Suddenly, passions flashed between the two successors of Byzantium - Greece and Turkey. The Greek army is conducting maneuvers near the Turkish border on the Balkan Peninsula; the Greek fleet is engaged in firing practice and has issued a warning to all ships. Turkey is unhappy, but so far has withdrawn its warships from the vicinity of the Greek islands. French President Macron spoke out in support of Greece and called for punishment for Turkey, while German Chancellor Merkel called on the parties to peace and calm.
What's the matter? Against the background of the complicated relationship between the two neighbors, there are two new difficulties. One is that the Turks want to redraw the Mediterranean shelf on the basis of an agreement with the government of Tripoli (Libya) and, accordingly, move Greece aside, which does not suit the Greeks very much. The second difficulty is that the Turks turned the Hagia Sophia Museum into a mosque. Last Friday, 350,000 Turks attended prayer at the new mosque, turning it into the largest demonstration of support for Erdogan's unexpected move. The Greeks protested, so much so that many started talking about the war. Greece and Turkey have fought more than once on lesser occasions.
I contacted fellow journalists from Greece and they told me that although the people would support the government's decisive steps, they do not believe that the Greek government will go that far. Rather, it is an attempt to mobilize Greek society and gain its support at a very difficult time.
The Greeks have real problems: although the country has hardly been hit by the coronavirus, the economy has taken a terrible blow. No tourists came. After ten years of “belt-tightening” imposed by Berlin and Brussels on unemployment in the country, young people leave in search of work. Streams of migrants continue to flow into Greece - there are few Syrians among them, but many Pakistanis, Afghans, Africans. Against this background, Hagia Sophia does not bother the Greeks so much. The beautiful church, like the great Constantinople, was lost 500 years ago, and now it's too late to talk about it.
Hagia Sophia was not built to serve as a museum, the Greeks say, but it became a mosque in 1453. What is the use of remembering! If this incident had happened 40 years ago, everything might have been different, but today the Greeks are much less religious. In addition, Constantinople lost its Orthodox population. Back in 1910, half of Istanbul residents were Orthodox, and now there are only a few thousand in the city of 15 million. It will not be possible to change history now, the Greeks say. There are other problems.
I also contacted my Turkish colleagues. They say the conversion of Hagia Sophia to mosque status took place on the anniversary of the Lausanne Accords, which set Turkey's borders after World War I and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Actually, a change in status is a signal for a revision of Lausanne. In particular, the Turks started talking about the restoration of the caliphate and even found the descendants of the last legitimate sultan and caliph Abdul-Hamid. And on a practical level, they believe that the Lausanne agreements, which gave all the islands near Asia Minor to the Greeks, did not establish that the shelf around the islands should be Greek. And even more so if you conduct an audit of Lausanne. Therefore, the Turks want a more "fair" division of the shelf. This, of course, does not suit the Greeks.
Merkel fears that Europe will lose Turkey as a loyal ally and pressures the Greeks to make concessions. But the Greeks say that if the government in Athens goes to meet the Turks, the people will not approve of them.
Russia is in no hurry to get involved in these showdowns. As the largest Orthodox power, Russia could speak out on St. Sophia, but it limited itself to a restrained statement that, they say, this is an internal matter of Turkey. Considering that in Russia itself there was no great excitement about the transformation of St. Sophia, this is apparently a justified position. St. Sophia is located on the canonical territory of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, which has recently shown hostility to Moscow and went to the recognition of Ukrainian independenceists, so Russia is not in a position to fight for the churches of Constantinople.
In addition, Patriarch Bartholomew himself was extremely restrained about the change in status and did not condemn the Turkish authorities with a word or a half-word. Russia also does not want to run ahead of the locomotive. For her, good relations with Turkey, the guardian of the Straits - the only exit of the Russian fleet to the World Ocean and to the Mediterranean Sea are important.
On the other hand, there is strong sympathy in Russia for Greece, an Orthodox country with which there are many years of cultural ties. So it is convenient for Moscow to sit on the sidelines while blocking extremists' attempts to unleash a conflagration of war in the Eastern Mediterranean.
The United States took a difficult position - it condemned the change in the status of St. Sophia, but approved the agreement between Turkey and Tripoli (Libya) on the shelf. Israel, a serious player in the region, is more likely to support Greece, but the Greeks fear that Israel is more likely to want to brew the conflict between Greece and Turkey, and it will sit on the sidelines while the two sisters grab each other's hair.
The United States and Europe want to maintain and expand their influence in the Eastern Mediterranean. It is easier for them to press on Greece, which was weakened after its enslavement by Brussels, than on Turkey, where Erdogan plays on his own and does not look back at anyone. But it is possible that Greece will not be able to bend as much as its patrons in Brussels and Washington want.
Much depends on developments in Libya. After all, Turkish claims to the oil shelf are based largely on an agreement with the Tripoli government, which is opposed by the alternative Libyan authorities in the east of Libya, behind which is Egypt. Until Tripoli begins an operation to storm Sirte, everything remains in limbo.
Yes, because of the status of St. Sophia, no one will go to war: this is not 1914, and no one has the desire to knock down the crescent moon from its domes. But the story of the mosque church lends additional depth to the disputes over the oil shelf.
The author's point of view may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.