This essay addresses the following questions: How do political myths, such as the Red Apple and the frog in the boiling pot, function as guides to strategic behaviour?
How do these myths apply in the context of the Greco–Turkish rivalry?
This essay analyses two political myths as instruments of strategic cognition rather than as historical narratives. It argues that such myths operate as organising frameworks through which state elites interpret threat, opportunity, and the acceptable limits of action, especially in conditions of prolonged low-intensity conflict.
Drawing on the Ottoman–Turkish myth of the Red Apple and the parable of the frog in the slowly heated pot, the essay examines a strategic logic based on gradual pressure, incremental alteration of realities, and the deliberate avoidance of escalation thresholds that would provoke decisive counteraction. These myths are treated not as cultural artefacts but as functional guides to strategic behaviour, shaping expectations about restraint, timing, and risk.
Using a Thucydidean lens, the analysis explores the interaction of Fear, Honour, and Interest on both sides of an asymmetric rivalry. The framework is applied to the Greek–Turkish context, where incremental challenges tend to fragment perceived stakes, defer response, and temporarily balance the erosion of Honour against the Fear of conflict. A comparative reference to Chinese practice in similar low-intensity conflict environments situates this logic within a broader pattern of contemporary strategic behaviour. The essay concludes that stability generated under such conditions is inherently fragile and prone to abrupt reversal.
The use of political myths in the analysis of international affairs is often dismissed as impressionistic or methodologically unsound. Such scepticism rests on a narrow understanding of myth as a distorted account of the past. In strategic analysis, however, some political myths perform a different and far more consequential function. They operate as cognitive frameworks through which political and military elites interpret threat, opportunity, risk, and the acceptable boundaries of action. Their relevance lies not in historical accuracy, but in their capacity to structure perception and guide habitual behaviour over time.
Political myths condense complex strategic experiences into accessible narratives. They provide continuity across generations of decision-makers and serve as informal doctrines, especially in environments where formal strategy is constrained by ambiguity, deniability, or the absence of declared conflict. In this sense, myth belongs not to the realm of folklore, but to that of strategic psychology.
Within the Ottoman–Turkish strategic tradition, the myth commonly known as the Red Apple occupies such a role. According to the well-known parable, Mehmed II confronted his advisers with a problem: how to seize a red apple placed at the centre of a carpet without stepping onto it. When they failed, he slowly rolled the carpet inward from its edges until the red apple could be reached. The lesson was one of gradual encirclement and cumulative pressure upon the rival, minimising risk and avoiding premature confrontation, rather than seeking swift or decisive assault.
Whether historically authentic is ultimately beside the point. The Red Apple does not function as a literal objective, nor even as a fixed geographical destination. It functions as a symbolic horizon of achievement, while the carpet represents method. Power, in this logic, is exercised incrementally, through cumulative pressure, until resistance becomes futile or structurally impossible. The myth encodes a preference for gradualism, restraint, and timing over spectacle or direct collision.
This strategic logic finds a clear application in the context of the Greco–Turkish rivalry. From the perspective of Ankara, Greece is not primarily treated as an adversary to be defeated in a decisive confrontation, but as a space in which balances can be progressively altered. The objective is not immediate victory or conquest, but the slow redefinition of what is considered normal, tolerable, or irreversible. Legal challenges, operational probing, incremental faits accomplis, and persistent diplomatic pressure all belong to the same strategic grammar.
Under a Thucydidean lens, this behaviour is anchored first in Fear—specifically, fear of encirclement, exclusion, and strategic suffocation. Crucially, however, this fear is not managed through defensive passivity, but through an active strategy designed to prevent the emergence of a corresponding fear on the opposing side. Pressure is applied in a manner calculated to remain below the threshold that would transform irritation into existential alarm. Even when recognised as hostile, such actions are framed by the defending party as manageable, reversible, or insufficiently grave to justify escalation.
This constitutes a deliberate strategy of sub-threshold pressure within a low-intensity conflict environment. The aim is not to conceal intent, but to fragment perception: each individual move appears too limited to warrant a decisive response, even as their cumulative effect alters the strategic landscape.
At the level of Interest, the asymmetry becomes even more pronounced. For the aggressor, interest lies in expanding influence at controlled cost and without triggering countervailing coalitions or military confrontation. For the defending party, interest is assessed episodically rather than cumulatively. Each isolated challenge is judged insufficient to justify the risks associated with escalation. The familiar rhetorical question—“are we to go to war over a single islet?”—captures this logic with precision. Interest in restraint consistently outweighs interest in deterrence, moment by moment.
It is at this point that Honour enters the analysis—not as an abstract notion of prestige, but as a lived experience of erosion. Honour is not absent from the equation; it is wounded repeatedly. Every challenge to sovereign prerogatives, every redefinition of accepted limits, constitutes an affront. The difficulty lies not in recognising the affront, but in its gradualism. Because the injury unfolds incrementally, fear of escalation repeatedly neutralises the impulse to restore honour immediately. Restoration of Honour is not canceled; it is merely deferred.
This dynamic can be illuminated through a second political myth: that of the frog-in-a-pot of water heated slowly. Because the temperature rises gradually, the frog adapts rather than reacts, until escape becomes impossible. Applied strategically, the parable captures the psychology of prolonged low-intensity confrontation. Each adjustment appears rational in isolation; together, they produce a transformed reality.
The Red Apple myth describes the method of pressure; the boiling frog myth describes the psychology of adaptation. Combined, they form a coherent model of strategic interaction under low-intensity conditions. Fear restrains reaction, interest is fragmented into manageable units, and honour erodes without provoking immediate rupture.
This logic is not unique to the Greco-Turkish rivalry. A comparative illustration can be found in contemporary Chinese strategy. Globally, Beijing has expanded influence through instruments of economic integration and cultural presence—most notably the Belt and Road Initiative and the Confucius Institutes—creating dependencies without triggering direct confrontation. In the case of Taiwan, the approach becomes more overtly coercive, yet remains carefully calibrated. Military exercises, air and maritime incursions, and political pressure are conducted at levels designed to intimidate and normalise escalation without crossing the threshold that would compel a decisive military response.
In Thucydidean terms, such stability is illusory. It is not grounded in equilibrium, but in postponement of action. When accumulated injury to Honour can no longer be absorbed by fear, transitions from low-intensity conflict to open confrontation tend to be abrupt, externally conditioned, and difficult to control, leaving the initiating actor structurally advantaged over the responding actor.
The central conclusion is therefore stark. Political myths do not determine outcomes by themselves, but they shape the pathways through which outcomes emerge. Deterrence is not produced by the absence of conflict, but by the credible possibility of escalation. When a political myth remains unchallenged—when it is not empirically contradicted—it ceases to be symbolic and becomes operational.
Political myths, in this sense, are not stories about the past. They are cultural constructs that become embedded in patterns of strategic planning and, through them, shape the future.