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| By Ziya Öniş and Şuhnaz Yılmaz Greek-Turkish relations in the modern era have been characterized by cycles of improvement and worsening of bilateral relations.1 Historically three distinct phases of rapprochement could be identified between the two countries. The first phase of détente in Greek-Turkish relations followed the Treaty of Friendship signed between Kemal Atatürk and the Greek Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos in 1930. This process carried into the post-War period and continued well into the early 1950s as both countries became NATO members and assumed important geo-strategic roles in the Cold War context. From 1955 onwards, however, the détente has effectively collapsed under the pressure of the Cyprus dispute and its adverse impact on the Greek minority in Istanbul, Gökçeada (Imvros) and Bozcaada (Tenedos), and the Ecumenical Patriarchate. The relationship has deteriorated and reached its lowest point following the Turkish intervention in Cyprus in 1974. The second major phase of rapprochement occurred in the wake of Turkey’s application for full membership of the EC in 1987 through an initiative engineered by the Turkish Prime Minister Turgut Özal known as the Davos Process.2 Following a serious escalation in tensions in the Aegean in 1987, Özal met with his colleague Andreas Papandreou at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 1988. The Davos Process did not involve an attempt to tackle the grand problems relating to the Cyprus and the Aegean disputes. Nevertheless, it was clearly a step forward in that it involved confidence-building, tensionreduction and good neighborliness measures. The second phase of détente, however, proved to be of even shorter duration than the second and collapsed by the end of 1989 due to a combination of factors which included Andreas Papandreou’s lack of willingness and the political scandals resulting in his electoral defeat (June 1989), Özal’s isolation at home following the electoral setbacks in the municipal elections (March 1989) and his election to the Presidency and, finally, the rejection of Turkey’s membership by the European Community (December 1989). 3 Although the Davos Process proved to be short-lived, it was in a sense the fore-runner of the more recent rapprochement between the two countries in that it involved not only the participation of state actors, but also civil society and NGO initiatives. In retrospect, the failure of the Davos process also illustrated the crucial significance of EC/EU signals. It was quite clear that without positive signals for Turkish membership from the EC/EU, the incentives facing particularly the state actors to engineer a radical breakthrough in bilateral relations would be quite limited. Consequently, these two periods of enhancement in bilateral relations can be categorized as a fragile détente due to their extremely limited scope and ephemeral nature. In this respect, this article argues that the third phase of the Greek-Turkish rapprochement which has been initiated since the middle of the 1990s, promises to be a far more sustainable enhancement rather than simply the upturn of the cycle in an otherwise troubled and conflictual history of the two countries. Certainly, the context in which the rapprochement has been taking place is quite different from the earlier phases in the sense that the European Union, through its mix of conditions and incentives, has emerged as an active promoter of this approach. Indeed, there has been enormous progress in the post-1999 period during which Turkish membership of the EU has become a concrete possibility as opposed to an abstract ideal. Moreover, there has been a dramatic easing of tensions on both sides, which has been reflected through far-reaching improvements in the economic relations between the two countries in the areas of trade, investment and tourism. Similarly, there has been a dramatic increase in both diplomatic and civil initiatives which has brought the two countries closer than ever before with multiple actors at multiple levels supporting the process of sustainable rapprochement. At the same time, however, we have reached a situation where the incrementalist logic underlying the rapprochement, particularly voiced by prominent scholars such as Theodore Coulombis or Thanos Veremis on the Greek side, which has been significantly helpful during the early stages of the rapprochement, has reached a certain impasse. The basic logic of the gradualist approach is that the two countries should direct their attention on building co-operation from below by focusing on “micro” or “low politics” issues such as trade and tourism as well as cultural and civil society interactions, leaving the macro or “high politics” issues such as the Cyprus and the Aegean problems (namely territorial waters, continental-shelf, airspace, militarization of the eastern Greek islands, flight information region, and the”grey areas dispute” due to lack of clear demarcation) to the future. This paper acknowledges that the gradualist approach has provided the basis of a good start and, indeed, we have reached a point where the tensions between the two countries have eased considerably. Nevertheless, this kind of incrementalist logic which is based on a low expectations scenario is unlikely to transform the rapprochement from a negative securityoriented scenario into a durable partnership. Stated somewhat differently, the achievement of such a durable partnership with a considerable potential for co-operation