Читать книгу Greek Military Intelligence and the Crescent - Dr. Panagiotis Dimitrakis - Страница 8

Chapter I Post 1974 Greece

On 15th July 1974, the Greek-Cypriot National Guard and the Greek military in Cyprus staged a coup against the government under President/Archbishop Makarios III. The coup succeeded but Makarios escaped safely. However Turkey was provided with a strategic opportunity to invade the island (on the pretext of an interpretation of the Treaty of 1960 which had established the Cyprus Republic) and to occupy the northern territories in order to ‘protect’ the Turkish population from the new regime. The invasion took place on 20 July 1974 and faced little organized Greek resistance. The Athens Junta hesitated to respond militarily and eventually transferred the power to conservative politicians. Former Prime Minister Constantine Karamanlis, in self-exile in Paris since 1963, returned on the night of 23 July and assumed power during the dramatic days of the Cyprus crisis.

Karamanlis had the difficult task of planning an effective political and military response without the aid of the armed forces. The operational status of the Greek armed forces had been almost nullified by the seven-year Junta. The new Prime Minister opted for United Nations talks but a new Turkish invasion of Cyprus on 14 August 1974, extending the occupied zone, confirmed the hostile intentions against Greece and the Cyprus Republic. The predominantly anti-communist Greek military was also surprised by the new threat posed by a NATO member state in the East. Since the 1940s, the primary threat to Greece came from the communist regimes of Bulgaria, Albania and Yugoslavia.52 Until the invasion of Cyprus in 1974, Greek intelligence had not focused operations and analysis on Turkey. The disputes and clashes in Cyprus since the early 1960s had been considered by the KYP and MoD as ‘Cyprus-only, Greek-Turkish communities affairs’ and caused by the wrong policies of Archbishop Makarios.53 Athens did not respond militarily during the Cyprus conflict as they feared the invasion of Greek possessions in the Aegean.

The return to democracy was a great opportunity for politicians to create new parties, consolidate public opinion and develop ideologies. On 28th September 1974, Karamanlis founded the new right wing party Nea Dimokratia (New Democracy, ND). Nea Dimokratia included the pro-democracy, right wing supporters of the 1960s and followed the pattern of a pro-US, pro-Western Greek foreign policy. However as De Gaulle had done in 1966, Karamanlis declared on 14th August that Greece would exit NATO’s military wing in protest against Brussels’ inaction during the second Turkish invasion. Athens argued that ‘the principal reason was the proven inability of the North Atlantic Alliance to stop Turkey from aggression’.54 All political parties hailed his decision. As Georgios Rallis, the former Secretary for Foreign Affairs in the Karamanlis Cabinet, later explained, by leaving NATO Greece aimed to cause a reaction in the West. However Greek politicians and public opinion had mistakenly overestimated the importance of Greece to NATO’s South East wing. Athens predicted that her brinkmanship would provoke Washington and London to react in favour of Greece to retain her in the NATO alliance. Unfortunately, as Rallis later commented, ‘the results were not the expected ones’. London and Washington did not attempt to deter Turkish aggression in Cyprus.55

By May 1975, British staff officers had assessed the implications of the Greek withdrawal from NATO and concluded that it was Athens and not NATO which faced major military disadvantages. The staff officers commented that ‘there were indications that the Greek government had failed to evaluate all the implications of their decision’. Greece was not capable of defending herself against any offensive from Warsaw Pact nations. Every branch of the Greek armed forces required urgent reorganisation and NATO officers assumed that they could not react quickly enough to aid Greece if necessary. The British strategists assessed that this decision ‘obliged the Greeks to adopt a posture of independent, unassisted, national defence, one which we believe would lack credibility’. The decision to withdraw also inhibited NATO’s ability to help Turkey in times of war and would also ‘seriously weaken the Alliance’s deterrent posture in the Southern region’. However ‘apart from the psychological effect on the Alliance’, British military interests were not directly affected. With reference to the contribution of Greek military intelligence to NATO, the British estimated that the withdrawal would ‘lead to a delay in Alliance reaction to a Warsaw Pact threat, although there are overlapping contributions to intelligence assessments from American intelligence stations in Greece (which may well be allowed to remain) Turkey, Italy and Cyprus which diminish the effect on the Alliance’. In addition, Greece did not show any sign of leaving the Nuclear Planning Group (NPG). US-made tactical nuclear weapons were held as a deterrent by the Greek Army in the event of a Warsaw Pact offensive. However ‘the NPG’s work is so bound up with collective defence generally that it would hardly make sense for a country not in NATO’s Integrated Military Structure to participate in discussions on NATO’s nuclear policy’.56 In political terms and under public pressure, the Greek withdrawal appeared justified. In strategic and operational terms, however it created many serious problems for Greek defence modernisation. The hot political atmosphere of the summer of 1974 in Athens and the lack of faith in Greek officers (who could not be influential in foreign policy after their seven-year Junta) contributed to this controversial decision.

The Greek exit from NATO enabled Turkey to be assigned NATO air defence duties over the Aegean and this challenged all Greek NATO assignments and operational responsibilities. Eventually, by October 1975, Greece had informed Brussels that they were interested in re-entering the NATO military wing. By July 1978 Brussels and Athens had formulated a re-entry framework despite Turkish objections. To the dismay of the Greeks, Turkey argued in favour of ‘a joint (Greek-Turkish) Aegean Sea defence against Warsaw Pact forces’.57

Domestically, the period of smooth political transition which followed the Junta was a result of Karamanlis’s insightful political thinking. He did not embark on mass purges against Junta sympathisers as his main task was to control potential domestic unrest and to avoid a national division among all political ideologies (rightists, centrists, leftists and Junta-sympathisers). He checked the aspirations of Junta sympathisers and members of the royalist groups by employing the retired Lieutenant-General Solon Gikas, a royalist and former member of the pro-Junta IDEA conspiracy organization, as Secretary for Public Order, responsible for the police intelligence services in the first post-junta government. Gikas controlled royalist societies within the armed forces. However Karamanlis received intelligence on many occasions between 1974 and 1978 about potential assassinations and coups in preparations. In late August 1974, he was warned that a coup would be organised on 2nd September and that the conspirators planned to shoot him during a party rally speech in Salonika. Eventually, Karamanlis stayed aboard the warship Canaris anchored off Salonika harbour.

