Souda Bay – Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has negotiated a plan to expand the United States military presence in Crete amid simmering tensions between NATO allies Greece and Turkey.
“Here at Souda Bay, we expanded the scope of the facility, which is governed by our bilateral defense cooperation agreement,” a senior State Department official told reporters following a series of high-level meetings between Pompeo and Greek officials. “We expanded the envelope where we can make U.S. investments … for purposes of our operational capabilities.”
That agreement, which includes a decision to station the USS Hershel “Woody” Williams permanently in Crete, was unveiled just weeks after a senior Republican senator identified the Greek island as a potential alternative home for at least some of the U.S. forces currently stationed at Incirlik Air Base. State Department officials maintained that the expanded cooperation with Greece should not be regarded as a sign of American unease in Turkey.
“So it’s apples and oranges in terms of our operations in Turkey, which are important but stand on their own than what we’re doing here in Greece,” the senior State Department official said.
U.S. officials have sought to contain rumors of an impending exit from Incirlik in recent weeks, but the speculation has been stoked in part by American lawmakers voicing their frustrations with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s confrontational foreign policy.
“It’s very concerning, which is one of the reasons we certainly are increasing and improving our military cooperation with Greece … beefing up our presence in Souda Bay, because our presence, quite honestly, in Turkey is certainly threatened,” Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, the top Republican on the Foreign Relations subcommittee for Europe, said earlier this month.
Such statements are troublesome for the Defense Department, which is widely believed to house nuclear weapons at Incirlik and more recently has relied on the base for operations targeting the Islamic State in Syria.
“Upon the invitation of the Turkish government, the U.S. has been conducting its operations at Incirlik military base for decades,” the Pentagon said in a statement released this week to Turkish media. “The continuing presence of the U.S. in Incirlik demonstrates the strong relations between the U.S. and our NATO ally Turkey.”
The expansion was still cause for celebration in Athens, where Greek officials are eager to tout their affinity with Washington as a means of pressuring Erdogan to stop saber-rattling in disputes over energy-rich waters of the Eastern Mediterranean.
“It is dictated by circumstances but also because our country must have a presence in the Eastern Mediterranean. For this [to] happen, the Crete Naval Base needs to be upgraded and strengthened,” Greek Defense Minister Nikolaos Panagiotopoulos told lawmakers on Monday. “The Americans assign enormous strategic importance to Souda.”
Yet Pompeo’s team emphasized the value of having Turkey “remain tethered” to the transatlantic alliance despite the recent standoff.
“Greece and the United States are as strongly aligned as any two NATO members on the principle that we have to keep Turkey anchored in the West,” the senior State Department official said, noting that Turkey and Greece share a border. “They have a huge stake in … seeing Turkey remain tethered to European and Euro-Atlantic institutions.”
Still, lawmakers in Washington have a growing appetite for a more aggressive approach with Turkey.
“We cannot continue to act towards Turkey as we wish it were,” New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez, the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, told Greek media on Sunday. “We have to act towards Turkey as it is under Erdogan.”
