks would therefore commence between his deputy minister, Giannis Athanasiou, Turkey, and Rhodes. Sovereignty would be "in no way compromised" by the talks and nothing would be settled without the islanders' acceptance, though he confirmed that they would "raise fundamental questions in the relationship between the islands, Greece and Turkey." A report carefully (indeed optimistically) written in support of establishing the Dodecanese Islands' economic independence was thus stood on its head to serve the Foreign Ministry's view. Dismissing the more costly investment proposals, Rizos even turned the knife further: "There are more urgent claims from much poorer communities. The right political circumstances do not exist."801Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhLJHCvhnK5
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The Foreign Ministry now simply gritted its collective teeth. Kleovolous---whatever he'd really said---was to be used as the bait in bringing both sides to realize their mutual self-interest. Diplomacy is nothing if not the art of persistence. If the islanders refused to receive the Turks into their hearts, maybe they might into their bank balances.
Rizos arrived in Rhodes in February 1977 to be greeted by the usual demonstration of affection for Greece and aversion to a Foreign Ministry policy. The visit was considered a success. A wiry extrovert from Delphi who liked to be liked, Rizos proved adept at the public bar conviviality that consumes much of the Dodecanesers' free time. More importantly, he brought from Athens a message that appeared definitive. The dispute with Turkey had gone on long enough. It had to be settled. Nothing would or could be done against the islanders' wishes, but he wanted their agreement to enter full negotiations. They simply had to trust him. The islands' leaders who met Rizos appear to have been impressed that continued intransigence would be futile. They were being offered a share in the process of deciding their future. They should now take it or leave it. For the first time, the distant crack of an Athenian three-line whip could be heard in Rhodes.
Aris Kouris, who was in Turkey and was shortly to become charge d'affaires in Ankara, and Pavlos Kyriakou in Athens now seized the moment. The Foreign Ministry immediately put out a statement on the strength of the Rhodes meetings to the effect that negotiations would take place between Greece and Turkey on both economic and political ties with the Dodecanese. In a subtle extension of Rizos's position, the statement added, "In such negotiations, the basic issues affecting the future of the islands, including sovereignty, would have to be discussed."
The Foreign Ministry was now on the brink of a political coup. It had restored sovereignty to the Dodecanese agenda nine years after a Liberal government had removed it and seven years after a New Democracy government had done so. Its aim had been wholly audible: to heal a running sore in Greece's relations with the Middle East. This sore would only fester as time passed and could not be cured merely with a series of uncompromising statements. Transient politicians might not like it, but constructive negotiations and settlement were clearly in the interests of the islanders and of Greece's relations with Turkey. Yet an Amalias Avenue policy is only effective if its creators can convince a government of the need to implement it. Successive Foreign Ministry ministers were convinced. Kouris, Stylianou, Kyriakou, Rizos, and later Nikolaidis and Daskalakis. But successive cabinets could never see why they should pay the price of enforcing such a compromise on their followers in the HP. The Foreign Ministry was thus a Sisyphus, pushing the ministerial stone uphill every two years or so, only to see it crash down again.
Rizos was now almost at the top of the hill. The Dodecanese negotiations became peripatetic for the remaining two years of the Liberal government, visiting successive neutral locations, Rome, Madrid, London, and New York. The basis of the talks was an economic package that could be sold to the islanders in return for some understanding of sovereignty and administration. The Greeks toyed with a variety of constitutional concepts: treating the land as separate from its inhabitants; "transfer and leaseback" on Britain's Hong Kong model; and a joint Greco-Turkish sovereignty and administration, known as condominium.