In February 1975, another coup was thwarted by the KYP and MoD. The royalist Army officers planned to mobilise their followers on the evening of 24th February but the security services arrested the majority of the mutineers on time. The armed forces were put on alert pending the arrest of all conspirators. In October 1975, new intelligence on a royalist coup reached Karamanlis and the armed forces were once again placed on alert. By January 1976, the Prime Minister had fresh intelligence about the conspiratorial activities of retired Colonel Michalis Arnautis, a former Aid de Camp of King Constantine II. In October 1976, British intelligence informed the Greek ambassador about the preparations for a coup by royalists in London. British security services confirmed a link between Constantine II and the coup conspirators and that Karamanlis’s life was in danger. In late October, the British ambassador in Athens warned Karamanlis that the coup preparations were intensifying and would be implemented soon. On 18th November, the British Prime Minister James Callaghan personally warned former King Constantine II, who had been residing in London, ‘not to interfere in such [conspiratorial] activities while on British soil’. Constantine denied everything. The royalists abstained from further preparations, but would resume their activities again in 1978. Significantly, Karamanlis avoided publishing intelligence on the coup attempts (even if the evidence proved royalist guilt) because he wanted to avoid giving the impression that democracy was still in jeopardy.58 Between 1974 and1978, the KYP and MoD had feared a successful coup against Karamanlis by royalists and Junta sympathisers from within the Officer Corps as well as left wing terrorism; the terrorist organisation ‘17 November’ had recently assassinated a number of American and Greek officials.59 In a time of perceived threats from Turkey and Bulgaria, Greek intelligence had to secure domestic security against internal conspirators.

Meanwhile, the anti-Junta policies of Karamanlis had been selectively aiming at the political decapitation of the Junta and the royalists. The Junta leaders Colonel Georgios Papadopoulos and Brigadiers Makarezos and Ioanidis were sentenced to death, a punishment later commuted to life imprisonment. Approximately 110 prominent Junta members (mainly from the Greek Military Police) received jail terms for torture. However high ranking PASOK members, such as the future Secretary of Defence retired Colonel Giannis Charalampopoulos, declared that within the Greek armed forces and the Police, ‘Junta conspirators remained and operated against democracy’.60

In December 1974, a referendum decided in favour of a republic. Prime Minister Karamanlis planned a European-centric foreign policy for Greece and modernised the Greek armed forces for ‘adequate deterrence’. However he did not opt for a second war with Turkey over the issue of Cyprus or for an uncontrolled arms race. He intended to avoid the sort of ‘chain reactions’ which had sparked Arab-Israeli wars. As Professor Theodoros Couloumbis argues, Karamanlis assumed that by using a mixture of political, economic and diplomatic (but not military) means against Ankara he could regulate Turkish intentions on Cyprus and on the Aegean Sea disputes.61

Karamanlis’s political opponent was Andreas Papandreou, a US-educated academic, economist and former Cabinet Secretary in the early 1960s who returned from exile to Greece in August 1974 and on 3rd September founded the Pan-Hellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK). Papandreou and his political party, which ‘had been built by him and around him’, increased in mass support.62 In the 1974 elections, PASOK took 13.58% (13 Members of Parliament), in 1977 25.34% (93 Members of Parliament) and eventually, in 1981 won with 48.06% (174 Members of Parliament). Papandreou was able to unite the political left and centre around him with populist and nationalist policy declarations and his oratory skills. During September 1976 in which a Turkish exploration vessel named the Hora was found in the Greek-claimed continental shelf, international waters, Papandreou declared in the Greek Parliament ‘Sink the Hora’. This was not just a phrase but ‘clear political symbolism’ which referred not only to the present Greek-Turkish crisis, but to all future bilateral issues, as Papandreou cited later that year.63 Papandreou directed the blame towards the US for the survival of the seven-year Junta and for not intervening in Cyprus during the summer of 1974. PASOK considerably influenced public opinion, arguing that Washington provided the ‘aggressive’ Turkey with military and political support. PASOK and the two Greek communist parties (legalised by Karamanlis in 1975) were in agreement about the American intervention in Greek politics since the late 1940s and the tragedy of Cyprus. As a result, the anti-American faction of Members of Parliament (who would be assigned future administrative posts in the 1980s), political cadets, trade unionists and public opinion ideologues increased. However the communist parties did not gain more support and gradually during the 1980s, they were isolated to 10-14% of the votes.

By the late 1970s, the competition between PASOK and Nea Dimokratia became more intense and increasingly polarised. The foreign policy advocated by the conservatives argued that Greek interests would be better served by joining the European Economic Community (EEC). However this vision had limited influence on Greek public opinion in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The predominantly anti-imperialist, nationalistic, anti-American, anti-Turkish, anti-EEC PASOK declared the need for ‘national independence and sovereignty’ and the need for ‘change’ in domestic affairs gained social momentum. The domestic confrontation between PASOK and ND in the 1980s was also fuelled by the personalities of their respective leaders. Papandreou and the conservative leader Constantine Mitsotakis had harboured strong animosity since 1965, when Mitsotakis, while serving as a cabinet member, voted against and overthrew the administration of Andrea’s father, Georgios Papandreou, in Parliament.

