Ready to Rumble with Turkey

Since 1993, Greece has contracted to purchase $3.8 billion in arms from the U.S., putting it well on its way to achieving its 10-year, $14.6 billion arms procurement plan. The U.S. has aided in this endeavor by supplying Greece with a multitude of aircraft, missiles, helicopters, and various other arms.

Greece has also benefited from $200 million a year in foreign military financing to help purchase this equipment.

The U.S. defends being Greece's largest arms supplier -- over 80 percent of Greece's weapons hail from the U.S., according to Daniel Gallick of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency -- because its strategic location on the Aegean Sea is believed essential to NATO and U.S. national security.

Ready to re-invade northern Cyprus?	Army Special Brigades in training

According to the State Department, Greece has committed sporadic human rights abuses and has been constantly ready for war against Turkey for the last 24 years. In 1974, Turkey invaded the island nation of Cyprus, occupying its northeast quadrant in response to a pro-Greek coup. The UN interceded and its peacekeeping forces remain in Cyprus to monitor the so-called Green Line, a 112-mile long buffer zone separating the island's 80-percent Greek populace from the 20 percent who are Turkish.

The scuffles and finger-pointing continue; the Greek defense ministry reported that in 1996, Turkish jet fighters violated Greek airspace 1,600 times, 538 of which were over land.

U.S. arms sales in the Clinton years Direct government sales Government-approved sales (scale in millions of dollars)

Recently, Cyprus purchased $400 million worth of Russian-made S-300 missiles, which Turkey vowed to destroy. This prompted Greece to fly four F-16 jets to Paphos Air Base on the island's southern coast. In response, Turkey deployed six F-16s to the Turkish-controlled northeast. Cyprus' government huffed and puffed and backed down -- and then insisted that it would deploy its missiles from the Greek island of Crete.

In another sign that a Greek-Turkish conflict may be imminent, Greece's ruling Socialist party recently mandated that women receive compulsory military training for several weeks each year starting in 1999. The Guardian of London reports that this will make Greece only the second Western nation (after Israel) to draft women.

-- Suzie Larsen

Flags courtesy of World Flag Database
Photos by Rassias Evangelis/Gamma Liaison