An utterance by American President Trump should not go unnoticed. He stated, among other things, that both he and Russian President Putin admire Turkish President Erdogan because he is tough but consistent. In fact, in a digression of his speech, Trump emphasized that he does not like the pathetic heads of state that Europe has.
Why Trump and Putin admire Erdogan and consider ours to be pathetic?
Let us be realistic, it does not have to do with Turkey having 84 million and Greece 10 million in population, but with Turkey's insistence on maintaining a strong military, maintaining a tough stance toward Israel—which Trump supports but Putin criticizes. Turkey, despite its economic problems, maintains a $1.64 trillion GDP compared to Greece's $308 billion. The Turkish economy is five times larger than the Greek one, possesses a strong defense industry, and wants to militarize further. Furthermore, Erdogan knows how to maneuver; he supports Ukraine but also Russia, and is a member of NATO that maintains open channels of communication with Russia, which will inevitably defeat Ukraine and NATO. On the contrary, they consider Greece a country of "yes men," the Greek government submissive, and Mitsotakis an indifferent political leader, timid, who goes with the flow and lacks a strategy of diversification. Greece obviously should have maintained open channels of communication with Russia; instead, it has maintained a stance detrimental to national interests. Greece never possessed a strong foreign policy; Turkey made leaps of growth and progress, and Greece, with its haphazard governments, failed to follow Turkey's geopolitical dominance. Turkey has surpassed us and we simply watch without knowing what to do; Greece's deficit is terrible.
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