Meanwhile, a majority of Greek public opinion, the Press, trade unions and politicians (even rightists) were influenced by anti-American attitudes in response to the Cyprus crisis and US support for Turkey after the US Congress arms embargo on Ankara had ended in 1978. In 1979, centre and leftist politicians and the Press hailed the fall of the Shah’s rule in Iran and the emergence of a new anti-American power. However commentators of Greek public opinion and influential politicians failed to understand that the fall of the Shah had forced Washington to depend more on Turkey for maintaining forces, diplomatic leverage and intelligence gathering assets against the USSR in that region. As a result, a large portion of pro-PASOK public opinion, remembering the Junta regime and the invasion of Cyprus, remained nationalistic and anti-American, unable or unwilling to assess the complexities of international relations and the regional, political and military balance of power.64 Eventually, PASOK included two main forces – a publically anti-US, pro-Third World attitude towards a balance of power, foreign policy and national liberation movements and an influential, but discreet, Western European mind.65 Therefore, during the 1980s, when Papandreou followed isolationist policies towards NATO and publically accused the US of supporting Turkey, a large part of public opinion supported him and failed to question the usefulness of this policy. Greece was the only EEC and NATO member to follow an anti-American stance and to cast her veto at the international conferences in pursuit of a seemingly nationalistic and neutral foreign policy.

Most significantly the analysis undertaken by Greek politicians and Army officers was influenced by an unusual type of ‘long-term reverse mirror imaging’. By ‘long-term’, I mean a perception which is ingrained and difficult to alter and the term ‘reverse mirror imaging’ refers to strong democratic feelings and aspirations in Greece after the demise of the Junta. This had an impact on the way Greek officials and politicians saw a world in which, democracies sought peace and the resolution of disputes through legal and diplomatic means, while non-democratic states were aggressive and quick to resort to force. Henceforth, Greek officers and politicians interpreted Turkish foreign and defence policy within this framework. Both argued that the predominant influence of the military in domestic affairs and the inherent lack of democracy proved that Turkey had the potential to be an aggressor.

There are several key factors which affected Greek public perceptions of threat assessment in the late 1970s and 1980s. Karamanlis pursued a deterrent and not a revanchist foreign policy and achieved Greek EEC membership before Papandreou became Prime Minister.66 In the 1970s and 1980s, PASOK was an anti-imperialist, anti-American, anti-Turkish party. Papandreou opted instead for a pragmatic but populist stance in foreign policy. Despite declarations by PASOK in the 1970s against Greece joining the EEC, Papandreou inherited the pro-EEC policies of the conservatives and consequently, within the PASOK’s higher echelons, a small faction of pro-Europeans had formed and these members did not share the nationalist and populist arguments of Papandreou against Turkey. One key pro-Europe PASOK member was Costas Simitis, co-founder of PASOK and the Prime Minister from 1996 to 2004. In the 1980s, Papandreou’s public confrontation with conservative leader Mitsotakis caused conflict and division in Greek society and partisan politics affected every foreign policy issue. However no party argued in public that Turkey did not pose a direct threat to Greece or posed a lesser threat than the one presented by the media.

Papandreou established his authoritarian style of leadership within PASOK. And this often led to clashes with prominent leftist anti-Junta resistance leaders. He succeeded in controlling the ideologues of the political centre(derived from his father’s party ‘Enosi Kentrou’ – Centre Union of the 1960s) and to expel leftists from PASOK (i.e. Trotskysts, Maoists, Marxists, Leninists, Anarchists and members of anti-Junta PAK group who sought an ‘armed revolution’ in Greece).67 However the public image of PASOK remained ‘leftist, progressive and patriotic’. In the 1980s Papandreou followed a similar inner-party practice and any Secretary who sought to increase his influence and gain support within and outside PASOK was dismissed from the party. Professor Dimitrios Charalampis, the Chair of Political Science, Department of Mass Media, Athens University, has argued that Papandreou was ‘the founder, the leader, the strategic mind, the personality that took all the essential decisions’.He was not ‘first among equals’. In contrast to Karamanlis who was the prominent leader and founder of Nea Dimokratia, Papandreou, until his resignation for medical reasons in 1996, ‘was PASOK’. Papandreou retained the legitimate power to overrule decisions, to isolate cadres, to manipulate inner-party processes and to place the blame on individuals who had been assigned to carry out given tasks rather than PASOK policy makers. Moreover, the decision to avoid calling party conferences avoided the publication of disagreements within the party. PASOK was a ‘leader’s party’.68

By the late 1970s, Papandreou believed that he would be elected as the next Prime Minister in the coming October 1981 elections. As a result, PASOK pursued contacts with foreign embassies in Athens and Papandreou opted for a secret meeting in May 1981 between high ranking PASOK official Asimakis Fotilas and State Department, Pentagon and CIA officials in Washington. Fotilas (the future UnderSecretary of Foreign Affairs) was assigned to go in secret to Washington and to ease fears of potential anti-American policies regarding the US bases, NATO and Greek-Turkish-American relations.69 Papandreou nurtured PASOK youth and middle and high ranking trade unionists in an anti-American attitude, yet he remained a realist leader who understood world politics and the status of Greece within NATO and Europe. Consequently, Papandreou had to ‘sell’ the continuation of US bases in Greece and the Greek-Turkish-American contacts scheduled to resume after the October 1981 elections to an anti-American party and public opinion. Surprisingly, the Prime Minister believed that Turkey could be employed by the United States against socialist Greece by staging a crisis; gradually throughout the 1980s and 1990s a perception formed within Greek public opinion and some parts of Greek academia that Turkey aimed to become the loyal US ‘gendarme’ in the region, sidelining Greek influence in the Balkans.

Once elected to the premiership, Papandreou followed moderate policies towards Washington while using highly nationalistic and populist rhetoric to reassure the public and his party lieutenants that he continued to remain intransigent. In effect, Papandreou ‘signalled left and turned right’.70 The tactic of political dazzling without political and diplomatic substance was also used by Giannis Kapses, UnderSecretary for Foreign Affairs and Chief Political Negotiator in the US-Greek talks on US bases in the early 1980s. An Ambassador and close confidant of Kapses, revealed that he had several arguments with the UnderSecretary about the latter’s attempts to create impressions for domestic consumption without the talks having been concluded or diplomats informed.71

The Institutional Development of Greek Intelligence, 1953-1995

In post war Greece, intelligence was always militarised within the foreign affairs and security community. Greek politicians primarily assigned military officers to the intelligence field, while graduates from the armed forces academies and higher officers were preferred to civilian personnel within NIS. After the fall of the Junta in 1974, KYP remained under the authority of the Prime Minister; later it was transferred to the authority of the Home Office and then to the Minister for Public Order. NIS did not have a strong institutional link or a culture of co-operation with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the MoD. Moreover, crisis management decision-making was not fully developed. From 1982, the famous KYSEA (Kyvernitiko Symvoulio Exoterikon kai Amynas - Foreign Affairs and Government Council) was manned by the Prime Minister as the council president and by the secretaries for Defence, Foreign Affairs, Home Affairs, Public Order and Finance. The director of NIS did not have a seat or an official advisory role in KYSEA. However the most serious problem confronted by KYSEA was the lack of support from a developed secretariat and the intelligence bureaucracy. The concept of creating and maintaining a ‘National Security Council’ was not accepted and the Prime Minister was only given a Legal Affairs Office and military and diplomatic advisors. Allegedly during the 1980s Papandreou used KYSEA primarily as a way to legitimise his own decisions.

