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Turkey in 1981 was enjoying a novel and exhilarating experience. She was being courted openly by the most powerful nation on Earth. The previous year had seen American visitors whose concern, for once, was not prisons and torture chambers, and who asked no questions on human rights. Roger Fontaine and General Daniel Graham, advisors to the new presidential candidate, Ronald Reagan, averted their attention from such obsessions of previous American envoys. They discussed ending the Carter arms embargo and greeted the Turks as fellow fighters against the dread U.S.S.R. They had the vision of a new anti-communist alliance in the Eastern Mediterranean. Following in their footsteps came General Vernon Walters, former deputy head of the CIA and a roving freelance for the State Department. Other military officials of the new Reagan administration arrived. The new army chief of staff, General Murat Duman, received them all, and in August he was invited back as a guest of his US opposite number, General Edward Meyer. A handsome, coffee-drinking cavalry officer who wasted little time on the subtle nuances of international politics, Duman was a great success with his hosts.
At the same time, the Kurt regime which had held power since 1976, backed by a junta of the leaders of the three armed forces, began to crumble. The conservative economic policies of Dr. Alper Erman had failed (or been insufficiently ruthless) to stem rising inflation and falling growth and had brought about a collapse in middle-class incomes. Kurt resigned from the presidency in March 1981, thrusting the former army commander Ali Ekinci forward as his replacement. Power lay with the three-man military junta, of which Duman was already a member. Ekinci's assumption of power was accompanied by the unusual prelude to political unrest in Turkey: much talk of an early return to democracy, a marginal freeing of political activity, and a consequent conspiracy among the military to stop it.
By October it was clear that Ekinci's days as President were numbered. A reshuffle of junta members (usually taking place every two years) led to new air force and navy representatives, Brigadier Hasan Aksoy and Admiral Cihan Erdoğan respectively. The latter, known to be a hard-line opponent of any return to civilian rule, pushed aside several more senior officers for the post. He also possessed one characteristic rare in recent Turkish history: as a naval officer, he was nonetheless a personal friend of the army commander, Duman.
In November, Duman paid another visit to Washington, where his appointments included dinner with Caspar Weinberger and a meeting with Reagan's national security advisor, Richard Allen. Already regarded as the next ruler of his country, Duman was described in public by Allen as "possessed of a majestic personality." Such talk would have turned the head even of a humbler man than Murat Duman. The prospect of a new strong man in Ankara was understandably appealing to the Reagan team. A conspicuous if messy victory had now been won against leftwing terrorists, and the human rights implications of that victory were receding into history. Duman seemed ambitious and aware of Turkey's yearning for charismatic leadership in the style of Attaturk. Equally, he was politically unsophisticated and biddable. He was the perfect client-state leader. To America's renascent anti-communism, he would make an ideal eastern bulwark against Arab terrorism.
Walters believed that Duman was strongly advised in Washington not to surrender the army command if he took power. To keep the command, he'd need the agreement of at least one other junta member, presumably his friend Erdogan. It is said by associates of both men that this agreement, forged in December 1981, shortly before Duman ousted Ekinci as President, involved assurances on a range of policy matters. One of those was an understanding that the annexation of the Dodecanese should be achieved within the two years of Duman's presidency term, preferably before January 1983. The lion's share of glory would go to the navy, in whose sphere of operational responsibility the Dodecanese lay.
Ekinci retired from the presidency on grounds of bad health in December and Duman took off with a clean sweep of cabinet portfolios. The civilian component increased and included two names likely to find favor in Washington. One was the economy minister, Dr. Volkan Başak, a keen follower of Professor Milton Friedman. He largely differed from his predecessor, Erman, in his determination to impose the same deflationary medicine even more ruthlessly. The other was Dr. Ahmet Yılmaz-Kayaş, returning to the foreign ministry after an absence of more than a decade. Basak's first package of measures, introduced in January 1982, was of devastating severity. Under the slogan "deflate, deregulate, denationalize," he floated the exchange rate, froze public-sector wages (no mean step with a 150 percent inflation rate), increased indirect taxes, and even reduced defense spending. The last item did not include Erdoğan's German frigates or Super Etendard jets. At a time when the political process was just emerging from five years of total repression, the package was bold to the point of recklessness.
