What are the Finnish islands of πουland that Ankara parallels with the islands of the Eastern Aegean

Of Costa Rapti

The argument, launched by Ankara for the first time in July 2021 and then in September of the same year, that the concession of the islands of the eastern Aegean to Greece by the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 took place “conditionally” (therefore, it is implied, can be revoked in case of non-implementation) and yet “depends” on their demilitarization, which was already revised after the Montreux Convention in 1936, is clearly an attempt at “creative theorizing” of territorial revision aspirations.

And for this, the Permanent Representative of Greece to the UN, Maria Theofili, responded in detail to the letter delivered yesterday, following the instructions of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Nikos Dendias.

However, Ankara’s argument also brought to the fore a distant archipelago, not very well known to the Greek public, which was explicitly cited as a precedent in a previous letter by the Turkish Permanent Representative Feridun Sinirlioglu: the νland Islands (or, according to other transcripts) ).

Åland, a natural continuation of the “Finnish archipelago”, is a cluster of islands at the entrance to the Gulf of Botswana, ie one of the two (along with the Gulf of Finland) tributaries of the Baltic Sea to the north.

Holland is inhabited by about 30,000 people, mostly concentrated on the largest island, which is located about 38 km west of the coast of Sweden and 160 km east of the Turkish island of Finland, with which it is connected by ferry.

Administratively, the islands are the smallest region in Finland, to which they belong under a regime of broad autonomy and demilitarization, as defined in 1921 by the League of Nations in one of the first cases to be considered.

The Dutch’s peculiarity is twofold: geographical, on the one hand, as an island “bridge” between mainland Finland and Sweden, and, on the other hand, demographic, as they are inhabited exclusively by a Swedish-speaking population. overwhelming.

In 1809, with the Treaty of Fredriksham, Sweden was forced to cede to Russia all, including Hollande, its Finnish provinces, which formed the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland under the tsarist crown.

In 1856, as a side conflict of the Crimean War, the Anglo-French fleet launched an attack on the Finnish coast and occupied Hollande, which by the Treaty of Paris was designated to remain un fortified. However, during World War I, Russia used them as a submarine base.

In December 2017, in the aftermath of the October Revolution, Finland declared its independence (soon to be plunged into a civil war between the Reds and Whites), while the landers, fearing cultural Finnishization policies, sought to oust , where, however, there was no zeal for adventurous expansionist policies, while World War I was still going on in the rest of Europe.

Later, however, Sweden sent a “peacekeeping force” to the archipelago, under the pretext of the need to evacuate the population in the face of a possible extension of the Finnish civil war.

In the end, Finland and Sweden agreed to address the League of Nations, where the arguments of Finnish diplomats prevailed.

In fact, the role of Japan was a catalyst, as the idea that the Olandes are a continental continuation of Finland itself, while separated by a deep sea from neighboring Sweden, matched the Japanese aspirations for Pacific islands.

Since then, the faithful observance of the rules of cultural and political autonomy of the islands, as well as the sense of “common destiny” with Finland formed by the developments during and after World War II, completely alleviated the “issue of Hollande”.

After all, in 1995 both Sweden and Finland joined the European Union – with the Netherlands, however, maintaining a special regime that, among other things, restricts the acquisition of land by foreigners.

The privileges of the Olanders are enshrined in the Finnish Constitution and their inhabitants are excluded from military service.

The differences (legal, historical, geographical and demographic) between the cases of Hollande and the islands of the eastern Aegean are obvious.

Incidentally, the demilitarized regime of the autonomous Finnish archipelago has only recently come to the fore again (and will certainly return more strongly, due to the forthcoming accession of Sweden and Finland to NATO) due to the anti-Cold War anti-Russian sentiment.

The strategic position of the islands and their presumed vulnerability to the forces stationed in the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad mobilize in the Finnish public debate for their re-militarization.

However, it would be difficult to unilaterally review a regime that not only dates back to 1856 and 1921, but was confirmed under pressure from the Soviet Union and by a bilateral treaty in 1940.