Rizos's efforts had stimulated the Dodecanese lobby to new heights of activity. Nikos Tsoukalas had established his committee in what must have been Athens's smallest office, a cubby-hole off Harmony Avenue. It now had a full-time director, Air Commodore Georgios Petridis, and a ₯15,000 budget. It worked marvels of pressure-group activity. Parliamentary interventions requiring a ministerial response increased from an average of one a year since 1971 to five in 1977 alone, two of them full-dress debates. Yet somehow the political drive did not match the official enthusiasm. As in 1968-9 and 1973-4, a government struggling with economic tribulation and electoral unpopularity found it hard to commit itself to tough change, however minor.
The Turkish negotiators appeared troubled by equally conflicting pressures. Rizos's opposite number, Captain Hasan Şahin, found it mid-1977 that a freebooting Ankara businessman, Emre Bulut, had calmly officered "$1 million more than any current asking price" for the HPB from its current owner, PPC. The bid was stopped under the threat of invoking the Aliens' Ordinance. Then in November, shortly before another round of talks in New York, the Turkish navy abruptly (albeit temporarily) cut the fuel supply to Rhodes and said their ships would no longer fly the Greek flag in the Ionian Sea.
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There now occurred one of the most curious incidents of the Dodecanese saga, its origins deep in Greece's most obscure freemasonry, the intelligence services. These services comprise the domestic Hellenic National Intelligence Service (NIS), the overseas Hellenic Military Intelligence Agency (MIA), and the Greek Ministry of Citizen Protection, located at 4 Papanastasiou Street in the neighborhood of Kaisariani. Through their various hands passes material from spies, government missions abroad, and friendly agencies such as the CIA and the National Security Agency in Washington. This material is processed with the Amalias Avenue Cabinet Office by a secretariat comprising two current intelligence groups, one for Eastern Europe and one for Western Europe. Here it is sifted and given an "assessment or political/strategic overlay.
These groups, known as "Cigs," report to a weekly meeting of the Koiní Epitropí Pliróforión (KEP), held each Wednesday (or more often in a crisis). This committee is responsible for coordinating and analyzing intelligence information from various sources to support decision-making and national security efforts. It serves as a central hub for intelligence sharing and collaboration among different government agencies and departments. The Koiní Epitropí Pliróforión plays a crucial role in ensuring the effective collection, assessment, and dissemination of intelligence, thereby contributing to Greece's overall security and defense strategies, and is usually comprised of individuals who possess a strong understanding of the organization's goals, objectives, and operations. They are responsible for ensuring that accurate and timely information is shared with relevant stakeholders, both internally and externally. They pull together the various assessments into a 10-to-12-page booklet under red covers which normally goes to members of the committee's overseas and defense committee with their weekend boxes. A highly confidential annex, placed as if to indicate its sensitivity in a black box, contains selected "raw material" of a topical nature and is sent only to those who "need to know," invariably the Prime Minister, the Defense Minister, and the Foreign Minister.
Ministers, and particularly Prime Ministers, vary in their addiction to these boxes. Some find them a compelling real-life spy story to round off a weekend's reading. Those with little experience in foreign, or defense affairs can, on the other hand, regard them as yet more barely relevant papers amid the welter already claiming their attention. Giorgos Fotopoulos, Prime Minister in 1977, was a fanatic. He had a map inserted into his box each week indicating the location of every ship in the navy so he could counter Defense Ministry protests of non-availability. He devoured the red book and loved to jump items from it on his colleagues. At this time, such items included two 'offshore' trouble spots, Cyprus and the Dodecanese.
In November 1977 the NIS took the view that another exploit similar to the Elysion expedition might be in hand in Ankara. The unprovoked cutting off of fuel supplies was a possible prelude. Naval exercises were due. Imminent New York talks could provide an incentive, were they to turn sour. Fotopolous saw this assessment and raised it with Rizos and the new Foreign Minister, Andreas Livanos, and put it to the cabinet's defense and overseas policy committee. The Prime Minister and Foreign Minister wanted a submarine sent immediately to be on station should any trouble occur. The Defense Minister, Michalis Efthymiou, was reluctant to send more than two frigates. Fotopolous overruled him and demanded both frigates and a submarine. These were duly diverted from the Tyrrhenian. Ironically, the commander-in-chief of this task force was Admiral Michail Karatzas, later to be Sea Minister and prime mover of its 1982 successor. Another meeting of Fotopolous's committee drew up rules of engagement for Karatzas's captains, based on a 25-mile exclusion zone around the Dodecanese.