In May 1953 KYP (Kentriki Ypiresia Pliroforion- Central Intelligence Service) was established by Law 2421/1953. Article 1 declared the foundation of KYP ‘for the national security of the armed forces, public security and order’. Article 2 established the authority of the Prime Minister over the new service; ‘KYP would be put under the direct orders of the president of the Government’. Article 3 outlined the priority assignments; KYP would have to ‘co-ordinate’ all state security agencies in collecting intelligence and under the direction of the Prime Minister KYP would have to develop methods to collect intelligence ‘by its own means’ and to provide assessments and estimates of national security issues. In parallel, KYP would have to ‘enlighten public opinion on national security’ which in effect meant that KYP was also an official propaganda agency of the state.Article 4 established that the Prime Minister was the only one who could appoint the director of KYP. The KYP director ‘could be a capable civilian’. However until 1987, the head of KYP was a military officer, usually an Army brigadier or a lieutenant-general and a NIS placement usually signified the end of a military career. The same article established an inter-ministerial council whereby the KYP director would be assigned to the Presidency. Nonetheless, KYP did not gain predominance or full co-ordination with MoD intelligence services and between the 1950s and the fall of the Junta in 1974, KYP was manned by special forces officers who generally had no training in intelligence analysis and lacked a full understanding of the role of a modern intelligence service. Military intelligence, or as one insider put it, ‘the mere counting of enemy capabilities’, remained a mindset that influenced the way personnel and officers understood the international events and assessed threats. Throughout the 1950s and until the invasion of Cyprus in 1974, officers of the MoD and KYP remained focused on the Bulgarian and ‘internal communist’ threats, ignoring Turkish intentions towards Cyprus and the possible Turkish reaction to the Greek-inspired plans against President Makarios.72

In February 1982 the PASOK administration introduced Law 1415/1982 which put KYP under the direct authority of the Prime Minister. Until 1982, KYP had been under the authority of the Secretary of the Presidency of the Government (Ypourgeio Proedrias tis Kyverniseos). Moreover, Article 1 par. 3e stated that the Prime Minister could assign ‘the parliamentary authorities on KYP issues’ to a Secretary. In effect, Papandreou could avoid answering controversial intelligence questions by sending one of his ministers to attend the parliamentary sessions in his place.

In 1986 the PASOK administration introduced Law 1645/1986. NIS (Ethniki Ypiresia Pliroforion/ National Intelligence Service – previously the KYP) constituted ‘an autonomous civilian service’, remaining under the direct authority of the Prime Minister. According to Article 2, NIS was assigned ‘the collection, processing and dissemination to the component authorities of information pertaining to the country’s national security’. NIS also undertook the tasks of ‘protecting national communications, co-ordinating intelligence collection and disseminating information to all government intelligence services’. Essentially, in time of war, NIS would become the government’s ‘intelligence staff’. The nature of the relationship and links between NIS and MoD would be decided by classified orders. Therefore, scholars cannot document to what extent NIS, MoD and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs shared intelligence in the 1980s and 1990s. However a former head of Turkey and Cyprus Affairs Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs revealed that he was not on the dissemination list of top secret NIS intelligence. Only political figures were entitled to secret intelligence and, in general, the sharing of secret intelligence was only at a political and not at a departmental level.73

Article 6 of Law 1645/1986 established closer co-operation between high ranking intelligence officials by assigning the presidency of the ‘Intelligence Council’ to the NIS director. This included members from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Intelligence Branch of the General Staff and the State Security Directorate of the Police. The council would meet every two months or during a crisis and the NIS director could invite other public officials if necessary. In 1986, UnderSecretary Kapses gave verbal orders to a top diplomat to attend occasional Chiefs of Staff and NIS meetings at the MoD. The diplomat requested the issue of a formal appointment to these meetings but Kapses, who sought to keep the MoD, NIS and Ministry of Foreign Affairs bureaucracies separate, thought it ‘unnecessary’.74

In the mid 1990s, NIS was placed under the authority of the Home Office. The conservative administration of Constantinos Mitsotakis introduced Law 360/1992 which reorganized the personnel structure and training within the NIS. The most important aspect of legislation appeared in Article 3 par. 4c. Accordingly, ‘the NIS director was the Prime Minister’s advisor on issues of his responsibility and informed him on any issue pertaining to the national security of the country’. This article established for the first time a clear intelligence advisory relationship between the NIS director and the head of the administration.

Later, under the authority of Law 395/2001, NIS was transferred to the Ministry of Public Order. The Secretary of Public Order supervised both NIS and State Security; in British government terms this amounted to being assigned MI5, Special Branch and MI6. Law 395/2001 did not replace 1645/1986 as it is considered the legal foundation of the civilian intelligence service.

Having provided key information on the institutional development of NIS, it is necessary to examine the legal framework for decision-making within the government council. The key documents are Laws 660/1977, 1266/1982 and 2292/1995. Law 2292/1995 is the most detailed legal document regarding the responsibilities and assignments of KYSEA and it makes particular reference to the role of the Defence Secretary, the chief of the General Staff and of the chiefs of the Army, Navy and Air Force during a crisis. A close analysis of these three documents reveals that both the NIS director and NIS as an institution are insufficiently integrated into the advisory structure of KYSEA. The MoD and the chiefs are in a powerful position, able to provide intelligence to decision makers. In contrast, the NIS director is not considered of equal rank to the chiefs of the Army, Navy and Air Force Staff. Moreover, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs bureaucracy does not have either position in KYSEA.

