#kittmer

The small boat, with its group of twenty or so British tourists and school kids, was leaning into the wind across choppy waters. Gerald, our teacher and guide, was telling us two stories at once and they were becoming occasionally confused. As we left the jetty of the pretty town, the geography opened up in all directions. Behind the town, itself set out on the edge of the bay, a conical mountain was now rising.

The island to which we were heading now seemed much larger; its sides precipitous and covered in forest. “The surrender of the Spartan garrison on Sphacteria was the first time that Spartans had ever capitulated,” Gerald shouted, above the noise of the engine. “It was an exciting moment for the Athenians: a moment that carried them into uncharted waters – waters that were unfortunately stalked by Hubris and Nemesis…” The waters through which we were being cοnveyed seemed themselves to be increasingly stalked, by danger.

We were apparently now heading out into the open sea through the southern channel between Sphacteria island and the mainland, and the waves were getting bigger. “We will soon see the monument to the French sailors who died at Navarino,” said Gerald, optimistically. The boat bounced on the turbulent waves, as we approached the stairs cut into the cliff of the islet of Tsichli Baba. “It’s too choppy to land today – according to the captain, but we’ll sail round the islet and then return to find the English monument.”

It was the middle of April in 1984. I was sixteen. We were in the first week of a three-week tour of Greece and were travelling around the Peloponnese. It was Orthodox Lent and we were due to spend Holy Week on Aegina and Easter week on Sifnos. I had never been to Greece before, but had been learning the ancient language for three years. Earlier in the day, we had excitedly toured the Mycenean remains of Nestor’s Palace at Ano Engliani. Now we were learning about events in the Peloponnesian War in 425BC (the capture of Sphacteria by the Athenians) and the Battle of Navarino on 20 October 1827 AD.

Five contemporary British philhellenes, eminent scholars and authors, write about their their life-defining connection with Greece.

The current tensions in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean are neither new nor a consequence of ancient history. Their origins can be traced to 1973, when Turkey first contested the Greek continental shelf. Since then, in the aftermath of Turkey’s invasion of Cyprus and its hardened stance towards Hellenism, the scope of that challenge has widened to encompass a broad range of rights associated with Greek sovereignty at sea and in the air. With the Imia crisis of 1996, Turkey went so far as to reject Greek sovereignty over territory which previous international agreements (the Lausanne Treaty of 1923, the Italo-Turkish Agreements of 1932 and the Paris Treaty of 1947) had, taken all in all, made Greek.

Greece’s position is straightforward and, since the return of democracy in 1974, consistent. Greece wants stability in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean and views the international legal order as its guarantor. All bar three of the islands in the Aegean (Bozcaada, Gökçeada and Tavşan) are Greek. They are home to a sizeable population: just over half a million people. Respect for the international treaties and agreements that underpin this settlement is, accordingly, essential in Greek eyes.

Greeks have reacted with alarm to the nationalist rhetoric emanating from President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his circles: crudely revanchist comments by Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay are but the latest examples. To take Erdogan’s statements at face value, the Lausanne Treaty itself is now in doubt. This should raise a general alarm, beyond Greek shores.

LEGAL ARGUMENTS Developments in international law since the 1950s have complicated matters, creating an overlay of new sovereign rights on top of prior agreements. After failing to exclude the Aegean from its scope, Turkey has notoriously refused to ratify the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) of 1982. It has done this primarily to frustrate the rights afforded to the Greek islands in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean. In 1995, the Turkish Parliament, extraordinarily, declared that extension of the territorial waters of Greece’s Aegean islands to 12 nautical miles (a right under UNCLOS) would constitute a ‘casus belli’. Despite all that, Turkey has declared its own exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in the Black Sea, agreeing its boundaries with the other coastal states, and has asserted its right to 12 nautical miles of territorial waters there and in the Eastern Mediterranean. Greeks point out that Turkey thus recognises the fundamental provisions of UNCLOS as customary international law, binding on all.

The Greek response has been measured. Greece has not asserted its sovereign rights to 12 nautical miles of territorial waters in the Aegean (though it has now done so in the Ionian), and has long indicated its readiness to negotiate the delimitation of the continental shelf, which, in practical terms, also means its EEZ. Recent discoveries of gas in the Eastern Mediterranean add fuel and urgency to the Greek position, without fundamentally altering it. In delimiting its EEZ with other states, Greece has proceeded circumspectly: it has not, for example, used the coordinates of Kastellorizo in its partial delimitation with Egypt.