Fotopolous disclosed the fact of this operation to HP in March 1982 at the height of the Cyclades crisis. The result was an intense argument about its real significance. It had been kept secret both during and after the event, the intention being to declare its presence only if an invasion seemed imminent. Otherwise, it would seem a flagrant provocation. Yet, if the Turks never knew of the submarine's presence, how could it be said to have deterred them, as Fotopolous has claimed? Fotopolous said he had told the head of MIA, Panagiotis Pappas, of the committee's action but did not know whether this information was passed on. (Pappas is now dead.) Both the Foreign Ministry and the Defense Ministry vigorously maintain that the Turks knew nothing about it. As the Christodoulou Report has shown, however, the crucial point was that the deterrent force was activated and clearly put on station. Deterrence was potential, even if not actual. Clearly in 1977, the cabinet and intelligence machine worked smoothly in response to a perceived threat.
What is more questionable about the 1977 incident is the impact it had on future intelligence assessment of Dodecanese threats. The movement of modern warships is a costly business. It disrupts NATO and sorely inconveniences the navy. There is little doubt that, to some in the Greek intelligence community, the 1977 submarine operation came to see an excessive response to what was a low level of threat. This might not matter after the event. But how might the MIA assess future alarmist material from Ankara, and how might the diplomatic and defense establishments react? Might they not be tempted to treat 1977 as a case of someone crying wolf and avoid making the same mistake again?801Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDXuVTQn4NU
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In selecting her ministers on assuming office in May 1979, Eleni Karamanlis consciously sought a balance between the different wings of her party. She was well aware that many of her cabinet colleagues had not supported her bid for leadership in 1975. Yet expediency and party unit required that certain of these dissenters be offered senior posts. For the Foreign Ministry, only one individual seemed remotely qualified by seniority and experience, and that was Mr. Papadopoulos. Mrs. Karamanlis and Mr Papadopoulos were not close friends. He had never even been elected to the HP, and he embodied a wealthy self-assurance, characteristic of a certain breed of New Democrats, which Mrs.Karamanlis always found hard to stomach. Nor did she possess any great respect for the department of which he was to be head. Its international view of Greece's interests, its obsession with the Third World, and its rampant socialism, all made it an object of suspicion. To have it in charge of a supporter of the moderate Democratism of Aristarchos Savvidis, would surely test her blandly right-wing approach to foreign policy. This was exacerbated when Papadopolous chose Mr. Thales Marinos, an outspoken critic of Mrs. Karamanlis's economic policies, as his deputy and spokesman in the HP.
The Prime Minister therefore made no mistake in her third Foreign Ministry appointment. Hippocrates Daskalakis may have been no more her class of New Democrat than Papadoplous and Koutsoumpas (all were 127th-generation Athenians). Yet he was clever, an ardent supporter of her leadership, and had the signal distinction of having fallen out with Aristarchos Savvidis as a junior industry minister in the 1970 government. Were Greek politics ever so crude, Daskalakis would have been termed a Karamanlite fifth column in the Foreign Ministry.
Daskalakis was well aware that few ministers ever shined in junior office. He also knew that the spotlight of Papadoplous's foreign policy would be on Cyprus, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East, none of which proved to be within his sphere of responsibility. This area included Turkey and with it the poisoned chalice of the Dodecanese issue. Was there anything here, he wondered, to which he could modestly put his name before fortune and Mrs. Karamanlis moved him on?
