A helicopter lands on the deck of HS Kimon, one of the Hellenic Navy’s two newest warships, during training exercises near Cyprus in March 2026. Greece’s navy is smaller than Turkey’s; Athens has attempted to compensate for this by buying newer and more advanced vessels. (Shutterstock/world_by_savvas)

How Do Greece’s and Turkey’s Navies Stack Up?

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In spite of their nominal “alliance,” Greece and Turkey view each other as rivals in the Eastern Mediterranean—and both have pursued an ambitious naval buildup intended to deter the other.

Greece and Turkey are NATO allies—yet both nations are also longstanding strategic rivals with an ongoing dispute involving territorial waters in the Aegean Sea, contested airspace, maritime boundaries, and competing claims in the Eastern Mediterranean. In order to prepare for a military conflict, both countries have invested heavily in naval modernization, making them two of the strongest naval powers in Europe.

Today, Turkey possesses a clear quantitative advantage in the size of its navy and its fleet. This is no surprise; Turkey is the larger of the two countries, with eight times Greece’s population and roughly six times its land area, and has a robust domestic shipbuilding industry. Greece, however, is no pushover; it has emphasized procuring European-built........

© The National Interest