The West's Ragged Edge

"There are problems within the alliance," declared Turkish Premier Buelent Ecevit, the honorary president of NATO. His audience consisted of the allied heads of government who gathered for a summit-conference dinner in the White House Rose Garden last week (see NATION). Indeed, there are problems, and none is more immediately troublesome to NATO strategists than the four-year-old rift between Ecevit's own country and neighboring Greece. Reflecting the ragged edge of the alliance's southeastern flank, NATO forces recently completed a maneuver code-named Dawn Patrol. Both Greek and Turkish warships participated--but never in the same waters.

At the heart of the Greco-Turkish diplomatic impasse is Cyprus. After a 1974 coup inspired by Athens' ruling junta against the late President Archbishop Makarios, Turkey--using U.S.-supplied arms--invaded the island to protect the minority of 120,000 Turkish Cypriots. The Turkish forces, however, then proceeded to partition Cyprus. They occupied 40% of the island, centered on the industrialized north, where virtually all Turkish Cypriots now live. Nearly 200,000 Greek Cypriots were forced to flee, joining their 320,000 ethnic brethren in the south. Blaming the U.S. for supporting the hated junta, which collapsed after the Cyprus coup, and for failing to halt the Turkish invasion, Greece's Constantine Caramanlis severed his country's military connection with NATO.

A strongly pro-Greek U.S. Congress then imposed an arms embargo on Turkey over the objections of Gerald Ford. Turkey, in turn, reacted by shutting down 26 American military installations.

Relations between Greece and Turkey were further strained by a jurisdictional dispute in the Aegean Sea. Ever since oil was discovered off Thassos in 1971,* Greece has insisted that each of the 3,000 Greek islands in the sea has its own continental shelf, making the Aegean an exclusively Greek preserve. The Turks claim that the continental shelf of the Anatolian mainland bestows about half of the Aegean on Turkey. Two years ago, the countries came to the brink of war after Turkey sent an oil-exploration vessel around the area to establish Turkish rights. Meanwhile, both countries still maintain troops in a state of near-combat readiness around the disputed waters.

The Carter Administration favors more sympathy toward Turkey, which shares a 370-mile border with the Soviet Union. Turkey also controls the Bosporus and the Dardanelles, strategic straits that provide access to the Mediterranean for Russia's powerful Black Sea fleet. Moreover, Turkey's entire 500,000-strong armed forces have been seriously weakened by the arms embargo; the effectiveness of its air force has declined by 50%. Says Secretary of State Cyrus Vance: "Turkey supplies more ground forces to NATO than any other na tion. If Turkey is to continue to play its NATO role, our relationship must be revitalized." Another U.S. official puts it more graphically: "The central question is: Why are we shooting ourselves in the foot?"

In case Congress did not get that message, Premier Ecevit was even more blunt last week. Saying that he felt "no threat" from the Soviet Union, Ecevit announced that he would visit Moscow later this month to sign a friendship agreement. "It's an increasingly smaller world," he told TIME State Department Correspondent Christopher Ogden. "It's natural there should be closer cooperation between countries of different alliances."

No one worries seriously about Ecevit hopping into the Soviet camp. For one thing, Turkey's conservative military chiefs--behind-the-throne powers who carefully monitor the country's civilian governments--are considered to be staunchly opposed to such an idea. But some NATO analysts fear that continued neglect of Turkish needs could drive the country toward a more neutral posture. They also note that prior to his departure for the U.S. Ecevit received a precedent-shattering visit from Soviet Chief of Staff Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov.

In the view of top State Department officials, there is another reason for being nicer to Turkey: the Turks seem more flexible than the Greeks on the Cyprus dispute. In April the Turks submitted to U.N. Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim a 34-page outline of proposals for settling the future of the island. In essence, the Turkish plan calls for a "bicommunal, bizonal" federal government for Cyprus with two legislative assemblies dealing separately with the domestic affairs of their respective populations, and jointly with external affairs and defense. In addition, there would be two Presidents, one Turkish and one Greek, who would alternate as Cyprus' ceremonial chief of state every two years. Turks have also offered to surrender about 5% of the 1,375 sq. mi. occupied during the invasion, to reopen the airport at Nicosia (the island's capital) and to allow as many as 30,000 Greek Cypriot refugees to return to the Turkish-held city of Famagusta.

Both Premier Caramanlis and Cyprus President Spyros Kyprianou have rejected the Turkish proposals as a form of de facto partition of the island. Their counterproposal demands more limited Turkish-Cypriot autonomy, a guaranteed return to their homes for the majority of Greek-Cypriot refugees, and withdrawal of 29,000 Turkish troops still on the island.

Caramanlis has been carrying on his own form of pressure diplomacy. The keystone of the Greek Premier's foreign policy is to gain entry for Greece into the European Community. His reasons, however, have as much to do with politics as they do with economics. Says a Caramanlis aide: "Once in, we count on the European Community to back us in our disputes with Turkey." Ecevit is aware of that ploy. After the community's Foreign Ministers met last month with Ecevit, they agreed in principle to soothe Turkish fears of being isolated by Caramanlis.

In all the recent maneuvering, there has been at least one sign of hope. Meeting each other in Washington's Blair House before the NATO summit, Ecevit and Caramanlis agreed to pursue next month a "dialogue" concerning their differences. The rendezvous will continue an initiative launched in March, when the two heads of government met for the first time, in Montreux, Switzerland. A meeting that had been scheduled for April fell apart when the Carter Administration declared its support for lifting the arms embargo against Turkey. While the chasm between Ecevit and Caramanlis remains wide, it is heartening that they are once again willing to speak across it.

*Experts have since declared Thassos oil deposits to be of low quality and hardly worth exploiting.

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