In the post-Junta years the Karamanlis administration sought to establish political control over the General Staffs of the Army, Navy and Air Force and aimed to strengthen the operational role of the chief of the National Defence General Staff (GEETHA – Geniko Epitelio Ethnikis Amynas). The need for the centralisation of authority in the armed forces derived from the 1950s and 1960s, in which Junta brigadiers and colonels were able to form loyal groups within the armed forces and KYP and were able to organise the 21 April coup and establish their military rule.75 Karamanlis’s intention was to centralise authority in the armed forces in order to ensure political oversight of the military and avoid internal conflict. However even until the mid 1990s, the staff chiefs retained considerable operational responsibilities in comparison to the chief of GEETHA. This was first addressed by Law 660/1977 which restructured the organization of the MoD and provided the chief of GEETHA with more operational authority. Its main aim was to ensure the flow of intelligence to facilitate rapid decision-making in times of war. As an institutional body GEETHA was considered the military services’ co-ordination hub and the chief of GEETHA installed as the first military advisor to the Secretary of Defence. However the chiefs of the Army, Navy and Air Force retained their advisory roles to the Secretary. The MoD has since admitted that Law 660/1977 did not adequately strengthen the role of the Chief of GEETHA in comparison to the Chiefs of the Army, Navy and Air Force.76

Regarding decision-making at a political level, Law 660/1977 established the ‘National Defence Supreme Council’ (Anotato Symvoulio Ethnikis Amynas) under the presidency of the Prime Minister. The council included the Vice-President of the Administration, the Secretary of Defence, the Secretary of Co-ordination of the administration, the Secretary of Foreign Affairs, the Secretary of Public Order and the Chief of the General Staff. All members had voting rights and the Prime Minister could call on ‘any public sector official’ in order to be provided with information’ (article 2 par. 5); there is no explicit reference to the NIS director. In times of war, the National Defence Supreme Council would be renamed ‘War Council’ and would be the only government body which could declare a state of emergency and mobilise the armed forces (Article 3, par. 1c). Surprisingly, there is no mention of NIS’s supporting role within the Supreme Council. Only Article 5 par. 4c stated that the Defence Secretary ‘in co-ordination with the Secretary for Public Order could set the general directions for homeland defence planning for NIS and for the other Security Services’ (i.e. Police and the Coast Guard). Article 10 par. 4d entitled the Chief of the General Staff to receive ‘all government services intelligence’. Paragraph 5a required the chief (after a relevant Council decision) ‘to exercise full control over NIS and Police intelligence services in times of war or general military mobilisation’. This demonstrates that the Karamanlis administration did not seek to upgrade the institutional status of NIS in information collection and analysis and instead emphasised the roles of the MoD and the chief of General Staff. Law 660/1977 referred to ‘general mobilisation or war’ and not to the arrangements of crisis management.

In February 1982 Andreas Papandreou renamed the Supreme Defence Council, the ‘Foreign Affairs and Defence Council’ (Kyvernitiko Symvoulio Eksoterikon kai Amynas, KYSEA). KYSEA was led by the Prime Minister and consisted of the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, the two MFA Undersecretaries, the Secretary and the Undersecretaries of Defence, the Secretary for the Presidency of the Government and the Secretary for Public Order (Article 11 par.1). The Chief of the National Defence General Staff retained his voting rights and membership according to Law 660/1977 (Article 11, par.6). The Prime Minister ‘could call on anyone from the public service suitable to provide advice for the issues under consideration’ (Article 11 par.2). KYSEA was required to decide ‘on issues of intelligence and public order related to the foreign and defence policy’ (Article 11, par.3a). This is the one and only reference to intelligence issues in Law 1266/1982. Papandreou did not upgrade NIS institutional status in supporting KYSEA decision-making and there was no reference to intelligence structures to deal with crisis management.

In February 1995 the PASOK administration introduced Law 2292/1995. It is the first detailed public document on KYSEA with reference to the special responsibilities of the Defence Secretary, the Chief of the General Staff and the Chiefs of the Army, Navy and Air Force Staff in ‘times of emergency’. Law 2292/1995 retained the provisions on KYSEA membership which were included in Law 1266/1982. KYSEA had the authority to vote on the ‘system of crisis management’ (this is one of the first ever references in a Greek legal document) and ‘to give the Defence Secretary policy directions’ (Article 3 par. 1e). KYSEA also had the authority to formulate ‘the policy and the collection priorities and the exploitation of strategic intelligence related to national defence’ (Article 3 par. 1h). However the document did not include a definition of ‘strategic intelligence’. The Defence Secretary ‘in co-ordination with other secretaries provided general directions for national defence planning of NIS and of other security services’ (Article 5, par.6c).

The Chief of the General Staff is responsible for the ‘overall threat assessment with the contribution of the General Staff and other authorised government agencies’. The Chief of the General Staff is authorised ‘to formulate strategic assessments within the zone of interest of the country’ (Article 11 par. 8e) and organises the ‘joint system of collection, processing and exploitation of military intelligence, issuing directives and identification of intelligence requirements for the authorised government agencies. Their task is to provide support for operational planning’ (Article 11 par .8z). These provisions gave the chief an unprecedented privilege and monopoly on threat assessment and sidelined NIS as an institution. During periods of war, national emergency or ‘in case of imminent threat to territorial integrity’ the KYSEA ‘decides on the jurisdiction of the chief of the National Defence General Staff who is authorised to have direct jurisdiction over NIS and other public security services’ (Article 11 par. 19 a1). Following a decision by KYSEA, article 22 promoted the Chief of the General Staff to a General-in-Chief in times of war, general mobilisation or an ‘imminent threat to the territorial integrity of the country’. This term refers to Greek fears of a possible Turkish threat to the sovereign rights, the air and the sea borders of islands in the Aegean.