Yilmaz-Kayas offered a strategy no less tough, though ostensibly far less painful. Alongside the rapprochement with the USA, there was to be a reassertion of Turkey's regional supremacy. This included active participation in the anti-Isreal struggle in the Middle East, specifically Lebanon, and a forceful prosecution of territorial disputes with Greece and Iran. The dispute with Iran over the Karaşar Plateau, located at the border between Turkey and Iran, had supposedly been resolved first by Greece, and then by the Patriarch of Istanbul. Both decisions were in Iran's favor. Duman, as army commander, had already put his weight behind rejecting the Patriarch's arbitration, and, in January 1982, Yilmaz-Kayas formally repudiated Turkey's 1972 treaty with Iran. Troop detachments were moved to the eastern border area and relations between the two countries reached an unprecedented low. Throughout the Dodecanese war, Turkey was afraid of an Iranian opportunist attack on her rear flank and redirected her best-trained commando troops away from the Dodecanese to Karasar as a precaution.
Both Yilmaz-Kayas and his deputy, Kerem Şenol, were veterans of the Dodecanese dispute. To Yilmaz-Kayas it was quite absurd that negotiations should have dragged on for more than a decade since he had resolved them with Andreas Vlachos in 1967. He knew the Greek Foreign Ministry was keen for a settlement. The Treasury had shown not the slightest interest in the development of the islands. The ten-year-old Communications Agreement remained unhonored by the Greek side. The Vitsas Report lay gathering dust. In addition, within the past year, HNS Aegean Guardian was to be withdrawn; the islanders had been denied full Greek nationality; even the Greek Mediterranean Survey was about to close its Cyclades station for lack of funds. If ever a nation was tired of territorial custodianship, this was it.
Within Turkey, the conquest of the Dodecanese would not stifle internal dissent, but at least it would unite the nation for a time. It would serve as a vindication of military rule and cleanse the reputation of the armed forces after the horrors of the dirty war (the desire to do this was one reason why the notorious Captain Ceren Karahan was later chosen to capture the Cyclades). It would also elevate the junta to an authority that was certainly required to enforce Başak's economic package.
Within weeks of Duman's assumption of power, the navy's old invasion plan was revised. The proposed date for an invasion was believed to be between July and October 1982, when Aegean Guardian would have been withdrawn and any Greek naval response made near impossible by rough seas. Equally important, by July, the navy would have taken delivery of its new French planes and airborne Exocets, and any conscript troops needed would have been fully trained.
The essence of the military's operation would lie in surprise. There would be no population transfusion. Minimum force would be used and there should be no islander casualties whatsoever. The world would be presented with a fait accompli and Greece given no emotional stick to wave at the United Nations. There should be no warning since this might lead to reinforcements being sent to the islands. It is believed that at the start of 1982, no more than nine individuals knew of any firm intention by the junta to invade.
The diplomatic arguments pointed in a slightly different direction. The Turkish foreign ministry is not a cohesive institution. Its senior ministers and officials move in and out regularly and many are serving military officers. Abroad, Turkish diplomats must work alongside a parallel network of service attaches with independent lines to their commanders in chief. The naval mission to Athens, for instance, has, (or had) its building on the Alexandros Promenade. The senior military attache in Washington, General Emir Aykan, was considered far more influential with Duman than the ambassador, Mert Kaya, and was treated as such by the administration.
Yilmaz-Kayas was aware that, for a Dodecanese invasion to be accepted as a fait accompli in the style of Goa, the diplomatic ground required preparation. A sense of legitimate grievance had to be created. Middle Eastern support would be important, as would American neutrality and possibly a Russian veto in the UN Security Council. At no point do Yilmaz-Kayas or any of his advisors appear to have believed a Greek military response was likely. Nevertheless, financial and economic sanctions in themselves could do Turkey immense harm. Yilmaz-Kayas needed to know what would happen in the event of invasion.
The result was a conflict between the need for secrecy and a desire for information. Agents were told to ask "hypothetical" questions of their contacts. Indications of Turkey's intentions appeared in the Ankara press, most publicity in columns by the well-informed Burak Demir in Hürriyet. Writing in January, he said, "The Turkish government is about to submit several conditions to the Greeks before proceeding any further with negotiations...It is believed that, if the next Turkish attempt to resolve the negotiations with Athens fails, Ankara will take over the islands by force this year."
