Parallel Monologues: Fidan, Gerapetritis, and the Illusion of Dialogue

Murat Yıldız

One Word, Two Meanings

Dialogue is often treated as a shared diplomatic virtue. Between Türkiye and Greece, it is not. Recent remarks by Hakan Fidan and an interview by Giorgos Gerapetritis, published by Greece’s foreign ministry, make this clear. Ankara and Athens are not arguing inside the same conversation. They are using the same word to describe different strategic intentions shaped by a long and unresolved bilateral history.

Both governments insist that dialogue continues. The divergence lies in what they expect it to do. For Türkiye, dialogue is a way to manage exposure in a relationship where security risks rarely remain local. For Greece, it is a means of containing discussion by excluding sovereignty from the agenda altogether.

This difference reflects how each side defines the problem itself. Ankara treats dialogue as an adjustable instrument, responsive to shifts on the ground. Athens treats it as a bounded channel, designed to prevent old disputes from re-entering political space.

Dialogue, in this context, is not a bridge. It resembles parallel monologues, each side speaking within its own chamber, hearing its own echo rather than engaging the other’s logic. The image is closer to Plato’s cave than to negotiation: familiar assumptions circulate, while the possibility that the other side operates under a different strategic reality remains largely untested.

Dialogue as Risk Management

For Ankara, dialogue is not a confidence-building exercise. It is a precaution.

Fidan’s recent warning that Israel may still be seeking an opportunity to strike Iran was not framed as conjecture. It was presented as an active risk with regional consequences. Such an attack, he argued, would not stay confined to one front. It would spread pressure across theatres, from the Eastern Mediterranean to the Gulf.

This reading extends to Gaza and Syria as well. Ankara treats these files as connected. Deterioration in one arena is assumed to affect others. Dialogue therefore remains deliberately broad. Narrowing the agenda is not seen as discipline, but as vulnerability.

What stands out in this framing is what is absent. Legal abstraction plays little role. The emphasis is not on doctrine or final status, but on sequence and consequence. The operative question is practical: what follows if escalation is left unmanaged?

Dialogue, for Türkiye, serves this purpose. It keeps channels open before crises harden, not after stability has already failed.

Dialogue as Perimeter Control

For Athens, dialogue serves a different function. It is not designed to absorb shocks, but to keep discussion within strict limits.

Gerapetritis has been explicit on this point. Sovereignty, he insists, is not open to discussion. Talks with Türkiye may continue, but only if sovereign rights are excluded from the agenda. Territorial waters, jurisdiction, and related claims are treated as settled. They are not bargaining items.

This reflects a perimeter strategy. Dialogue is used to manage friction without reopening foundational positions. By narrowing the scope, Athens seeks to prevent technical engagement from sliding into political negotiation.

Law is central to this approach, but selectively so. Greece consistently anchors its position in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, while portraying Türkiye’s non-signatory status as a deviation from legality. This framing overlooks Ankara’s stated rationale for remaining outside the convention, rooted in the Aegean’s geography and the security implications of applying uniform maritime rules to a semi-enclosed sea dense with islands.

By presenting a structural disagreement as a legal deficiency, Athens converts interpretation into leverage. Türkiye is cast as operating outside accepted norms, even though non-participation in UNCLOS does not, in itself, constitute a breach of international law.

This logic also explains why Greece recognises only one issue with Türkiye as potentially justiciable: the delimitation of the exclusive economic zone and the continental shelf. Everything else is declared non-negotiable. Dialogue continues, but inside a carefully drawn boundaries.

Red Lines Compared

The issue is not that Ankara and Athens have red lines. It is that they draw them according to incompatible logics.

Türkiye’s red lines are cumulative and regional. They are not tied to a single map or legal file. Escalation in Gaza, a strike on Iran, instability in Syria, or shifts in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean are treated as connected pressures. A breach in one area is assumed to raise risk elsewhere.

Greece’s red lines are narrower and declarative. They are anchored in specific legal claims, most notably territorial waters and maritime jurisdiction. Athens treats these as settled, even as it raises them repeatedly at the highest political level, often for domestic consumption. The aim is closure rather than deterrence.

This asymmetry degrades signalling. What Ankara intends as warning can be read in Athens as pressure. What Athens presents as legal consistency can be read in Ankara as provocation when reiterated in a tense environment.

The casus belli resolution adopted by the Turkish parliament sits at the centre of this mismatch. While Greece frames the extension of territorial waters as a legal right, Türkiye treats unilateral moves in the Aegean as inherently escalatory given the sea’s geography and security balance. The disagreement is not simply legal. It is strategic.

Israel and the Politics of Silence

The divergence between Ankara and Athens is sharpest over Israel.

Fidan places Israel at the centre of Türkiye’s regional risk assessment. In his framing, Israel is not background context but a potential trigger. Its actions are treated as capable of turning local crises into regional ones.

Gerapetritis, by contrast, keeps Israel largely outside his core narrative when addressing relations with Türkiye. References are indirect, filtered through Gaza, humanitarian access, and international law. Israel appears as circumstance rather than agency.

This silence is not accidental. Greece has deepened security, energy and diplomatic cooperation with Israel in recent years, particularly in the Eastern Mediterranean and beyond. Bringing that relationship into the dialogue framework would widen the agenda beyond Athens’ preferred perimeter.

Here, silence functions as control.

NATO, Ukraine, and the Eastern Mediterranean

For Athens, NATO cohesion and the war in Ukraine function less as policy files than as narrative anchors. Gerapetritis repeatedly invokes sovereignty, territorial integrity, and the consistency of international law, extending this language to Cyprus, the Aegean, and the Eastern Mediterranean where it supports Greek positions.

Ukraine plays a central role in this framing. By universalising the language of inviolable borders and opposition to revisionism, Athens seeks to project its claims as part of a broader rules-based struggle rather than as context-specific disputes.

Gaza is addressed more cautiously, through institutional and legal references rather than power politics. The emphasis remains procedural. This allows Greece to maintain normative coherence without opening a wider discussion of regional alignments.

Ankara’s reading differs. While Türkiye also refers to NATO, its focus is not on principle alignment but on consequence. The concern is not whether norms are applied consistently, but whether their selective use increases escalation risk.

The Fault Line

What separates Ankara and Athens today is not the existence of dialogue, but the direction in which each side is moving.

Greece is not simply defending legal positions. It is working to narrow Türkiye’s strategic space in the Eastern Mediterranean through overlapping partnerships with Israel, Egypt, Lebanon, and several Gulf states. This is not incidental. It is an alignment strategy aimed at shaping the regional balance.

Fidan has acknowledged this directly, warning that alliance structures are taking shape against Türkiye in the Mediterranean and that Ankara retains diplomatic and military options in response. Legal arguments, in this context, no longer stand alone. They are reinforced by coordinated political and security arrangements.

Türkiye’s own posture, however, has been uneven. Despite firm rhetoric, Ankara has reduced its operational footprint in the Eastern Mediterranean, withdrawing drilling vessels and signalling restraint. Domestically, these moves have been read less as de-escalation than as loss of initiative.

Dialogue persists. Strategies diverge.

What is striking is that, in Ankara’s current political climate, this divergence is rarely confronted openly. The question is not debated and, in many cases, cannot be asked at all. Yet it remains visible. Ignored or avoided, it continues to define the strategic dilemma Türkiye faces.