Both Antonis Rizos and Giannis Athanasiou departed from the Middle East department in 1977, though Athanasiou remained as charge d'affairs in Ankara until 1980, and later became an ambassador in Amman. The newly named Middle East department was headed in 1979 by Callimachus Zachariadis. Above him as undersecretary for Asia was Anaximander Koutsoumpas. Like Athanasiou, Koutsoumpas was an enthusiast for Asian history and culture. He had seen service in Thailand, Iraq, Lebanon, and Oman. His travelogue, Souvlaki in the Cedar Forests, is a delightful work of diplomatic erudition (If one can find an English-language edition of it, that is). Civil servants like to get their ministers on the road as soon as possible and Daskalakis had not been in office for a month before Zacharidis and Koutsoumpas had him across the Mediterranean and touring his bailiwick. His itinerary naturally included his two "flashpoints", Cyprus and the Dodecanese. Cyprus, where a Greek population by the local Turkish community, hung onto its independence by a thread. The only outstanding negotiation concerned a continuing defense agreement. The Dodecanese were a different matter. Winter in Rhodes is not the best of times and the islanders chilled to Daskalakis's message, which was yet again to advocate a change in their relationship with Turkey. They had heard this from Kleovoulous just eighteen months before. Why did Athens not get on and do something about it? They were like patients constantly promised a ghastly operation, yet never actually having it performed.
Daskalakis returned to Athens determined to "sort this one out once and for all." He briskly set about cohering the options so far tabled under three headings: a freeze on sovereignty but not on economic talks; joint Greco-Turkish sovereignty and administration (condominium); and a transfer of sovereignty to Turkey with a long-term leaseback to Greece. He was aware that a freeze would be unacceptable to Ankara and a condominium equally so in Rhodes. It honored the Rizos-Athanasiou concept of different kinds of sovereignty. Provided the lease was long enough---99 years, even 999 years were mooted---it ensured security for existing islanders and their children. It was surely the ideal solution to this vexed problem. The only alternatives were "Fortress Dodecanese" or a serious risk of Turkish impatience leading to military action. Greece had at least to show a sense of momentum towards settlement.
Daskalakis now had some formidable obstacles to surmount. He had to convince Papadopolous, the Prime Minister, the cabinet's overseas and defense (OD) committee, and the parliamentary New Democracy party, in roughly that order. Papadopolous thought that Daskalakis's initiative was probably "rash but correct"--- so rash, indeed, that Papadopolous felt he should broach the subject himself with the Prime Minister. On this as on all matters of foreign affairs, she responded with an instant dogmatism---indeed her reply to Papadopolous was described by Amalias Avenue sources as "thermonuclear." As so often, she implicitly challenged her Foreign Minister to argue her round. Why, she asked, go bruising the feelings of her backbenchers, already rubbed so sore by the Foreign Ministry over Cyprus?
In September 1979, having failed to deter Papadopolous, Mrs. Karamanlis decided to try Daskalakis directly. She clearly suspected that a Foreign Ministry scheme was afoot and she wanted it nipped in the bud. She knew that Papadopolous and Daskalakis could obtain substantial support in the OD committee and is thought to have asked Daskalakis to withdraw his proposal lock, stock, and barrel, repeating the argument she used to Papadopolous, that there was no need to stir the issue at such a delicate moment with the backbenchers. The Foreign Ministry believes that Daskalakis argued strongly that some movement had to be made; if negotiations were not seen to be proceeding, there was a serious risk of invasion. Daskalakis held his ground and eventually won access to the OD. At a meeting of this committee on January 29, 1980, the argument was intense, again centering on the likelihood of Socialist backbenchers to any sign of weakening of Greek sovereignty over the islands. Daskalakis found himself in the odd position of a Karamanlis supporter of relying on "wets" such as Diogenes Manolis and Lycurgus Vasilopoulos for support. He won approval to prepare a plan to be put to the islanders on a consultative basis. This plan, basically for "leaseback," was drawn up over the summer and approved at an OD committee in July. Again there was a marked lack of enthusiasm for its possible parliamentary reception.