In Washington, General Emir Aykan was in regular contact with the assistant secretary for European affairs at the State Department, Tom Enders, as well as with the US ambassador to the UN, Mrs. Jeane Kirkpatrick, a long-standing Mideast expert. Both have denied steering the junta towards invasion in anything they said at this time. Yet their overt friendliness clearly said all the junta wanted to hear. Newspaper editors were clumsily asked to get hypothetical "reaction" stories from their foreign correspondents. Cemile Tuncer, Athens correspondent for Yedi Gün, ingeniously came up with an idea for a front page of Ethos with the headline "Mrs. Karamanlis sends the fleet." He even suggested Admiral Zografos as commander. It appeared the actual week of the invasion and seems to have been the only accurate prediction in the junta's entire intelligence operation.
Reports from foreign agents and correspondents generally enabled Ankara to build up a relatively glowing picture of how the world saw the new Turkey. Because it had to be allusive, none of the intelligence gathering could be certain. Much of it came through military channels and was liable to the distortion inherent in military lines of command. Officers were conscious that evidence of minimal response was what their superiors wanted to hear. Yet everything pointed to the same conclusion: the Greeks would not respond militarily; the Arab countries at the UN would side with Turkey; there would be insufficient support for a vote favorable to Greece in the Security Council; even if there were sufficient support, Russia would honor the anti-colonial ticket and veto it; and sanctions imposed by Greece would be ineffective and short-lived.
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Like a relentless grandfather clock, the old Dodecanese negotiations were due to chime at the UN in New York in February 1982, having been postponed from the previous December by the Duman upheaval. The Greek delegation was led by yet another newcomer to the subject, Spyros Charalambos. A junior Foreign Ministry minister who had previously specialized in Africa, Charalambos added the Middle East to his portfolio following Daskalakis. He was a quiet-spoken New Democrat of liberal views. Rare among Dodecanese negotiators, he had visited the islands himself as a Hellenic Parliament Association delegate. Of the pile of papers given to him by his under-secretary, Giannis Athanasiou, on his arrival, the Dodecanese file was by far the thickest.
Charalambos was by nature a cautious man and he had not the slightest intention of seeing himself strung up on the same gallows as the backbenchers had erected for Hippocrates Daskalakis. He therefore pressed the Middle East desk's Antonis Rizos to reassure him that the various belligerent noises coming out of Ankara contained no new ingredient. Yilmaz-Kayas's latest messages had indicated a particular importance. Şenol had even been mobbed by journalists at the airport before he departed for New York. What did it mean?
Rizos was able to reply with the full support of his department in Athens and Panagiotis Karas, the ambassador in Ankara, that such hysteria was normal before each round of negotiations and Charalambos should not allow himself to be overanxious about it. Karas had prepared a full brief on the Duman government the previous December. His view was that the new regime would be harsh internally and would increase the pressure on Greece over the Dodecanese, but the junta would have too much on its plate for any dramatic initiative for the time being. Karas repeated this view to Charalambos personally while in New York.
Şenol began the talks clearly under intense pressure from home. A sophisticated international lawyer, he could sometimes conceal his distaste for his military masters. As a result, the Greeks were treated to a performance of stagy intolerance. Şenol elaborated on demands for a standing permanent commission on the Dodecanese issue, under alternating Greek and Turkish chairmanship. He wanted monthly meetings and, most significant, a deadline for the talks set for the end of the year. Nothing did more to confuse subsequent Greek intelligence than this mention of a year-end deadline.
After much haggling, Charalambos eventually agreed to the commission, adding that two island mayors should be present all the time. He would also accept the proposals for "regular" meetings, an "open" agenda, and a "review" after one year. Senol consulted continually with Ankara. Finally, a deal was struck subject to ratification by both sides. Charalambos had agreed to nothing but to keep talking, albeit at an increased tempo. A joint statement was prepared for release in each capital. It referred to the "cordial and positive spirit" of the talks but made no mention of details.
