Claim that US will shutter Greek military base is false

"BREAKING: Trump shut downs U.S. base in Alexandroupoli, Greece," says a February 24, 2025 X post with thousands of interactions.

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Screenshot from X taken February 25, 2025

The same claim has circulated elsewhere on X, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Bluesky, TikTok, YouTube, Gettr and news websites -- including in Greek, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian.  Several Moscow-aligned organizations including state-run news services RIA Novosti and Russia Today also amplified the claim.

Most of the posts attribute the claim to the conservative, Athens-based newspaper Dimokratia, which published a headline article on February 23 claiming Trump was closing the base at the behest of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The US president has begun a major overhaul at the Pentagon, firing top officers and reshaping the military, which could lead to a shift in strategy on longstanding alliances with Europe.

Trump blindsided Ukrainian and European leaders by agreeing to start peace talks with Russia and said he wants Kyiv to return billions of dollars in aid given by the US. Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth warned NATO allies that American military presence on the continent might not "last forever."

But the claims about the Greek base are inaccurate.

In a joint appearance with French President Emmanuel Macron in the Oval Office on February 24, a reporter asked Trump whether the story was accurate. After briefly conferring with Hegseth, the US president said: "It's not a correct story" (archived here).

Contacted by AFP, a US defense official said the base in the city, which is also known as Alexandroupolis, was not owned by the US, but is a Greek facility that the American military uses to transport supplies into Europe under a mutual defense pact.

"US transport personnel can surge to the location to manage episodic arrivals and departures of equipment, but this is not a US 'base' for the US to close," the official said in a February 24 email.

The US-Greek Mutual Defense Cooperation Agreement, originally signed in 1990 and amended in 2019, includes a clause saying the United States would have "priority" access to Alexandroupolis's port to transport equipment into the country (archived here).

In October 2021, then-secretary of state Antony Blinken signed an amendment to the agreement amid rising tensions between Greece and Turkey. The amendment gave the US permission to station troops at Camp Giannoulis in the northeastern Greek city, but it specified that the facility would still be owned by the Greek armed forces (archived here).

A keyword search revealed no reports that the US intends to terminate its over three-decade-old agreement with Greece.

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US Secretary of State Antony Blinken (R) and Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias sign the renewal of the US-Greece Mutual Defense Cooperation Agreement at the State Department in Washington, DC, on October 14, 2021. (POOL / JONATHAN ERNST)

AFP has debunked other claims about US military bases.