In seeking de-escalation, Greece is clear about what it wants. Above all, it wants a negotiation with Turkey, but one in which both parties have reached prior agreement to allow the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to arbitrate in the event that negotiations reach an impasse. Arbitration is surely going to be necessary: although Greece has compromised in its partial delimitation of the EEZ border with Egypt, it is hard to imagine Greek or Turkish politicians making the necessary compromises for a deal between them.

In this magical six-day tour, I am finally - after 36 years of travelling - visiting all of the significant places I’ve yet to see and experience in a lifetime’s pilgrimage across Greece. In part 1 I ‘completed’ the mainland, in a wonderfully rich tour of monasteries, citadels, ancient theatres, forts and market-towns - all set in ravishing landscapes, girt by the sea and the mountains; indented with secretive inland lakes. All of this was done in the blinking of an eye, leaving me time still to explore islands and mountains. This time I’m boarding my magical boat, to hop across unknown islands, somehow impossibly keeping within my six-day timeframe. I’m taking with me my trusty Blue Guide and Durrell’s Greek Islands.

The Pagasitic Gulf I’m starting my journey at Volos on the Pagasitic Gulf. My ultimate destination is Limni on Evia (Euboea). But like Jason or Odysseus, my journey will not be a simple one; we will not be going in a straight line. In my years of wanderings in Greece, I’ve visited every archipelago - 32 islands in all; I know the joys of island-hopping. The Sporades, the NE Aegean, the Dodecanese, the Cyclades, the Argo-Saronic, the Ionians: all beautiful names, conjuring subtly different memories. But on this magnificent journey I aim for new adventures. None of the places I visit, except my points of departure and arrival, are known by me. As Tennyson’s Ulysses puts it: ‘All experience is an arch wherethro'  Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades For ever and forever when I move’.

The ship I’m boarding is called Argo and she is a magic craft: magic because she not only travels at very high speeds (as her Greek name suggests), but because she is a shape-shifter, embodying, as we go, four thousand years of Hellenic seafaring. The route we will trace across the oceans mirrors the outline of a butterfly’s wings: as it happens, that is the shape of my favourite island - which we shall not visit on this trip. (I have to keep some semi-secrets.)

Dr John Kittmer, British Ambassador to Greece from 2013 to 2016 and passionate Hellenist left the British Diplomatic Service in 2017 to complete his PhD on the Greek poet Yannis Ritsos at King’s College London. He learned ancient Greek at school, and studied Classics at the University of Cambridge and the University of Oxford, while he obtained an MA in Modern Greek Studies in 2007 at King’s College London. After completing his PhD in 2019 Dr Kittmer is now working on several publications based on his doctoral researches. He is also Chair of The Anglo-Hellenic League, a charity dedicated to the promotion of friendship and understanding between Britain and Greece, and a Member of the Board of Okeanis Eco Tankers.

Last February Dr Kittmer, who is a fluent speaker of Greek, was in Athens to give a lecture titled ‘Anglo-Hellenism: Adventures in Cultural Exchange’ -organised in collaboration with the Centre for Hellenic Studies, King’s College London in honour of Niki Marangou- where he spoke in Greek about the powerful cultural and educational bonds between Britons and Greeks. [A full video-recording of this lecture can be found here].

Yesterday I had the pleasure of giving a talk on Thessaloniki at the Hellenic Centre on Thessaloniki. This year is the thirtieth anniversary of my first visit to the city, and I leapt at the invitation from the Centre. I took the hubristic title of ‘My Thessaloniki’ and gave the audience ‘a personal tour of the city and its culture’.

There are many ways to think of Thessaloniki: as a Byzantine city; as the second city of Greece; as a great Northern city; as the Balkan city; or as a cosmopolitan city. It has many aspects to its personality.

In the classic travel writing about Greece, Thessaloniki is often neglected. Michael Carroll’s recent book, Greece: A Literary Guide for Travellers, does better than most, covering off St Paul’s travels to the city, and those of William Leake and Osbert Lancaster; it also has an interesting letter from one of the ‘gardeners of Salonica’: an officer in the British Expeditionary Force, writing in November 1915.

I don’t think anyone ever encouraged me to be interested in Thessaloniki. Rather, the idea was kindled by small sparks, random hints, marginal comments and whispered asides.