Mitsotakis and the March of Shame – When Erdoğan Dresses Diplomacy in Blood

source – geopolitico.gr

The fact that Kyriakos Mitsotakis did not react, did not protest, and did not demand an explanation for what the author calls this act of “political pornography” demonstrates, in the author’s view, the extent of his conciliatory stance.

The image of a prime minister crossing the threshold of Erdoğan’s presidential palace is, in itself, a weighty one.

For this to happen while the strains of “Ceddin Deden” were playing—a military march composed by Muhtar Pasha for the army of Enver Pasha, the man who led the Ottoman Empire into World War I and organized the massacres of Armenians and the Greeks of Pontus—goes beyond the bounds of diplomatic discourtesy. It is a blunt, symbolic declaration of power.

To avoid any misunderstanding, what followed was even more striking. Immediately afterward, the reception program included the “İstiklal Marşı,” Turkey’s national anthem, the “Independence March.” Independence from whom? According to the author, it is the independence won upon the ruins of Greece’s “Great Idea,” during the period from 1919 to 1922, culminating in the destruction of Smyrna. The author describes it as a musical monument to Greece’s national tragedy, one that was, in his view, consecrated in the bloodshed left behind by Kemalism.

A Greek prime minister, therefore, stood at attention and listened while, in the author’s view, the history of his homeland was being trampled upon. He listened to what the author describes as the triumphant song of the persecutors of Hellenism, wrapped in the mantle of an “official ceremony.”

One cannot help but ask: where was the preparation by our diplomatic staff? Where was the National Security Adviser? (Although, the author adds sarcastically, he was apparently busy dealing with his blunder involving the Russian prank callers.) The answer, perhaps, has been lost in what the author calls the unbearable lightness that has come to characterize the Prime Minister’s office.

The choice of military marches was not accidental. Erdoğan leaves nothing to chance. According to the author, he wanted to send a message to both his domestic audience and us. The message is simple: “We are the continuation of the empire and its triumph; you are the defeated side, arriving as a visitor in our courtyard.”

The fact that Kyriakos Mitsotakis did not react, did not protest, and did not demand an explanation for what the author again calls this act of political pornography demonstrates, in his view, the extent of his conciliatory attitude. (Though, the author adds, one might even ask whether he knew about it in advance.)

When your history is being played out to the beat of war drums and your response is the gaze of a polite guest, then, according to the author, you are not conducting foreign policy. You are merely watching. And Turkey, methodical and ruthless, continues to write its own music over the waves of the Aegean, while our silence becomes the loudest admission of defeat.