Most analyses of Turkey have rightly focused on neo-Ottomanism, the Islamic conservatism of the Erdogan or on Angara’s relations with organisations and networks that cause anxiety in the West and the Middle East.
However, as the international scene goes through a phase of intense volatility and regional crises tend to feed off each other, another dimension emerges that has been less discussed but is particularly revealing: that of the striking similarity of Turkish revisionist strategy with the methodology that China in the South China Sea.
The comparison is not about the size or international power of the two countries. China is a global superpower. Turkey is trying to become a regional power. What is interesting is the similarity in method.
China has not imposed its claims in the South China Sea through a spectacular military operation. It followed a long process of small steps: fishing boats, coast guard, administrative decisions, artificial islands, military installations, official charters, and constant production of legal and historical arguments.
In the international literature, this practice is known as “salami tactics”that is, the strategy of successive small moves that individually do not provoke a decisive response, but cumulatively change the balance of power.
The similaritywith Turkish behavior in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean is striking. Ankara did not start with the “Blue Homeland”. It was preceded by decades of “grey zone” theories, contestations of Greek airspace, violations, overflights, NAVTEX, research missions and diplomatic interventions.
This was followed by the illegal Turcolibian memorandum, the filing of coordinates with the UN and today the attempt to transform the “Blue Homeland” from a political slogan into an official legislative and strategic doctrine of the Turkish state.
If the Chinese “Nine-Dash Line”, as it is called, was the tool with which Beijing attempted to redraw the geography of the South China Sea, the “Blue Homeland” seeks to play a similar role in the Eastern Mediterranean.
In both cases, the issue is not simply a projection of power, but the creation of an alternative framework of “legitimacy” that challenges the provisions of the International Law of the Sea. It is no coincidence, moreover, that at the heart of this strategy are both the Aegean and Cyprus, which remains the most significant obstacle to Turkish maritime sovereignty plans in the Eastern Mediterranean.
Turkey is not only seeking to impose its positions… It is attempting to create the impression that its claims constitute one of the possible interpretations of international law. Just as China has attempted to doin Asia.
But there is another similarity, perhaps the most important. Both Beijing and Ankara base part of their strategy on the belief that their adversaries will hesitate to clash with them. China because of its huge economic and military displacement.
Turkey because of its geographic location, its role in NATO, its immigration and the perception that still prevails in many Western capitals that it is “too important to be punished”. This Western reluctance, which often translates into a policy of appeasement or balancing, allows Ankara to exploit security gaps.
For Greece, the challenge lies in convincing its allies in the US and EU that revisionism is not a bilateral problem, but a systemic threat to the stability of NATO’s southeastern wing and Europe’s energy security.
It is essentially a paradox of geography… Ankara’s very position between Europe, the Middle East, the Caucasus and the Black Sea, which offers it this form of “geopolitical immunity”,is the reason why the West must review its stance. Ankara is politically invested in the doctrine that it is “too important to be punished”. That its geography acts as a strategic shield against the consequences of its actions.
This is the real stakes for Greece. The problem is not just Turkish claims. It is the gradual attempt to transform them into a new normal. The South China Sea experience shows that revisionist powers do not impose their positions when they change the charters. They impose them when they convince others to get used to their existence!
For Athens, then, the “Blue Homeland”is not just another Turkish challenge. It is an attempt to apply a proven revisionist model in the heart of the Eastern Mediterranean. Because the great revisionist powers don’t win when they change the maps… They win when they convince others to see their change as normal.
