By George Prevelakis — Former Professor of Geopolitics at the Sorbonne, Vice-President of the Board of Directors of Komvos
Addressing the United Nations Security Council, Kyriakos Mitsotakis held up a map of the Eastern Mediterranean as he rejected the Turkish–Libyan memorandum. “Geography cannot be rewritten,” the Prime Minister declared emphatically. Until that particular moment, Greek foreign policy had never invoked geographical arguments.
For years, Turkey has dominated the geographical arena unchallenged, in the “Battle of Maps”[1]. “Blue Homeland” is a term introduced by Admiral Cem Gürdeniz in 2006 and developed by Vice Admiral Cihat Yayci. It is accompanied by a corresponding map and, in parallel, a proposal to rename the Aegean the “Sea of Islands”. China aligns itself with Turkey; it, too, considers itself disadvantaged by the Montego Bay Convention. It advances the same geographical argument: that a state’s maritime space should be proportional to its land territory.
This view perpetuates the old German geopolitical tradition of living space, or Lebensraum. It is not formally part of Turkish policy; nevertheless, it has considerable resonance both within and beyond Turkey. According to the French geographer Jean Gottmann, “the strongest borders are in people’s minds”. Whatever dominates the mind stands a strong chance of becoming reality.
Physical geography cannot be rewritten; that is, the geophysical environment remains essentially unchanged. Political geography, however, is constantly being renegotiated. Alongside military power and diplomacy, maps and scientific or pseudo-scientific geographical arguments are deployed to redefine borders.
Greece’s relevant experience dates back to the beginning of the last century. Greeks, Serbs and Bulgarians promoted competing ethnographic maps, seeking to persuade the Great Powers of their territorial claims, primarily in Macedonia. Eleftherios Venizelos, a politician with a geographical understanding, made effective use of Greek geographical arguments. Subsequently, however, this geographical success faded into a dim historical memory. The relevant expertise and, above all, the theoretical groundwork have all but disappeared. Geography as a discipline has been marginalised.
The Prime Minister’s use of the map finally broke Greece’s geographical silence. This initial gesture does not yet counterbalance Turkey’s geographical arguments and its accompanying cartographic communication tactics. The confrontation with Turkey in the Battle of Maps has only just begun; it certainly did not end with the Prime Minister’s intervention. Greece needs a comprehensive theoretical and cartographic arsenal to respond to Turkey’s already widely disseminated strategy.
The Turkish approach belongs to the old deterministic geographical tradition, according to which the physical characteristics of geographical space determine its political organisation. Turkey thus regards the maritime space of the Aegean as an extension of its continental landmass; Greek sovereignty in the Aegean therefore constitutes a geographical anomaly. In this view, Turkey was forced to leave the islands to Greece because, as circumstances would have it, the Kemalists had no fleet in 1922. This was therefore a contingent error to be corrected.
Geographical determinism is considered outdated. It has, moreover, been discredited as a theoretical foundation of Nazi geopolitics. Contemporary geographical theory, by contrast, places emphasis on cultural factors. Most people in both West and East recognise the coast of Asia Minor and the Aegean islands as part of the Greek world and, by extension, as a cradle of European civilisation. The historical anomaly therefore lies in the de-Hellenisation of Asia Minor, rather than in the Greek character of the Aegean. This argument can be represented cartographically and developed through historical narrative.
“Blue Homeland” is not officially promoted by Turkish state institutions. The Greek perspective must likewise reach international public opinion through unofficial channels—a role that, by definition, belongs to cultural institutions, diaspora organisations and universities.
History, our powerful communication asset, effectively supported Greece’s accession to the European Economic Community without the need for geographical reference. For today’s geopolitical challenges, however, a history detached from geography will not prove equally effective.
[1] See Michel Foucher, Η Μάχη των Χαρτών. Κριτική ανάλυση των αναπαραστάσεων του κόσμου [The Battle of Maps: A Critical Analysis of Representations of the World], Economia Publishing, Athens, 2013. Introduction and adaptation to the Greek context by George Prevelakis.