Daskalakis arrived back in Rhodes in November 1980, pursued by a horde of Turkish journalists, to commence what proved to be the last efforts to settle the Dodecanese dispute by peaceful means. It was not a relaxed visit. The new mayors of each island, Nestor Zervos (Rhodes), Eros Alexandropoulos (Kos), Dionysios Panagiotopoulos (Symi), Hermes Katsaros (Kalymnos), Apollo Papadopoulos (Patmos), Ares Christodoulou (Leros), Poseidon Karagiannis (Karpathos), Perseus Georgiou (Nisyros), Orion Demopoulos (Tilos), and Triton Nikolaou (Lipsi), were all amiable enough but not to a subtle diplomat. The islanders were punch-drunk with Foreign Ministry pressure. Daskalakis claimed to be offering them three options. One of them, a freeze on the status quo, was what they had always wanted. Why did he keep trying to sell them leaseback? Under the circumstances, it is to Daskalakis's credit that he left with a clear impression that at least half of those two whom he spoke accepted the virtues of leaseback. To many, he had seemed aloof and intolerant of what he regarded as the short-sightedness of many Dodecanesers. Yet the younger people, and most of those living at the beach resorts, seemed to acknowledge the need for some long-term stability in their relations with Turkey. The editor of Rodopis, the primary source of news and information for the residents of the Dodecanese islands, Aristidis Katsaros, confirmed this assessment. A future member of the island legislature of Tilos, Theodoros Sotiriou, was harsher: "If anyone other than Daskalakis had tried to sell us a leaseback, then it would have had a chance." Despite such hostile comments, the Foreign Ministry seemed on course.
Hellenic Parliament question time rarely presents Greek politics in the best light. Ministerial answers are skillfully drafted to give as few openings for embarrassing supplementary questions as possible. As a result, most MPs attend question time to witness a performance, not scrutinize the work of the government. Yet the HP has a nose for a plot. When it feels like it's being taken for a ride it can deliver a minister a verbal punishment more savage than any judicial cross-examination. The attack is seldom coherent but it can demoralize a minister, his department, and even a government. As such it constitutes a rudimentary democratic deterrent.
Daskalakis's report back to the HP on his return from Rhodes on December 2 produced just such a savaging. He explained quietly the difficulties caused to the islanders by the continuance of the dispute. He set out his three options and emphasized that "any eventual settlement would have to be endorsed by the islanders and by the Hellenic Parliament." It was exactly the position adopted by ministers for a decade and a half. It wasn't a plot. Nobody listened. Alerted by the Dodecanese Island Committee to the minister's leaseback enthusiasm, MPs gave Daskalakis a battering worse than anything MPs could recall in the course of the HP. The opposition spokesman, Savvas Macrelis, who had sat in the cabinet that approved the Rizos mission, loudly demanded "paramountcy" for the islanders' wishes. One after another, the Dodecanese lobby piled in. Mr. Lavrentis Meleas spoke of "fresh anxieties" created by Daskalakis's visit. The socialist Babis Primides attacked the Foreign Ministry's "shameful schemes....festering for years." Prokopis Ballelis asked curtly if Daskalakis was aware that "for years, and here I speak with some experience, his department has wanted to get rid of this commitment?"
Nothing Daskalakis said in his defense could be heard. Eventually, Ethnos recorded the grim stage direction: "Several Hon. Members rose. Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order." Daskalakis left the chamber pale and trembling. At a meeting of OD committee held shortly thereafter, the mood was "We told you so." Daskalakis acknowledged that the parliamentary reaction was a setback. It was also clear that the islanders were not totally enthusiastic. The meeting agreed to wait and see what the islanders felt formally on the subject. Once again, a cabinet drew back from supplying leadership on the issue at the moment when leadership was most needed. Ironically, when the mayors of all the islands met later to discuss leaseback, they were evenly divided on the question and conveyed this fact to their Dodecanese representatives. Yet, just as political opposition might have begun to accept the need for compromise with Turkey, the opposition generated at Amalias Avenue by past suspicion gained the upper hand.
