On October 28th, Greece celebrates Ochi day – the word means “No”. On that day, in 1940, it is said that Benito Mussolini telephoned Greek prime minister Ioannis Metaxas, asking if Italian troops could occupy Greece. The reply was “No”.
Greece, which had been neutral in the second World War up to that point, was then invaded and overrun by German and Italian armies.
British novelist and poet Lawrence Durrell, who at that time was based in Kalamata, in southern Peloponnese, later recalled: “A word had been uttered, a single small word for which the whole of Europe had waited and waited in vain. It was the word ‘No’ and Greece had uttered it on behalf of all of us. With that small word Greece found her soul.”
He also suggested that the Greek “No” came “at a time when the so-called great powers were all cringing, fawning in the face of the Hitlerian menace”. Many today wonder whether the “great powers” can or will say an effective “No” to the current menaces in Ukraine and the Middle East.
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“No” is not quite as emphatic as it once was. No one shouted “No” when Turkey invaded Cyprus in 1974. It remains in illegal occupation of the north of the island.
Greece has been particularly worried about the situation in Ukraine, not only because of the very historic Greek heritage but also because Odesa (which was largely founded by Greeks in the sixth century) remains a sizeable Greek commercial centre. It has been bombed by Russia in the current war.
Meanwhile Kherson, established as part of the Greek Project which set up Greek communities in Ukraine in the 1780s, has been fought over by Russian and Ukrainian forces and was flooded after Russia destroyed the Kakhovka Dam in 2023.
Nearer to home, despite some feeble protests by Greece, Turkey proceeds with its revisionist Blue Homeland project which, in theory at least, lays claim to large portions of the eastern Mediterranean which are legally part of Greek territory. This includes many islands, large and small, which brought the two countries to the brink of war in 1995. In addition, the Blue Homeland strategy envisions extension of Turkey’s continental shelf and exclusive economic zone (EEZ).
Turkey in 2021 registered “TurkAegean” for trademark registration as a tourism ploy, which Greece saw as a deliberate provocation. The Aegean, originally named for the Greek god Aegeus, father of Theseus, is generally regarded as 100 per cent Hellenic.
Turkey, by using the title TurkAegean, was, in Greece’s view, laying claim to this historic territory.
Earlier this year, following Greek objections, the European Union Intellectual Property Office cancelled it as a trademark, partly on the grounds that it made or implied geographical claims. The trademark was also registered in the US, where it remains active despite Greek legal proceedings.
But Turkey continues to fill pages of newspapers such as the New York Times with seductive proposals which are ironically based on the attractions of sites such as Ephesus, Izmir/Smyrna and Pergamon, which were originally Greek settlements in what was then Asia Minor and is now part of the Turkish state.
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There is much more to this dispute than tourism, however lucrative that market may be. The Blue Homeland strategy is no mere appeal to sentiment. The Turkish claims to an EEZ envisage rights to mineral deposits, and its 2019 pact with Libya for a joint “maritime EEZ” has an implicit dimension which includes the whole island of Cyprus as well as large Greek islands such as Crete and Rhodes and, in effect, all the Greek islands which are close to the Turkish mainland.
This runs counter to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, to which Turkey is not a party. Turkish claims such as this may be lacking in international validity, but so was the invasion of Cyprus.
Activity in 2019-20 by Turkish drill ships inside Greek and Cypriot waters, backed up by military support, has been seen as a deliberate ploy by Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan to – literally – test the waters. So has the Turkish warning last year of a claim to a continental shelf in the region of Chios and Lesvos – two Greek islands which feature predominantly these days in relation to the reception of refugees.
Erdogan’s jibe about his drill ships and military backup – “we could come in the middle of the night” – recalls the 1974 invasion of northern Cyprus, and in that particular case no one shouted “No”.