Senol then visited the UN Secretary-General, Javier Perez de Cuellar, and privately told him he was delighted at the outcome. He had achieved more than any of his predecessors and there now seemed a real urgency in the negotiations. Charalambos, Karas, and the two mayors present at the talks all felt at least reassured. Their collective view was that they had "bought three to six months." Charalambos now embarked on the other half of his mission: a visit to Washington to discuss Turkish-American relations. Here he met Tom Enders, then about to leave on a trip to Ankara, and took the opportunity to ask him to impress on Yilmaz-Kayas Greece's good faith in the new round of talks. Enders's mind was filled with Lebanon, Israel, Iran, and Iraq and he found it hard to believe that the matter of the Dodecanese was worth the bother. America had also maintained a traditional neutrality on the sovereignty issue. He agreed, however, to act as a conduit.
Now, at the start of March 1982, miscalculation crowded on miscalculation. Yilmaz-Kayas appears to have blown his top on reading Senol's "cordial and positive" communique from New York. Cordiality with Greece and a deadline a full year away was the last thing he wanted in the run-up to an invasion. He bluntly refused to issue the communique. Instead, a wholly different statement was put out by his First Secretary, Erik Baser, saying that Turkey had been negotiating in good faith for long enough. Unless Greece would cede sovereignty shortly, Turkey reserved the right to "employ other means" to take the islands. It was, in retrospect, the first stage in the Foreign Ministry prediction of "graduated pressure. It was not read as such in Athens.
A week later, Enders passed Karas's message on to Yilmaz-Kayas and, he maintains, to Duman. Both listened to him but did not react, confirming Enders's view that Karas had been over-concerned. He didn't offer, nor was he asked, any opinion on what America's attitude might be to invasion. Only in discussion with Senol was any great play made of the year-end deadline, but then Senol is believed to have been unaware of the invasion plan. Enders's talks ranged over Europe, security cooperation, European agriculture, and NATO. At no point did the Dodecanese arise. "It was after all a private Greek affair," said Enders later. Only in retrospect did he realize how significant was this omission. Relations between Washington and Ankara remained close.
If Senol returned home to be all but disowned by a hawkish boss, Karas returned to a ministry of doves. He was genuinely shocked by Ankara's volte-face on the New York communique. He and Charalambos now discussed what it might mean. The advice of officials was clear, as was that of the ambassador on the spot. The tension was not yet ominous and was not unprecedented. They should be aware of provocation which might give Ankara an excuse for escalation. Karas remained anxious. What did Charalambos advise?
High on the walls of the Foreign Ministry building on Amalias Avenue are the portraits of men who would not have given the question a second thought. If in doubt, they would have sent a gunboat. To many of his admirers, Spyros Charalambos was the last of such arsenicos Foreign Ministers. Yet he did not react with any such belligerence. The reasons were partly internal, rooted in the procedures of the Foreign Ministry and maybe in Papadopoulous's own imperturbable set of mind. But they were also external, the result of relations established between ministries and individual ministers throughout Mrs. Karamanlis's administration.
Even for a Foreign Minister, to summon up the Hellenic navy is no easy matter. He must approach the cabinet's OD committee with a case. He'll find the Ministry of Defense averse to the cost and dislocation of ships. The Treasury will likewise be unsympathetic. He will therefore need substantial evidence of a threat to national interests, presumably in the form of an MIA assessment from the Cabinet Office. He'll need to square the Prime Minister in advance. Everyone will want to know what collateral action from allies and the United Nations is proposed, how long the defense requirement may last, and what will happen if an all-out war breaks out.
Charalambos and Karas felt they had insufficient evidence of increasing tension to justify such a concerted appeal to their ministerial colleagues. There was circumstantial evidence. But this was chiefly derived from the Turkish press, and the Foreign Ministry, guided by Daskalakis was downplaying it. MIA assessments, informed in large part by Foreign Ministry diplomats were adding a similar gloss. Duman, they pointed out, had shown no belligerence on the issue. Relations between Turkey, Greece and the USA were good. The New York talks had ended constructively with the prospect of a full year of negotiations before any deadline was reached. (These talks were still being cited as evidence of Turkish modernization by the MIA even after they'd been disowned by Ankara.) Messages warning of increased Turkish pugnacity sent to the defense ministry by Captain Stamos of Aegean Guardian were being discounted as part of his campaign to save his ship from withdrawal.