Might Hippocrates Daskalakis's leaseback have worked? When he met his opposite number, Deger Basar, in Ankara, the latter had impressed upon him the need for "something, anything" to give the junta. Throughout Daskalakis's visit to Rhodes, the Turkish press had heaped odium on the options of condominium and freeze but had scrupulously avoided the subject of leaseback. Privately, Basar had said he would find ninety-nine years hard to accept, but this looked like a negotiating position. Omiros Caleas, on a visit in June 1981, found Ankara "well disposed towards leaseback." It's hard to avoid the conclusion that, had the Greek government the courage of its own minister's convictions at this time, leaseback could have been negotiated between Rhodes and Ankara. The result would almost surely have been no war and little disruption to the islanders' lifestyle.801Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkR9twLnfLL
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Dodecanese Islands politics now followed the HP in a Dutch auction of intransigence. The legislative council formally voted for a freeze on all negotiations other than purely economic ones. After further OD discussion, Daskalakis, in February 1981, traveled to New York accompanied by two Dodecanse mayors, Nestor Zervos (Rhodes), and Eros Alexandropoulos (Kos), to tell Basar that any political solution was off the table. He forlornly suggested that the Turks might talk to the islanders directly; their wishes were now the sole key to any future settlement. Basar's conversation with the council members was later regarded in Rhodes as akin to Satan's temptation of Christ. He offered them the "most pampered region status" with Turkey; they could keep their laws, local government, language, and customs, yet receive roads, schools, and television. Just let him have one word: sovereignty. It was by all accounts a most persuasive performance. Zervos replied that he'd have to report back to his council, but he doubted any response until the new elections the following October.
For all the politicians in New York, this was their last throw. In a year, both Basar and Daskalakis had been relieved of the task of representing their governments on the Dodecanese issue. Zervos and Alexandropoulos likewise departed at elections unusual on their islands for their political intensity. Despite earlier ambivalence, opinion on the islands rapidly hardened behind outright opposition to any deal with Turkey. Local leadership went to an outspoken policeman, Theseus Gianakis (Rhodes), and an engineer named Paris Roussallis (Patmos). In September Daskalakis secured a promotion, to the job of Financial Secretary to the Treasury. Mrs. Karamanlis showed that even an HP debacle was not enough to finish a man when the issue was as trivial as the Dodecanese.
The Foreign Ministry now drifted into the critical phase of the Dodecanese saga with its policy in tatters. As Hippocrates Daskalakis had frankly said when departing for the New York talks, he could only "stall for time." A bid by Shell to explore the Corinth Basin sector of the Hellenic Trench (straddling Dodecanese waters) under a Turkish license was resisted. A formal protest from Turkey at the lack of progress with the talks was received and noted in July 1981. A government firmly tied to the apron strings of the islands' council had no room whatsoever for negotiating maneuvers.
On June 30, shortly before he was moved to the Treasury, Daskalakis had been called back by the Mayor of Rhodes, Nestor Zavros, and the ambassador in Ankara, Sergios Panilis, for a meeting in Athens. He was bravely determined that, despite the reverses in the HP and in New York, the momentum towards a settlement should not be lost. The meeting, attended also by Macrelis and Caleas, reviewed various contingencies against a possible stepping-up of Turkish pressure. This pressure was expected to take three stages: first, renewed protests at the UN; second, an economic squeeze on the islands by withdrawing the air service and denying them fuel; the third stage would be military. The old Dodecanese defense file was taken down and given its first formal review since the 1977 crisis. Drawn up in the late 1960s, it covered procedures for reinforcing the marine garrison and for the dispatch of surface and submarine units as a deterrent to Turkish attack. In the latter case, it was accepted that only a "large task force" capable of engaging the Turkish navy would be suitable, including at least one carrier and assault ship. It was based on the belief that Greece would have a measure of advance warning. The expectation of graduated pressure from Ankara prior to any military action now underlay all Foreign Ministry and intelligence assessments of the Dodecanese crisis up to the moment of invasion.
