6459 - Marathon, Thermopylae, Castelorizo

N. Lygeros
Translation: Paola Vagioni

For those who do not have direct access to topostrategic facts, it is efficient to obtain some examples from our history in order to comprehend the structure of the particularities of the future. For most of us, Marathon and Thermopylae constitute such examples and this applies also to the world scene. We do not treat these two cases in a different way, despite the fact that it is about a victory and a defeat. We remember the notions of fight and sacrifice, of need and death. We do not examine as much the structural elements of these battles for locating the historical mental schemata, except when we are among military men or strategists. In reality, unless this study is done, we cannot understand the existence of these events at these particular moments of space-time. And yet we know that the framework played a crucial part and its selection as a battlefield was of a strategic importance. The fact that the two areas were on Greek territory is not as important as the fact that the conduct of the battle in these places was Greek. In both cases, the ending of the battle was expected from our side: for both the victory and the defeat. The same applies to Salamis but not as an outcome. The examination of the facts via topostrategic analysis allows the transgression of the geometry of space and explains the timing for the conduct of the battle. For those who do not realize it yet, Castelorizo is a battlefield not only by itself but also the whole area, specifically the one which belongs to the Greek space i.e. the west side, due to the Paris Treaty of 1947. In reality, the EEZ issue will exert pressure de facto in this area and we will have to decide if this space is the equivalent of Marathon or Thermopylae. This access to choice is a problem of will and of course initiative on our behalf. In any case the topostrategic elements facts exist, the framework of geostrategy exists. The entire questioning lies on our preparation. Otherwise we will repeat the mistake of the 1920 Sèvres Treaty, which finally turned into the 1923 Lausanne Treaty, which via the pretext of the Straits, determined the fate of Imvros and Tenedos without having paid attention to these specific islands. The case of Castelorizo is even more important because it allows, with erroneous manipulations, the contact between Turkey and Egypt and simultaneously eliminating the Single Defense Doctrine. By emphasizing solely on the island without examining the repercussions of the pressures on the specific area and without attempting to understand the topostrategic facts by assuming that they add nothing new to our knowledge, to which we owe the present situation, is a sign of inertia. While in Castelorizo, we need all the mental schemata of grand strategy and not only tactics. Consecutively, after selecting our model, we will have to support it but in this phase we are only at the invention of the issue. This is the difficulty since we are still found inside the space of the invisible and in there, only strategy is seeing.