Turkey’s Middle East Power Grab Has Greece in Its Way
Turkey is making a calculated move to position itself as the dominant transit hub of the Middle East, and Greece is standing directly in its path. That's the assessment from Angelos Syrigossss, international law professor and New Democracy MP, speaking on SKAI's podcast this week.
Syrigos breaks Turkey's play into three parts. First, Ankara is pushing the so-called Middle Corridor, a trade route running from China's border with Kazakhstan, through the Caspian Sea, into Azerbaijan, and finally into Turkey. Trump has been aggressively pushing Azerbaijan and Armenia toward a peace deal, partly to unlock this corridor, even mapping out a road through Armenian territory connecting Turkey and Azerbaijan that he's calling the "Trump Road."
Second, Turkey wants to pipe Turkmenistan's vast natural gas reserves through the Caspian to Azerbaijan and then into its own territory. Turkmenistan holds the world's third-largest natural gas reserves, making this a significant energy play if Ankara can pull it off.
Third, and perhaps most underrated, is fiber optic cables. Several major undersea cables running through the Strait of Hormuz have reportedly been damaged, and Turkey is lobbying hard to route replacement telecommunications infrastructure overland, through its own soil.
All three moves point toward the same goal: Turkey as the central hub for energy, trade, and communications between Asia, the Middle East, and Europe.
Greece is not sitting still. Syrigos flagged Mitsotakis's visit to the Gulf states last week as directly tied to the IMEC corridor, the India-to-Europe trade route that Greece is positioning itself to anchor. Greece also holds a geographic edge on undersea cable infrastructure, sitting close enough to Africa to serve as a viable green energy cable route. Syrigos noted that Greece dispatched two naval vessels to Cyprus in 6 to 7 hours during a recent crisis, while Britain needed more than 20 days to send a single warship to the region.
According to Syrigos, Turkey will try to block Greece's cable ambitions by every means available. The race to define the post-crisis Middle East is already on.