The intelligence and crisis management legislation from 1977 to 1995 was characterised by attempts to centralise political control under the Prime Minister, his Secretaries and the command of the armed forces under the Chief of the General Staff. KYP/NIS was sidelined and essentially placed under MoD jurisdiction in times of war or crisis. NIS did not gain an official intelligence role in support of KYSEA and it was not until 1992 that the NIS director was named official ‘intelligence advisor’ to KYSEA. As a Major-General admitted, in the 1980s and 1990s, NIS could not provide special military intelligence to the MoD and to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The poor regard for the performance of NIS in matters of intelligence and espionage lead to the marginalisation of the service with Law 2292/95.77 The Greek legal framework regarding intelligence services and crisis management demonstrates a monocentrist approach to leadership-intelligence relations.78 Throughout the period under examination, NIS/KYP leaders were limited to information gathering and delivery and certainly had no authority to consult with the chief of the General Staff on equal terms or to provide official advice to the cabinet. The politicians assigned issues of intelligence to military officers and therefore, intelligence was regarded as only military information.

Greek-Turkish antagonism and legal arguments

From 1974 until the present day, several geographical areas have dominated the Greek-Turkish disputes. These include the continuation of the Turkish occupation of the north coast of the Republic of Cyprus, the delimitation of the Aegean Sea continental shelf, the sea and air borders within the Aegean, the international aviation responsibilities between the two countries and the NATO assigned operational responsibilities over the Aegean.

In 1996 Turkey declared that ‘some areas’ (i.e. East Aegean islets) had no clear sovereignty status. Ankara did not define the number and the location of these so-called disputed ‘grey zones,’ and this caused Greek frustration and encouraged fresh assessments of Turkey’s seemingly expansionist intentions. The sovereignty dispute over the Imia Aegean islets has been the last major Greek-Turkish crisis until today. To fully understand the nature of the Aegean disputes, it is necessary to review the history of the legal positions of Ankara and Athens.

In May 1974, the Turkish survey ship Chandarli, escorted by 32 warships, conducted seismological surveys over the continental shelf in international waters. Athens protested without using force. The surveyed area in the North Aegean was outside Greek territorial waters around the Greek islands of Lemnos, Mytilini and Chios but within the part of the continental shelf claimed by Greece.

On 6 August 1974, seventeen days after the invasion of Cyprus, Ankara issued NOTAM [Notice to Airmen] 714, requiring all flights in the mid Aegean to report to Turkish authorities. This challenged the air traffic control status quo over the Aegean Sea, as approved by ICAO in the 1950s.79 Greece rejected NOTAM 714 as it directly affected the airspace above her islands and in response issued NOTAM 1157, declaring the entire Aegean Flight Information Region (FIR) a ‘dangerous area’. Considerable Athens FIR violations by Turkish Air Force aircraft occurred on 20, 27 March and on 3-4 April 1975. In April 1981, on the eve of discussions between Turkish and Greek FIR specialists, the Turkish Air Force violated the Athens FIR and the Greek national airspace. Eventually, bilateral discussions failed to reach an agreement.80 The Greek MoD assumed that the NOTAM 714 Aegean delimitation showed Turkish strategic intentions. Turkey simply divided the Aegean at roughly the same locations she intended to share the Aegean Sea continental shelf. The perception of linked issues and disputes (i.e. the Greek belief NOTAM 714 had been linked to the Turkish positions on the continental shelf) had prevailed within the MoD and the echelons of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs since 1974.81

Moreover, Turkey did not accept the claim (incorporated in a declaration in 1931 which had not been challenged until 1974) that Greek airspace extended 10 nautical miles (nm) from each island’s coast. The Greek territorial waters were six miles off the coast and Athens had retained the right to extend them to 12 miles (according to the 1982 Law of the Sea Convention). In the 1980s, 1992 and in 1997 Ankara declared such a future Greek decision a casus belli, a cause for war. Turkey argued that in such a case the Aegean Sea would be turned into a ‘Greek lake,’ and the Turkish fleet would need to pass through Greek territorial waters in order to reach the high seas and the Aegean international sea corridors.82 Athens was irritated by the Turkish declaration pertaining to a threat of war and to the challenge of a legal right granted by the codification of customary International Law. The Greek military took this declaration as an unequivocal message of hostile intentions.83 The Turkish desire to divide the Aegean in half was considered for political reasons, while the Greek argument had been grounded on a legal basis. Turkish generals argued about the need for Turkish lebensraum and a ‘security zone’ in the Aegean while NATO considered the USSR as its primary threat.84 The term lebensraum is rather emotive to Western readers who may not view the Turkish foreign policy through this spectrum. Key Greek politicians and officers often referred to Ankara’s expansionist intentions to revise the Aegean status quo as a ‘lebensraum concept’, especially after the invasion of Cyprus and the casus belli declarations.85

Issues of the air and sea borders were concerned with the dispute over NATO operational command of the Aegean Sea. Until 1974, Athens had retained international airspace control over the Aegean. After the invasion of Cyprus, the Karamanlis administration decided to withdraw Greece from the military wing of the Alliance in protest of NATO’s failure to intervene. Karamanlis’s move was of a political nature but caused unpredicted operational problems for the MoD and Greek diplomacy. After the Greek withdrawal, Turkey sought to be assigned NATO operational control of the Aegean and thus challenge Greek operational rights (not sovereign rights) over the Aegean Sea and airspace. In October 1975, Greece decided to rejoin NATO. However Ankara had exercised a veto, rejecting the pre-1974 command and control status quo which favoured Greece.