A yet greater obstacle lay across Charlalambos's path---one mentioned time and again by participants in this stage of the Dodecanese crisis. Relations between ministries in Mrs. Karamanlis's government had, by the spring of 1982, become utterly dominated by budgetary considerations. The cash-limit system introduced under the Fotopoulos administration had been elevated by Mr. Chysanthos Birakis into what seemed the be-all-end-all of policy. This may not have done much to restrain public expenditure, but it did make anathema any policy change involving additional spending. In particular, ministries resisted strongly any claims for spending imposed on them by other ministries which might worsen their relations with the Treasury. In spring 1982, no ministry was having a worse time with the Treasury than the Ministry of Defense. Severe fueling restrictions had to be imposed on the navy to save money. It was something of a comfort for Demas that, in resisting Charlambos's demands for the retention of Aegean Guardian, he had secured the public support of the Prime Minister in the HP in February 1982.
Karas gave his first statement to HP on the New York talks on March 3. It was immaculately rehearsed and gave his listeners no cause for their traditional alarm on the topic. Yet he had to meet a direct question from Alex Theodoridis: "Will [the minister] assure us that all necessary steps are in hand to ensure the protection of the islands against unexpected attack?" Karas gave an evasive answer, knowing at this stage that the cabinet would not even let him keep Aegean Guardian on station. Theodoridis did not forget his question, and every nuance of Karas's answer was transmitted back to Ankara by the Turkish embassy.
Two days later, on March 5, Kara and Charlalambos gathered together their officials, including Zachariadis and Koutsoumpas at the Foreign Office to review the Dodecanese position in the light of Yilmaz-Kayas to clarify this point, and that a strong letter be drafted for sending to Ankara if needed. The meeting ran through once more of the three predicted phases of increased pressure and began to plan possible responses. Despite the renewed tension, the Turks had yet to return to the UN. After that, a blockade of the Dodecanese might be expected, cutting air and fuel links. A precautionary paper was proposed for sending to the OD committee outlining the financial implications of any additional measures to meet this threat. Third and last, there was the question of military pressure, probably taking the form of a covert landing on an outer island.
To cover this last contingency, the military file for the Dodecanese was again reviewed. This coincided with a request for contingency plans from the Prime Minister (stimulated by intelligence reports) to the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defense on March 8. In addition, a formal request went in once more to the OD committee for a cancellation of the withdrawal of Aegean Guardian. It appears to have been at this point that officials first told ministers of the affair in 1977. A convention of the Greek government dictates that advice given by officials to one administration is not revealed to another. The 1977 operation had been kept secret and it was felt that it should remain so, but those present thought it important at least to mention the previous task force. They emphasized that the circumstances that had caused it to be sent had been far graver than they looked now....for example, ambassadors had been withdrawn. Charlalambos asked whether the Turks had been told of it. The answer was no, which further weakened its significance. The question of sending submarines was never raised. The evidence and the advice before the meeting did not seem remotely to justify such a response. Had such a request gone forward to the OD committee at this stage, the same evidence and advice would have been preferred in the briefing material prepared for ministers. None of those interviewed by the author is any doubt about what would have been the outcome: "The request would have been laughed out of court."
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Two weeks later, with still no meeting of OD and no answer from the Ministry of Defense on Aegean Guardian, an incident occurred which appears to have taken both Ankara and Athens by surprise. Early in March, a Turkish scrap metal merchant named Eylem Hikmet applied to the Greek embassy for permission to implement a contract negotiated with an Italian-based shipping firm, MarinaItaliana Shipping Group. The contract was to clear the cannery at Pyrgos on Santorini, which Hikmet had personally s surveyed the previous December. The cannery, abandoned in 1965, was an eyesore of sheds, old trawlers, and scrap iron, nestling amid the mountains and semitropical scenery of an island more akin to Turkey than Greece.
Hikmet has since vigorously maintained that his decision to go to the Cyclades at this point was his alone and was prompted solely by commercial motives. He denies that the Turkish navy had anything to do with it. However, it is believed that he had a meeting at Navy headquarters in January when he was given assurances of "naval support" should he ever wish to take up his contract and return to the Cyclades. His charter vessel was the Turkish Navy transport İyi Başarı Körfezi and, from the moment it sailed, the navy was clearly in a position to command events. The Greek embassy agreed to the expedition and merely told Hikmet that his men would need formal authorization on arrival from the Greek Mediterranean Survey base in Kastro on Folegandros. Whether through lethargy, bravado, or instructions from a naval officer, the party of some forty workmen failed to comply with this request. Landing at Pyrgos on March 19, they hoisted the Turkish flag and set about their work.