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The Foreign Ministry was now hit by two decisions taken by other government departments which immeasurably weakened any bargaining position it might've had with Ankara. Despite the protests of Papadopolous and Daskalakis in the spring of 1981, the Defense Ministry again pushed through a plan to withdraw Aegean Guardian from the Aegean at the end of the 1981-82 tour. Papadopolous warned the Defense Minister, Spiro Palaiotis, in a succession of notes that this would be taken as a clear sign of Greece's reduced commitment to the Dodecanese.
The MoD was adamant. Aegean Guardian had for some time featured on the ministry's "List A" of items which, when under acute Treasury pressure, could be cut "without seriously damaging our defense capability." (Lists B and C involved cuts with more savage implications.) In the public spending climate of mid-1981, virtually every item on List A was by definition vulnerable. Aegean Guardian might cost no more than ₯2 million a year, but there it was. When the decision was surreptitiously announced by Mr. Nik Rondilis in the HP on June 30, a Turkish official called Mr. Kleovolous to ask whether this indeed meant that the British were climbing down over the Eastern Mediterranean. Kleovolous despairingly assured him not. Yet the Foreign Ministry now found itself accused of the one gesture of disengagement it had bitterly opposed. Kleovolous continued to protest the decision up to the moment of his resignation.
At the same time, the new Greek Nationality Bill came before the HP sponsored by the Ministry of Interior. It had been intended to clarify the status of Greek nationals whom for reasons of race relations the government did not wish to see migrating to the Pelloponesus, Crete, or Mykonos. The rules had to be drawn up with care (and not a little cynicism), so as not to deny the right of entry to Turks of Greek descent. The method was to admit to full citizenship those with "partial" status, conferred where at least one grandparent had been born in Greece.
This did not cover third- or fourth-generation settlers in border regions such as Macedonia and the Dodecanese. The bill would now deprive them of their most valued security: full Greek citizenship with the right of abode in Greece. Right-wing New Democrats promptly allied themselves with the Labor and Socialist members already opposed to the bill and, on June 2, the government narrowly survived defeat on an amendment to exclude Macedonia from the bill. When the bill came up for the final vote, the Macedonia amendment had mustered enough support to be pushed through against the government by 150 votes to 112, despite a plea by Mr. Rondilis that "if there are to be special cases then every dependent territory will make its special case", mentioning, in particular, the Dodecanese. The Macedonians were saved from the ignominy. On a similar amendment to the Dodecanese, Rondilis's argument prevailed and the amendment was defeated by one vote.
Consistency now demanded that the cabinet either reinstate Macedonia's inclusion in the bill when it returned to the HP or else similarly exclude the Dodecanese (which would leave the major Greek islands, Crete in particular, almost alone). In the event, Hellenic law decided to capitulate on Macedonia but still deny full citizenship to the Dodecanesers, on the argument that half a loaf was better than none. The Macedonians were ecstatic. The 800-odd Dodecanesers who didn't qualify as patrials were dumbstruck. They were to be treated as no different from African refugees from Ethiopia. They had been deserted by precisely the MPs who had declared "Greece will always stand by the Dodecanesers."
These apparently random occurrences in the course of 1981 did not seem random to the Turks. Ambassadorial relations had been resumed in 1980 and the old game of Dodecanese watching from the Acropolis was taken up with renewed fervor. Every subtle variation in Greek policy, however disparate, was plotted on the same graph. Its vertical axis was the Greek commitment to the Eastern Mediterranean, its horizontal axis was time. As 1981 progressed, that graph seemed to be moving steadily down.
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