Greece would not accept NATO operational control over any part of her territory (land, sea, islands and the sea/land corridors) when the NATO commander was not located at a Greek/NATO base and was not a Greek officer. Athens had previously been involved in a dispute with Brussels regarding the formation of the Alliance air headquarters because NATO sought to establish them first and then to decide on their operational responsibilities. Since 1970, the Americans had planned to establish a ‘NATO task force concept’ with no rigid operational sections for the local headquarters and promoting a ‘commanding flexibility’ during a future war with Warsaw Pact forces. However the Greek military understood that should this concept be implemented, Turkey would have influence over the defence of Greek sovereign territories.86

Greece and Turkey, in particular, strongly disagreed about the operational rights over the island of Lemnos (Northern Aegean, Greece). In 1977, the upgrading of radar capabilities at a Lemnos base was discussed at NATO level. Initially, the upgrade was considered a financial issue, but later became a military one because NATO planners sought to undertake military exercises around the area. Since the mid 1960s, Turkey had attempted to veto NATO exercises in the Aegean islands. At first, this did not cause concern to Athens because there was no challenge to Greek sovereign rights and because no oil deposits had been discovered in the seabed. Eventually, after the invasion of Cyprus, Athens began to interpret all Turkish actions as suspicious. In 1980, after three years of discussions, Joseph Luns, the Secretary General of NATO, rejected Greece’s request for financial support in the upgrade of the Lemnos radar. Contrary to Turkish arguments, Greece reiterated that the Montreux Treaty (1936) substituted the relevant article in the Lausanne Treaty (1923) regarding the militarisation of the Eastern Aegean islands for self-defence. Therefore, Athens retained the right to have defence installations there and thus receive financial support from NATO.87

On 2nd November 1978, NATO’s legal service accepted the Greek argument on the militarisation of Lemnos as the sovereign right of self-defence. Luns did not accept this advice and created the impression that he favoured the Turkish argument that the arming of Lemnos violated the 1923 Lausanne Treaty. Six years later, in 1984, Luns sent a letter to the president of the NATO Military Committee. His reference to the Lemnos issue was explicit and caused a strong Greek reaction. Luns wrote that ‘the Lemnos problem was a legal-political dispute between two member states. The planners of military exercises shall avoid incorporating Lemnos into NATO exercises’. Eventually, Athens decided against participating in the NATO exercises which did not incorporate Lemnos – where Greek, not NATO funds, maintained the defence installations.88

The former Chief of National Defence General Staff. Air Marshal Nikos Koures, claimed that the US did not approve of zones of operational defence responsibility over the Aegean. Athens did not consider the issue of operational control as operational/technical, but as political. American proposals for a ‘negotiated solution’ were viewed by Greece as a challenge to the existing international rules and status quo over the Aegean and as encouraging Turkish-Greek ‘dialogue’ under the auspices of Washington.89 Greece considered the NATO corridors of power as a ‘battlefield’ where Athens was on the ‘defence’ and Ankara, with ‘the patient strategy of the Middle East culture’, was attempting to manipulate the Alliance policy in favour of Turkish interests. Ankara sought to link the Aegean Sea disputes (FIR, continental shelf, islands demilitarisation, NATO command and control) because the Turkish military intended to alter the status quo in the Aegean.90

In January 1975 Greece proposed that the International Court of Justice (ICJ) should resolve the delimitation of the Aegean continental shelf. Initially, the Turkish Prime Minister Sadi Irmak accepted this offer but pressure from the diplomatic establishment and the opposition leader, former Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit, urged him to withdraw his acceptance. When Suleyman Demirel took the Premiership on 6th April 1975, he stated that the dispute could only be resolved through a negotiated settlement. Turkey claimed that the Aegean was a special case and it would be more appropriate to proceed with bilateral discussions rather than seek arbitration through the ICJ.

In April 1976, Greece proposed the signing of a non-aggression pact. On 20th May, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs learned that Turkey was against such a pact and this caused worry about Turkey’s real intentions. As stated earlier, in public statements Ankara raised casus belli on the possibility of extending the Greek territorial sea to 12 nm and avoided addressing the issue of a ‘Greek-Turkish Non-aggression Pact’. In a message to Karamanlis, Prime Minister Demirel argued that a ‘non-aggression pact should come as the culmination of efforts to solve the Greek-Turkish problems peacefully’.91

Scientific research would soon become the pretext for a military standoff. On 29th July 1976, the Turkish research vessel, the Hora (or Sismik I), was dispatched to the Aegean to explore areas of the continental shelf claimed by Greece. Turkey maintained a low military profile with only one warship accompanying the Hora but the earlier (in March 1976) statement of the Turkish Secretary for Power and National Resources alarmed Athens creating the impression of a direct intent to challenge Greek sovereignty. The Secretary claimed that ‘the first thing is to establish our sovereignty rights in the Aegean in a way to leave no room for doubt…sovereignty rights are safeguarded by carrying out our seismic surveys’.92

Greece, despite the highly nationalistic tones of opposition leader and future Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou, did not react militarily; only discreet aerial and naval surveillance took place around the vessel. The latest research in de-classified files of the US State Department revealed that Washington was afraid of a Greek overreaction to the Turkish initiative; also the military threat to Greece posed by the Hora and the escorting ship was deemed low enough not to be an extensive files’ reference.93 The Hora reached the Greek-claimed continental shelf on 5th, 7th and 8th August making Athens fear that a precedent could be set. Karamanlis opted for diplomat’s contacts with the EEC and Turkey and abstained from raising the stakes, citing that Turkey had violated Greek sovereign rights. On 8th August Athens proceeded to an official demarche to Ankara. The Turks denied any violation of international law.94 Karamanlis and the MoD staff officers had grasped that the mere dispatch of a research vessel should not be dealt with militarily, since the escorting ship did not constitute a direct military threat. On the other side of the Aegean, the Turkish military assumed that so long as no one touched the Hora in her brief voyage, they should also abstain from any military adventurism; thus the posture of the Turkish military was deemed low. Ankara protested the alleged harassment of Hora on 11th August, warning that ‘the responsibility of any undesirable incident that might occur as a result of such provocative action will lie with Greece’. Athens publicly raised the stakes making known of ‘exceptional military measures’ with the deployment of warship near the sea sectors Hora was moving. A ‘qualified source’ even spoke of ‘Greece... on a war footing’.95 Beyond politicians’ statements, media speculation in Athens and Ankara at tactical level the situation remained calm and restraint ruled.

