Ozcan AkinciThe geopolitical landscape of the Eastern Mediterranean is undergoing a rapid transformation. As regional alignments evolve, Israel has increasingly repositioned Greece as a strategic gateway into Europe’s security and economic architecture.
By expanding defence, energy and economic ties, Athens seeks to enhance its regional standing while offering Israel deeper access to both the European Union and NATO.
This convergence is often framed as a stabilising partnership. Yet its structural implications are more complex.
Rather than producing autonomous strategic capacity, Greece’s alignment pattern reveals a recurring dynamic in which external partnerships shape Athens’ policy choices more than they expand them.
This raises a broader question about whether such alignments generate resilience or deepen dependency.
Defence integration and emerging dependencies
Defence cooperation has become the most tangible and fastest-moving dimension of Greece-Israel relations.
In April, Greece signed a $750 million contract with Israel to procure 36 PULS multiple rocket launcher systems from Elbit Systems.
This marked one of the largest defence acquisitions in recent years and signalled a shift toward deeper technological integration.
A more ambitious initiative is the multi-layered air defence architecture known as ‘Achilles’ Shield’.
With an estimated value of around €3 billion, the programme is designed to integrate Israeli systems such as Barak MX, David’s Sling and SPYDER to establish a comprehensive defensive umbrella across the Aegean and around the Greek islands.
Agreements advanced in early 2026 formalised cooperation in multiple areas, including counter-drone technologies, swarm defence and cyber capabilities.
These developments are complemented by trilateral military planning involving Greece, Israel and the Greek Cypriot Administration (GCA).
In December 2025, the three sides signed a joint action plan for 2026, under which joint exercises, intelligence sharing and operational coordination have intensified, framed under the language of regional stability.
However, such arrangements also embed Greece more deeply within Israel’s defence ecosystem.
This creates a structural asymmetry. While Israel expands its strategic depth and access to European markets, Greece becomes increasingly reliant on external technology, doctrine, and threat-perception frameworks.
Over time, this reduces Athens’ ability to independently calibrate its security posture, especially in a region where the threat environments remain fluid.
Energy cooperation forms the geoeconomic backbone of the alignment, yet its outcomes remain uneven.
The EastMed pipeline project, once presented as a flagship initiative, lost momentum after the United States withdrew support citing economic and environmental concerns.
Despite periodic attempts to revive it, high costs, technical challenges and unresolved maritime disputes continue to limit progress.
More viable, at least in technical terms, is the Great Sea Interconnector (GSI), an electricity cable linking Israel, the GCA and Greece.
The project has faced significant delays, with contractor Nexans rescheduling the execution timeline in early 2026 due to financing disputes, updated technical and economic studies, and ongoing geopolitical sensitivities, including Turkish objections over maritime jurisdictions.
While some deep-sea cable trials were successfully conducted, the Greece-Cyprus segment remains stalled amid financial and regulatory uncertainties, with full implementation now pushed well beyond initial targets.
At the same time, Greece positions itself within broader connectivity frameworks such as the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC).
By leveraging ports such as Piraeus, Athens aims to function as a European entry point for trade and energy flows originating in the Middle East.
This vision aligns closely with Israel’s interest in diversifying export routes toward Europe.
Yet these projects reveal a structural limitation. Many remain delayed, scaled down or contested.
Eastern Mediterranean gas reserves are modest outside Egypt, while Europe’s green transition faces headwinds: efforts to escape Russian dependence have increased reliance on Chinese-controlled rare earth elements and critical minerals essential for renewables.
In contrast, existing infrastructure networks anchored in Türkiye offer shorter, more integrated and operationally proven routes.
Geoeconomic gains and structural dependence
Trade relations between Greece and Israel have expanded significantly in recent years.
Bilateral trade volumes increased by 41 percent between 2023 and 2024, rising from approximately $920 million to $1.3 billion, with Greek exports to Israel reaching around $900 million to $1.07 billion and Israeli exports to Greece remaining lower at approximately $350-430 million.
Growth was concentrated in sectors such as construction materials, chemicals and energy equipment.
