This year’s tension in the East Mediterranean is commonly understood as a spat about gas and oil sparked by an older Greek-Turkish dispute over the Aegean continental shelf.
This perception is punctuated by reminders of the traditional rivalry between both NATO allies which, in its current phase, dates to the outbreak of the Cyprus question in the 1950s. While both dimensions are real, they are but the tip of the iceberg of the current wrangle.
Today’s confrontation is not a bilateral dispute spiralling into regional crisis, as some commentators suggest, but essentially the reverse. Since 2013, Greece and Turkey have been caught up in a wider international crisis which threatens to turn their old differences into a proxy war.