Thus, we understand that the criteria for military intelligence threat assessment (as presented in the introductory chapter) were not fulfilled by the Hora mission. A research mission that may have aimed to set a precedent (or just provoke a military initiative that could lead to the escalation of the crisis) should not be dealt with a military response (we shall keep this in mind while assessing the 1987 and 1996 Greek-Turkish crises).

In response to the Greek request for a UN Security Council meeting, Ankara declared that she had not violated Greek sovereign rights in any way since a settlement had not been agreed upon. The main Turkish position on the matter was that the continental shelf was ‘a geological prolongation’ of Anatolia and that each island did not have a continental shelf of its own. Greece rebuffed the argument and claimed that each island was entitled to a continental shelf. After the ambiguous Security Council Resolution 395, Athens sought the help of the International Court of Justice, requesting that the Court define the shelf delimitation and The Hague Judiciary ‘grant interim measures of protection from acts that could prejudice the outcome’.96 The granting of exploration licenses to oil companies by Turkey was deemed an act of ‘irreparable prejudice’ against Greek rights. However the ICJ did not agree and doubted whether the Court could exercise jurisdiction over the dispute without the expressed acceptance of both parties. Athens claimed that Turkey had in fact expressed jurisdictional acceptance, referring to the Agreement for Pacific Settlement of Disputes (1928) which Greece and Turkey had both signed and to the interpretation of a joint communiqué by the Greek and Turkish Prime Minister’s on 31 May 1975.97 Turkey replied that Athens and Ankara had not specified the Aegean Sea disputes, with the exception of the continental shelf, or the merits of an ICJ jurisdiction. According to Ankara, the fact that both states agreed to discuss the Aegean issues at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs specialist meetings, indicated that both parties sought a ‘political’ and not a ‘legal’ resolution to the dispute.98

After the Hora crisis in 1976, extensive Turkish and Greek diplomatic efforts resulted in the signing of a secret agreement in Bern, Switzerland on 11th November 1976. Athens and Ankara accepted a 10-article Procès Verbal which provided a framework for the settlement of the continental shelf dispute: Thus, ‘both parties undertook the obligation of avoiding any initiative or act in relation to the continental shelf, that could undermine the negotiations (Art. 6); both parties undertook the obligation to avoid any initiative or act that could downgrade the authority of the other party’ (Art.7).99 Finally in January 1979, the ICJ announced that The Hague did not have jurisdiction over the Aegean Sea continental shelf, although, the Court did not accept the Turkish request to remove the continental shelf issue from its case list altogether.100

The legal arguments and policy positions of Greece and Turkey included hints of strategic intentions to take dynamic measures or to go to war over the disputes in question. Turkey’s argument is based on political merit and Greece’s on legal merit, influencing perceptions of threat assessment. Moreover, the invasion of the Cyprus Republic and the continuation of the occupation, the Turkish refusal to sign a non-aggression pact, Turkey’s ‘casus belli’ declarations and the post-1974 Turkish challenges to the FIR arrangements, established the perception amongst the Greek foreign affairs and defence establishment that Turkey harboured long-term aggressive intentions and showed bad faith.101 Turkish and Greek political and legal arguments have affected the way political leaders, officers and diplomats interpret each other’s decisions and policies. The legal-political arguments and positions on the Aegean Sea dispute created distinct analytical ‘lenses’. Impressions of what was ‘lawful and unlawful’, ‘revisionist and pro-status quo’ affected Greek estimates. For example, the Turkish refusal to submit the continental shelf issue to the ICJ caused anxiety within the Greek government because the perceived weakness in the Turkish argument has indicated an intention to manipulate the dispute through political arbitration or even coercion.

A former Major-General and a law graduate argues that the legal disputes over the Aegean could not have led to a serious crises or bilateral confrontation unless there was a clear three-phase Turkish plan against Greece. He estimates that the first phase of the long-term Turkish strategy in the Aegean incorporates the ‘weakening’ of the Athens FIR responsibilities, by daily Turkish Air Force challenges and intrusions. The second phase involves the division of the Athens and Constantinople FIR in the middle of the Aegean and the third phase the dividing of the sea roughly in accordance with the FIR partitioning. Thus the Greek Eastern Aegean islands would be isolated from mainland Greece and almost placed under Turkish FIR operational responsibilities.102 However Admiral Antonios Antoniadis, the Chief of the Navy General Staff in 2002-2005, strongly dissented with this assessment. He made it clear that throughout the 1980s and 1990s he could not indentify the Turkish threat to Greece and claimed that the FIR dispute and the Imia islets crisis showed just the potential for small-scale hot incidents and not the long-term hostility of Turkey against Greece. He argued that sectors of the Athens FIR that did not correspond to national airspace were not Greek sovereignty areas and should not be treated as such. Antoniadis was clear enough in arguing that for three years he served as a military representative in NATO, for five years as head of the Directorate of Defence Policy at the National Defence General Staff, and later as Vice-Chief of the Defence General Staff and as Chief of the Navy General Staff; but ‘he could not indentify the threat’. He concluded that since for so long he could not see the threat there had to be ‘a gap on how this threat had been defined’.103 Turkey seemed challenging the Aegean status quo (i.e. the FIR and the continental shelf areas claimed by Greece) not because of expansionist strategy; according to Antoniadis, Ankara implement ‘military diplomacy’ just to test Greek politico-military reactions and assumed that Greek legal arguments had not be as strong as presented by Athens.104

A former NIS director warns that when studying the post-1974 Greek-Turkish relations and disputes over the Aegean, we should pay special attention to the chain reactions caused by the decisions, declarations and actions of Turkish and Greek diplomacy. By identifying which action caused which Greek or Turkish reaction, we may be able to fully define the real threat Greece faced in the 1980s and 1990.105 This book shows that Greece was not afraid of a Turkish invasion or military adventurism. Turkish politicians projected their national interests in the Aegean and created the impression that Ankara aimed to overrule the 1923 Lausanne Treaty, using force if necessary. However the majority of Turkish generals were unwilling to follow the ultra-nationalistic stance taken by politicians against Greece and engage in military adventurism.