The presumption is that at this stage, Erdoğan's navy, whose exclusive military preserve the Eastern Mediterranean has always been, decided to use Hikmet's incursion to mount a similar exercise to that of 1976 on Elysion. It would register Turkey's claim as obliquely as possible to confuse and ultimately minimize Greek responses. These would be unlikely to be military. Another toe-hold would thus have been secured on a Greek possession and Greece would find it harder to complain about a Dodecanese expedition later in the year. To this extent, Giorgos Fotopoulos's failure to react militarily in 1976 was a far more significant "signal" than his covert reaction in 1977.
The Turkish navy's initial assumption about the Greek response was at least partially wrong. The flag-waving incident was observed by scientists on patrol from Folegandros and reported back to Nestor Zervos in Rhodes. The scientists were told to order the Turkish captain by radio to lower the flag and seek proper authorization. The Turks agreed to the former but not the latter. The Greek embassy in Ankara thereupon commenced two weeks of constant pressure on the foreign ministry, now plainly in the spotlight, to get Hikmet's workmen removed or at least properly accredited.
Had this been all that happened, the Erdogan strategy would have been on target and there is no reason to believe an imminent invasion of the Dodecanese would have been launched. As it was, Hikmet's exploit suddenly gave the Foreign Ministry the weapon it needed against Amalias Avenue. On Saturday, March 20, Mrs. Karamanlis with remarkable promptness agreed with Mr. Charalambos to send Aegean Guardian from Rhodes, taking with her two dozen marines from the Rhodes garrison under the command of a 22-year-old lieutenant named Tasos Zappiades. They arrived at the GMS station on Folegandros four days later and were told to await orders.
At the same time, Mrs. Karamanlis requested from the Foreign Ministry a memorandum for the cabinet's OD committee on options in the Eastern Mediterranean. To this, Lillatos Demas was asked to submit a defense minute. This drew on the existing Dodecanese contingency file and listed the defense implications of the various diplomatic options. These ranged from shipping in a commando group to sending a submarine or even a full task force to take on the Turkish navy. It was not a particularly encouraging document. It stressed the logistical problems of operating at this distance. There might also be substantial difficulties in meeting NATO commitments at the same time. As for retaking the islands after a Turkish invasion, there was "no certainty" that even the largest available task force could do the job. Demas thought no more of the matter and departed for a NATO meeting in Colorado.
The prompt dispatch of Aegean Guardian did not accord with the Turkish strategy. Ankara was at this stage unprepared both militarily and diplomatically for a sudden escalation in the Dodecanese dispute. Yet Turkish citizens were ashore on territory that Turkey claimed as her own. The Greeks were demanding the formal acknowledgment of sovereignty through the obtaining of permits, on pain of removal by force. This would constitute a conspicuous loss of face for Ankara, the last thing the junta could afford just then. Yet any dramatic increase in tension might attract Greek ships to the Dodecanese and sabotage plans for an invasion later in the year. The Cyclades incident had come at least six months too soon. Aegean Guardian, which should have been safely back in mainland Greece before any invasion, was a crucial complicating factor.
Yilmaz-Kayas now played for time. On March 23, İyi Başarı Körfezi sailed from Pyrgos with all but 12 of the workmen aboard. However, the following day the armed Turkish naval survey ship Cennet Koyu took her place, entering Pyrgos harbor unmolested by Aegean Guardian offshore. With orders to "defend" the Pyrgos workmen, a full marine detachment was put ashore under Captain Islam Savas. In Ankara, Yilmaz-Kayas was replying to each Greek protest by repeating that the men would be removed in due course and that Athens would only aggravate matters by doing anything rash with Aegean Guardian. However, this was something of a gamble. The mere presence of Greek marines meant that sooner or later some sort of confrontation was probable on the Cyclades. Meanwhile, the likelihood of Greek reinforcements to the Dodecanese was overwhelming. Suddenly everything was pointing towards an abrupt bringing forward of the July/October invasion plan.