from the Balkans to the Eastern Mediterranean will not be possible without a more pro-active approach on both sides towards the core issues of conflict. Another important point to highlight in this context is that the EU has played a paradoxical role in the process of restructuring Greek-Turkish relations in the recent era. Its role in providing the context and the incentives for the initial rapprochement process has been quite striking. At the same time, however, the EU has effectively limited the transition from the rapprochement to a durable partnership because of the asymmetric incentives that it has provided to the key actors involved. At the wake of the historic European Council decision on October 3, 2005 initiating the accession negotiation process of Turkey, the intricate dynamics of Turkish-Greek rapprochement will play a critical role for Turkey’s European integration, as well as serving as a litmus test for the extent of Europeanization of Greek foreign policy. Concluding Observations As Richard Clogg has observed Turkish-Greek relations have progressed in terms of cycles. Periods of detente have been accompanied by long periods of conflict and tension between the two countries. The recent rapprochement, however, contains the ingredients of a real breakthrough in Turkish-Greek relations. A benign interpretation suggests that the old cycle has finally been broken following a period of striking improvement in bilateral relations, a process in which both state and non-state actors have been heavily involved. Given the degrees of democratic deepening and the parallel shifts in foreign policy behavior achieved both in Greece and more recently in Turkey, even the most cynical observer would find it hard to believe that a crisis similar to the Imia-Kardak crisis of January 1996 would take place in the current context. The immediate security threat underlying the relationship between the two countries has largely subsided. The fact that relations with Turkey has not been the overriding item in Greek national elections in recent years demonstrates the strength of the detente, which makes it radically different from the earlier experiments in the 1930s and the 1990s. Support of Turkey’s EU membership has become national policy and Greece has been transformed from a veto player to a key suporter of Turkish membership of the EU. There is no doubt that through multiple channels the European Union has played a critical role in the recent rapprochement process. However, the EU through its actions, notably through its endorsement of the accession of the Republic of Cyprus to full membership without any conditions attached to the resolution of the Cyprus dispute has placed a major constraint on the possibility of an equitable settlement to the Cyprus dispute. It is highly probable that the Republic of Cyprus in the Community since May 2004 may play the role of a veto player, which Greece had played in the past with negative repercussions on Turkey during the 1981-1996 era. Indeed, we have alrady seen signs of this in the recent period. It is also quite striking that the EU has not been able to fulfill its promises to Northern Cyprus, which were made following the referendum in April 2004 that could have placed additional pressures on the Greek-Cypriot side for a re-unification of the island along the lines of the Annan Plan. Perhaps this is not so striking given the institutional structure of the EU and the powers of the member states. It is quite likely that Southern Cyprus will be a key member of the anti-Turkey coalition in the EU together with France and German Christian Democrats and it will be increasingly in a position to use its veto power to frustrate attempts aimed at a mutually satisfying compromise solution to the Cyprus dispute. Hence, the analysis of the rapprochement process illustrates quite nicely both the potential and the limits of the EU as a security community and its capacity to resolve tensions between countries enjoying unequal status between full and potential membership. Among the actors involved Turkey has the greatest incentive to adopt a pro-active behavior rather than a passive, wait and see attitude. Pro-active behavior such as the partial withdrawal of troops from Northern Cyprus especially given the mixed signals from the EU may be politically difficult for any government in the Turkish context. Nevertheless, the potential costs of a more pro-active approach should be weighed up against the danger that the longer the solution of the big, macro-issues like Cyprus are delayed during the process of accession negotiations with the EU, the more likely that the final outcome would be a less equitable one from the Turkish point of view. The achievements of the recent rapproachment process are considerable and it is extremely unlikely, given the depth of democratization and the Europeanization of foreign policy in Turkey in recent years and a similar process which has taken place in Greece over a longer time span that these achievements will be reversed. At the same time, an important point that emerges from our analysis is that a more pro-active approach addressing the core issues of conflict is needed from all the key actors involved in order to convert the recent process of establishing a sustainable rapprochement into a durable partnership. |
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| The fact is the Turkish government made plans and implemented them to destroy the Greek community under its care which according to the Lausanne treaty it was suppossed to protect. |