Turkey rapprochement sparks rift in Greece’s ruling party

ATHENS — A dispute over how far Greece should go in rebuilding ties with its archenemy Turkey is exposing major fault lines in the ruling party in Athens.
Despite both countries being in NATO, political tensions and military brinkmanship between Greece and Turkey are a persistent threat to security in the Eastern Mediterranean, so Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ recent attempts to establish a rapprochement with Ankara are being closely watched in diplomatic circles.
As the two governments made tentative attempts to rebuild bridges over the past 16 months, Mitsotakis has met some of the sternest criticism from within the more nationalist ranks of his own conservative New Democracy party.
Those tensions came to a head Nov. 16 when Mitsotakis ousted one of his predecessors, Antonis Samaras, from the party.
Samaras had become one of the leading critics of diplomacy with Ankara, accusing Mitsotakis of engaging in “frivolities” with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
In an interview with To Vima newspaper, Samaras accused the government of following a policy of appeasement and called on Mitsotakis to oust Foreign Minister George Gerapetritis for allegedly giving in to Turkish demands in ongoing bilateral talks.
“Arrogance and loss of nerve explain Mitsotakis’ move,” Samaras said. “Cut off from the party base, he is leading a party that scarcely resembles New Democracy.”
Government spokesman Pavlos Marinakis accused Samaras of spreading “fake news.”
“[He] did not just express opinions. He expressed his complete disagreement with all governing policies,” Marinakis said.
Athens and Ankara have been at odds for decades over a number of topics such as Cyprus, maritime boundaries and overlapping claims to the continental shelf. The countries’ fighter jets have engaged in high-risk games of brinkmanship over the Aegean sea.
The two came to the verge of war in 1987 and 1996; in the summer of 2020, meanwhile, a dispute over drilling rights pushed tensions to another alarming high.
The diplomatic breakthrough came in February 2023 when Greece’s prompt pledge of support after devastating earthquakes in Turkey created a the backdrop for a diplomatic reset.
Over the past 18 months, Mitsotakis and Erdoğan have met six times. During a meeting last December in Athens they signed more than a dozen bilateral cooperation deals.
Foreign Ministers George Gerapetritis and Hakan Fidan met in Athens earlier this month. While it became clear a breakthrough was not imminent, they agreed to seek ways to prevent spats from escalating dangerously. Gerapetritis and Fidan will meet again in the coming weeks, while Erdoğan and Mitsotakis will meet in early 2025.
The new diplomatic path has not played well with Samaras, a hardline conservative who served as prime minister from 2012 to 2015. He has always had a very difficult relationship with Mitsotakis, challenging his policies as being too centrist.
One recent flashpoint was legislation that legalized same-sex marriage, voted through last February. A significant proportion of the ruling MPs didn’t support the law; the most prominent opponent was Samaras, who argued that “same-sex marriage does not constitute a human right.”
While New Democracy achieved a resounding victory in June 2023 national elections, it significantly underperformed a year later in the European election, with polls showing it wouldn’t be able to form a majority government if elections were held today.
Given those declining fortunes, Samaras has teamed up with another ex-prime minister, Kostas Karamanlis, to criticize Mitsotakis. While Karamanlis is markedly milder in tone, both are proving determined critics of both Mitsotakis’ ideological direction and his policy on Turkey.
“The expulsion of Samaras was a bold step by Mitsotakis, signaling that intra-party dissent must remain within certain limits and that his grip on New Democracy is solid, allowing him to confront a senior party figure such as the former PM,” said Wolfango Piccoli, co-founder of risk analysis company Teneo.
Piccoli added that Misotakis’ challenge will now be “to avoid being torn between his innate liberal stance and the need to appease ND’s right-wing faction, which has been emboldened by Donald Trump’s reelection.”
Loukas Tsoukalis, professor at Sciences Po, Paris and president of Greece’s ELIAMEP think tank, said it made sense to try to tackle the core strategic disputes between Greece and Turkey, and condemned attempts to score political points off the rapprochement.
“The fact that there are no airspace violations and no warships against each other is a huge success and a great economic benefit. But you have to have substantive discussions. You can’t keep things under the rug indefinitely,” he said.
“I don’t think the majority of Greeks are opposed to a serious dialogue with Turkey that may one day lead to some compromises,” he added. “In Greece, there is a minority that has turned patriotism into a profession and is making a lot of noise, while those on the other side are afraid to take a public stand.”