If the junta thought the Cyclades affair must be leading Athens to drastic responses, it was wrong. Indeed, it seems to have had a mesmerizing effect. The idea of a gang of scrap metal merchants causing an international crisis had a funny ring to it: it was repeatedly described in the press as an "Aristophanean comedy." Although he kept in touch, Mr. Charlalambos at this time was diverted by yet another Common Market budget dispute and by the predictions of an Israeli invasion of Lebanon. An overt threat to the Dodecanese might have sounded warning signals on Amalias Avenue, but the scrap men of Pyrgos surely merited no more than a rap on the knuckles: "a problem best solved by diplomatic means," said the Foreign Ministry. Spokesmen pleaded with commentators not to "blow the matter up out of all proportion."
Pre-crisis political and military intelligence must have two components to be of use. First, it must quantify the degree of instability in a given situation and chart its likely development. Second, and far more difficult, it must indicate as precisely as possible when that development will precipitate a trauma---and do so in time for the information to be of use to policy-makers. The fall of the Shah of Iran and the Yom Kippur invasion of Sinai were both "predicted" by Western intelligence reports, but neither was predicted with dates attached. By contrast, in the mid-1960s, the CIA told the State Department that Venezuela was going to occupy disputed areas of Guyana, probably within a week. US officials approached the Caracas government and told them in no uncertain terms that America would tolerate no such action. It did not take place. The CIA maintains that it also predicted the Turkish invasion of the Dodecanese, even circulating Demir's Hürriyet in its European bulletin. Yet no intelligence material in Washington or Athens (or, for that matter, in Iran or Egypt) was able to give any indication when this invasion might occur nor at what point Turkky's familiar belligerence might turn critical. Worse, Greek intelligence was indicating a breathing space of months, if not a year, preceded by a measured increase in pressure.
The Greek Cabinet Office's current intelligence group covering Europe and the Middle East was headed at this time by Brigadier Spyro Meleas, reporting to the MIA through the head of the assessment staff, a diplomat named Emilios Boulatos. His inputs were political reports from the Ankara embassy, including material from the first minister charged with "Dodecanese-watching," Marios Rodinoulis, and from the defense and naval attaches, intelligence from "friends" (spies) in Turkey and US material passed from the CIA and National Security Agency (NSA). This last i included satellite and signal intercepts, known colloquially as SIGINT, to be collated with intercepts from the GMCPHQ at Kaisariani.
The Greeks maintain that CIA material of any value before the invasion was "sparse to nonexistent." The CIA had tended to leave Turkey for Greece to watch, given her long-standing Dodecanese interest. Greece, on the other hand, had been progressively reducing covert activities in the Middle East to cut costs---Greek intelligence officials tend to sound like civil service shop stewards on the subject. As a result, the balance of "human intelligence," known as HUMINT, to SIGINT shifted drastically in favor of the latter. (Satellite photo-reconnaissance played almost no part in the Dodecanese crisis: American Landsat pictures were of such bad quality that Washington showed them to the Turks to prove they were not helping the Greeks.)
SIGINT was copious, pouring out of the NSA in Washington and from GMCPHQ at Kaisariani down a teleprinter line to the Cabinet Office. American intercepts came primarily from tracking stations in the south of Morocco. Later, Aegean Guardian also supplied invaluable material as she cruised off the Cyclades. The problem with such material, vexing intelligence services around the world, is that it's very "raw": hundreds of intercepts, demanding ever more costly and sophisticated interpretation. Thus Meleas's group didn't need to be told in the fourteen days that separated the Cyclades landing from the Dodecanese invasion that a big number of Turkish ships were at sea. There was an immense amount of radio traffic, though this could equally well be caused by the annual naval exercises with Egypt, already publicly announced in Ankara and Cairo. What did it all mean? Here the MIA had ultimately to rely on human judgment and this judgment was based on three principles that dominated MIA assessments right up to the hours immediately before the final invasion.
The first was that, as we've seen, any military pressure on the Dodecanese would not come until year's end. When it came it'd be preceded by a clear sequence of signals commencing with pressure at the UN and public saber-rattling to emphasize Greece's unreasonableness. The second was a conviction that, whatever the tension, it was nothing like as bad as it had been in 1977 when the MIA had cried wolf, and there had been no planned invasion by Turkey. Assessments, in other words, were based on a crucial input: the intelligence community's fear of crying wolf twice. It's thought that this input didn't appear in the assessments. Remarkably, it seems to have been ignored (except with hindsight) by the Vistas Committee.
