GREECE AND THE GOOSE WITH GOLDEN EGGS

By Angelos Costopoulos
A.Kostopoulos is associated with a law firm in Athena and is a former US Army officer

The Greeks believe that they are in the best plot of the planet. Today with the discovery of healthy quantities of oil in the Aegean Sea and the Mediterranean Sea, this Greek "farm" can also be the most valuable in the world.

It should not be surprising that our neighbor in NATO, Turkey, acts as a great evil wolf, threatening to get what Mr. Erdogan sees as his share of the golden goose eggs in Greece!

The irony is that despite the economic recession of the Homeland, the dysfunction of the left-wing government and its public sector, the disappointment of the military, and the traditional tendency to discard even the best opportunities, we finally somehow understand the Golden Goose.

Yes, the goose is constantly in a Greek henhouse and under the protection of the US fleet in the Gulf of Souda, not to mention almost the entire US military body that was silently transferred to Souda from Turkey's Incirlik Air Base in recent months.

Mr. Erdogan's day-to-day crash threats to redraw the borders of the region, promote thousands of refugees and irregular migrants to Greece and Europe, imprison the Greek soldiers during a recent routine patrol, block the drilling of hydrocarbons in Cyprus, and the worsening of regional tensions in general, requires clear action by the West.

Unfortunately, Mr Erdogan does not realize that this intimidation is not in the interest of his country. Instead of challenging the Greek and Cypriot borders, which are also borders of the European Union, it should promote good neighborhood policies that could potentially lead to favorable trade agreements for the next oil market.

Instead of stirring up the interior of Albania, Bulgaria, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Kosovo, Turkey would benefit better than a good neighborhood policy that would give it a political impetus to its struggle to prevent Kurdish irresponsibility.

Too many theories and pious thoughts, the United States and the European Union have to take decisive steps, as they did in Poland to tackle Russian threats, to ensure that Turkey respects the rule of law. The West's response should make it clear that Turkey's accession to NATO and EU accession are not unquestionable and that there are tangible consequences for Turkey's blatant threats.

Mr. Erdogan should stop acting as a common "cheetah" and revise Turkey's north-Atlantic and European foreign policy.