An unpleasant retort to my former professor Mr. Heraclides

Reading the interview of Professor Alexis Heraclides on ThePressProject, I remembered, many years ago, I had been warned, shortly before my interview to enter a postgraduate program at the School of International and European Studies in Panteion:”Do not mention to the committee that you have read Heraclides’ books.” In short, they disliked him.
I had considered it unacceptable and ridiculous, as I still do, after all. I was a student of Heraclides – and a good student in fact – and it was natural that I read his books. The academic war, in which this professor has also participated, however, can not be an alibi for the factual errors and the mental contradictions-acrobatics that characterize his recent interview.

ThePressProject reporters conducted more of a discussion with him rather than a professional interview. That is, it was a relaxed conversation that from the beginning and throughout is dominated by the identification of the journalist with the interviewee. Mr. Heraclides spoke very openly. He believes that Greece is wrong and Turkey is right. So I chose to comment on nine of his positions.

“Turkey is not aggressive. And we have wrongly spent money and procured so many weapons systems, which have thrown out the Greek economy. Turkey is not aggressive. I repeat, it is not “.

We will not go into Turkey’s genocidal past. We will stay remain in our time, by simply mentioning:

• the 46-year occupation of northern Cyprus
  the systematic flights of Turkish fighters not only within the Greek airspace but also over Greek islands
• the designation of Greek (inhabited) islands as “Turkish islands under Greek occupation”, in stark contrast to the Treaty of Lausanne
• the completely arbitrary claim that islands do not have a continental shelf-EEZ
  piratical research and drilling in the Cypriot EEZ
• the invasion and occupation of areas in Syria and Iraq
• the military intervention (in favor of the recognized government and against the recognized Parliament) in the civil war in Libya and the proven close cooperation with ISIS-Jihadists
• What is all this, if not the actions of an aggressive-expansionist state? It takes a very large dose of rationalization to describe Turkey as a “dove”.

2. “Turkey was not like that before. And Greece is also to blame for how Turkey has become, right? “Because Greece always put a stop to it, so that Turkey would  not join the EU. If Turkey had joined the EU under Ozal, we would have no problems today.”

Greece did not say no to Turkey in 1987, it was an official response of the European Commission. And if Greece would have said “yes”, many Europeans, ever since the 1970s did not want Turkey in the EU. Why did Turkey continue to be aggressive in Greece after 1999, when Athens supported Turkey’s accession process? Turkey under Ozal was “recovering” from the dictatorship of Evren (1980). Therefore, from a political point of view, it was impossible for the EU to accept a country with huge human rights and democracy problems. The European Parliament would not have accepted it. It is not Greece’s fault that Turkey has a 10% electoral threshold for a party to be represented in Parliament, or that it imprisons Heraclides’ dissident colleagues, etc. etc.

3. “After ’19 -’22 well… Over there I once said that I am ashamed to say that I am Greek […]. That is, in ’19 -’22 the Greeks did horrible things. “Rape, burning of villages; horrible things and of course the Turks reacted in their own way.”

In 1919-1922 the Greeks did commit acts of violence. Such is war. But, the professor is essentially lying through this truth. The Turkish violence was not a reaction. The “scientific” genocides of Armenians and Greeks had preceded it and were part of the official plan of racial homogenization of the population of Asia Minor. At least the Greeks had a Stergiadis and a Plastiras to reign in wrongdoings. The Turks? However, Mr. Heraclides conceals these facts in order to support his counter-narrative.

4. “The Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) [ie Gray Wolves] is an extreme nationalist party, [but] of course it is not like Golden Dawn, it is a relatively serious party, it is not this vulgarity, let’s say, like this Nazi party ».

MHP leader Bahceli, who is not “vulgar”, justified in 2015 the attack of his followers on Korean tourists by arguing that they were “slant-eyed” and thus his supporters had mistaken them for Chinese. Turkish writer Nasuh Uslu has described the Gray Wolves (MHP Youth) as a well-disciplined paramilitary organization. American academic Joshua Hendrick easily compared the Gray Wolves to the Nazi Schutzstaffel (SS). So this “relatively serious party” – according to Mr. Heraclides – has killed and tortured thousands. After all, this party is acceptable and now co-rules, while Greece’s Golden Dawn was on the political sidelines even when it was represented in Parliament. Comparing Golden Dawn and MHP is like comparing a viper that lives in Greece and one that lives in France, both of which are poisonous.