Tourism flows and port investments have also contributed to deepening economic ties.
However, this expansion reflects more than market-driven dynamics. It is closely linked to the broader strategic alignment.
Greece provides Israel with access to European markets, while Israel supplies defence technology and offers opportunities for energy cooperation.
This exchange is not symmetrical. Greece’s increasing integration into Israeli supply chains and security frameworks creates a form of strategic dependency.
Economic gains are therefore accompanied by reduced policy flexibility.
As alignment deepens, Athens may find itself compelled to align with Israeli regional positions, even when these do not fully coincide with its own economic or diplomatic interests.
The Greece-Israel partnership is often interpreted as part of a broader balancing strategy in the region.
Through trilateral formats, Athens seeks to strengthen its position vis-a-vis regional competitors.
Yet this approach carries inherent constraints. Alignments built on external partnerships tend to limit strategic autonomy when not backed by independent capacity.
Greece has historically shaped its policy through such external actors.
The current alignment with Israel follows a similar pattern, reflecting Tel Aviv’s security-driven calculations and updated periphery doctrine of flexible regional networks.
As cooperation deepens, Greece risks prioritising these priorities over its own.
Meanwhile, Türkiye has increasingly emphasised its strategic autonomy through indigenous defence programmes, advanced air defence, drones, and naval systems, and diversified energy corridors that leverage its geography.
This dynamic appears clearly in defence planning, while the alignment overlaps with US-EU efforts to reduce Russian energy dependence.
However, NATO-internal tensions between Greece and Türkiye constrain its operational depth.
In energy, projects aligned with Israeli export strategies may not always match Greece’s optimal pathways.
While Athens has deepened its strategic partnership with Tel Aviv, Greek public opinion remains increasingly divided.
Although polls indicate that a majority still supports the alliance for security and economic reasons, significant discomfort has grown over the Gaza genocide and expanding military ties.
In August 2025, a coordinated ‘Day of Action’ protest targeted Israeli tourists across more than 100 locations, including popular islands.
Similar tensions erupted in March 2026, when thousands marched outside the US and Israeli embassies in Athens following strikes on Iran, demanding the closure of foreign military bases linked to the partnership.
Implications for regional stability and Türkiye
From a regional perspective, the deepening alignment between Greece and Israel contributes to an increasingly fragmented security architecture in the Eastern Mediterranean.
While framed as stabilising, such arrangements can also reinforce bloc formation and strategic competition.
For Türkiye, these developments directly affect maritime jurisdiction, energy access and regional balance.
Projects that bypass established infrastructure or exclude key actors create inefficiencies and additional risk.
In response, Türkiye has bolstered its position through sustained domestic defence investment and alternative energy corridors, including deeper cooperation with Libya and Egypt, that capitalise on its central geography and proven networks.
This creates a structural contrast: while new alignments pursue alternative routes, networks anchored in geographical continuity and infrastructural depth, many involving Türkiye, deliver greater reliability and lower risk.
In this context, attempts to exclude Türkiye from regional frameworks risk prioritising political signalling over systemic efficiency.
The evolving Greece-Israel partnership reflects broader shifts in the Eastern Mediterranean’s geopolitical landscape.
It combines defence integration, energy cooperation and geoeconomic expansion into a multi-layered alignment.
However, its long-term sustainability hinges on generating genuine strategic autonomy rather than deepening external dependence.
Current trends indicate that this risk remains notable, even as Türkiye pursues a contrasting path by investing heavily in indigenous defence capabilities and alternative regional corridors.
Greece’s growing reliance on Israeli systems and frameworks limits its independent policy space in key areas.
For Europe, this raises a wider question about connectivity and regional strategy.
Alignments that prioritise exclusion and symbolic positioning may offer short-term political gains, but they risk undermining long-term efficiency and resilience.
Sustainable stability in the Eastern Mediterranean is more likely to emerge from inclusive and infrastructure-based approaches that align geopolitical considerations with economic realities and recognise the role of all major actors, including Türkiye.
In this framework, the key issue is not the formation of new alliances, but whether these alliances enhance or constrain the strategic flexibility of the actors involved.