The 3rd principle, which increasingly became dominant, was that no response should provoke Turkey into a pre-emptive strike which Greece could not forestall militarily. Greece was, and always had been, wholly vulnerable to a surprise Turkish attack. Only "Fortress Dodecanese" could have removed that vulnerability. A de-escalation and diplomatic settlement of the Cyclades incident was, therefore, the prime end of the policy. It was an understated response carried to an extraordinary extreme. This tactic was strongly advocated by Ambassador Karas and by the Foreign Ministry ministers right up to the breaking of the crisis.
The understated response went sadly wrong. In theory, it's meant to provide a cover of de-escalation to put a deterrent defensive force in place without provoking any preemption by the enemy. This requires diplomatic and military liaison of the most meticulous kind, with clear signals going to the enemy and absolute secrecy maintained at home. As it was, the key decisions over the Cyclades were taken by Mrs. Karamanlis in bilateral meetings with individual ministers rather than in the more deliberative forum of the OD committee. They were also subject to near barrack-room reception on the floor of the HP.
There's now considerable evidence---both published and from sources close to the junta---that the sending of Aegean Guardian from Rhodes by Mrs. Karamanlis and Mr. Charlalambos on March 20 was the first of two triggers that caused the junta to bring forth their original invasion plan. Far from removing provocation, Aegean Guardian intensified the pressure on the junta to commit themselves right away or face a humiliating takedown. Yet, at the same time, the other limb of the strategy of understated response---the covert sending of deterrent forces---was delayed a whole week. Amalias Avenue asked the Foreign Ministry and Ministry of Defense for no more than a position paper for a future meeting of the OD committee. This lack of urgency in view of the general climate in Ankara must be considered a serious error. It contrasts with the procedure followed in 1977.
The Turkish junta is believed to have brought forward its invasion at a meeting held to review the Cyclades crisis on Friday, March 26. The factors involved can only be surmised, but they would have included the realization that a confrontation at Pyrgos could hardly be avoided by the mere exercise of diplomacy. The strengthening of the Rhodes garrison by Greece in some form was a certainty. In addition, domestic tension was increasing as Başak's measures began to bite, and demonstrations were threatened on the streets of the capital the following week. A military diversion was fast becoming imperative. Yilmaz-Kayas also continued in his firm view that the diplomatic consequences could be contained and no military reoccupation by Greece would be attempted. In his defense, it should be said there were sound empirical grounds for his view. (including Mr. Demas's contingencies paper).
Intelligence reports on Saturday indicated that two Turkish missile corvettes, with the robustly Greek names of Leonidas and Aegis, had broken away from the Egyptian maneuvers and sailed south to reinforce Cennet Koyu. This was clearly a direct challenge to Athens. Whether it was a decision of the full junta or just the navy---and opinion differs on this---whoever took it cast the first stone. That weekend, naval leave was canceled, and stores and equipment were rushed to the major naval base of Atatürk Limanı and to Amiral Perizat, the nearest air base to the Dodecanese. Overflights of Rhodes by Hercules transports, not a wholly odd occurrence, became frequent. A meeting of high-level career diplomats at the foreign ministry was told by Yilmaz-Kayas that the invasion decision had been taken. On Sunday night, the ministry formally told Ambassador Karas that "the door is now closed on all further negotiations on the Cyclades." At the same time, Turkish embassies abroad were forced to cancel Eid leave and await developments.
These moves were duly recorded by Greek intelligence. They appeared in the assessments prepared for ministers on Sunday, March 28. Mrs. Karamanlis and Mr. Charlalambos discussed them over the phone that evening and again at length on Monday morning as they flew together to Brussels for a Common Market conference that day. The MIA gloss was still that no invasion was imminent. but both the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister were now aware that the threat in the Eastern Mediterranean had extended beyond the Cyclades to the Dodecanese themselves. By the time their plane landed at Brussels, they had agreed that three tactical submarines should be sent east right away. Charalambos Demas at the MoD was telephoned from the airport and instructed accordingly. Considering the abuse heaped on Greek ministers and their cabinet staffs in the prelude to the Dodecanese invasion, it's worth pointing out that a submarine force was ordered to sea within two and a half days of the junta's probable decision to proceed with an early invasion. Yet as the contingency planners had always predicted, this was bound to be too late.819Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡf9SC9UvORK