5. “The unbelievable Israel which is the worst alliance Greece has ever made. I would call it a pariah state. Netanyahu’s Israel today. Who is also a swindler, among other things. “

Mr. Heraclides deals with Israel by adopting gutter characterizations for its prime minister. I may condemn Israel’s policy towards the Palestinians, but this does not mean that democracy does not work in Israel, compared to Turkey. He even falls into a paradigm contradiction. While he teaches about how we alienate the OTHER and give him a negative identity (Turkey), he does exactly the same for Israel. He easily characterizes it as a pariah! For Mr. Heraclides, Israel is an outcast, while Turkey is not! Thus, one who hunts down Kurds is whitewashed, while the other who oppresses Palestinians is demonized.

6. “The rest of the Europeans do not have such a good image of Greece, of how it handles issues, or until recently how it handled them, when it says that the only difference is the continental shelf, which is why they do not support us so much».

Europeans support Greece, or not, based on their interests and this is too elementary for a professor of international relations to bypass. When Byron Theodoropoulos once explained the Greek-Turkish dispute to his Luxembourg counterpart, the latter replied: “Your analysis was perfect.” So the criteria of the Europeans were different. Is it Greece’s fault that Turkey has been creating bilateral problems with its claims since the 1970s?

7. “… But the Greek side has not retreated at all. In other words, if Turkey is stronger, it could have retreated all these years. Greece never relented. It just stays the same “

Mr. Heraclides has revealed himself. He tells us crudely that Greece should have retreated, that is, it should have given up its sovereign rights, because Turkey is stronger! In other words, he blames Greece for not succumbing to the logic of the law of the jungle! Let alone, that in fact Athens has made concessions in many regards.

8. “If we were nice to the Turks, we would have them in our pocket”

What does Mr. Heraclides tell us through this phrase? Essentially to become satellites of Turkey, and be on their good side, that is, to give them something every time, to have the “beast” content and calm! Many Greek governments made friendly overtures towards Ankara (eg Simitis). What did they achieve? Only to fuel Turkey’s expansionist appetite.

9. In 2007 […] a Turkish ambassador at the Turkish Foreign Ministry told me: “Look, casus belli is just an expression. It means that our relations will sour. But that does not mean we want to go to war. And Erdogan has told us that he would like the Parliament, which is the great national assembly, as the Turks call it, to withdraw it, but he does not know if he has the “beans”. If he has the votes “.

The professor is breaking one record after another! He is invoking an informal conversation with a Turkish ambassador and makes this conversation his banner! As for Erdogan, Mr. Heraclides is caught completely unaware, unless he is consciously distorting reality. For many years Erdogan’s party had a comfortable majority in Parliament and if he wanted he would have removed the casus belli. Not only did he not do so, but he emphasizes it at every opportunity. It is not possible for the professor to so naively downplay the official threat of war threatened by a state.

One has to explain to the professor that the problem in the Greek-Turkish conflict was never whether Greek airspace would be six or ten miles, although from 1931 to 1974 Ankara had never complained about the mismatch between territorial waters and airspace. Turkey is an expansionist-revisionist country. Erdogan has repeatedly called for a revision of the Lausanne Treaty.

On the contrary, Greece is a status quo country. If it was aggressive, as Mr. Heraclides believes, then how is it possible to put so much water in its wine in the agreements with Italy and Egypt for the delimitation of the EEZ? What is the Ankara-Tripoli memorandum, which ignores Rhodes, Karpathos, Kassos, and Crete and which has been condemned by everyone on the international stage?

Many believe that Heraclides is of the Rozaki-Dokos line of thought. This is not the case. Mr. Heraclides goes much further than the like-minded Mr. Ioakeimidis. How is it possible for the Greek state to entrust the resolution of conflicts with Turkey to people who are eager to take the point of view of an adversary, if not an enemy? This is not science dear professor, it is an ideological fanaticism that blinds you and even to the extent that it makes me, your former student, wonder where it comes from …