Greece and the Mediterranean:

Shifting Foreign Policy[1]

Dimitris Xenakis, Panagiotis Tsakonas and Dimitris Chryssochoou

Introduction

Since antiquity, the Mediterranean has played a pivotal role in Greece’s history, politics and society, as the country is located at the crossroads of three continents – Europe, Asia and Africa. Although Greece, is well anchored to the European Union’s (EU) zone of peace and stability, being at the eastern hub of a strategic theatre connecting South-eastern Europe, the Middle East and the Caucasus, - together with Cyprus unlike any other EU members -, borders on regions of fluidity, where real or potential conflict endures. Greece is an integral part of the oft-troubled Balkan system, sharing a common heritage and culture with Balkan countries (Albania, Bulgaria, and FYROM) and those approaching the Middle East (Turkey and Cyprus) and North Africa (Egypt and Libya). Greece's complex relations with these three sets of neighbours in the wider Mediterranean typify the difficulties and challenges involved in seeking co-operation in these areas.

Arguably, no other part of the globe exemplifies better the post-bipolar symptoms of instability towards the fragmentation and revival of ‘ancient feuds’ than the Mediterranean, with security questions becoming increasingly indivisible. In the post-Cold War era, analysts were quick to point out that the Mediterranean constitutes an area of strategic and socio-economic instability, with varying forms of political institutions, violent religious and cultural conflicts, differing perceptions of security and worldviews. Security anxieties in the region include inter alia Turkey's question, Lebanon's struggle, Algeria's civil war, the still-open Cyprus question, the Palestinian issue, Israel's relations with Arab world, activities of terrorist groups, pervasive economic backwardness and unequal demographic growth, rising transnational crime including narcotics trafficking, proliferation of weapons of every kind, and last but not least, activities of great powers and international institutions in areas of long-standing rivalry and intervention. Regional security considerations are also as full of misunderstandings about distorted perceptions and images of Islam, as they are about the threat of terrorism used by transnational extremist groups, especially post-September 11^th.

Greece, the country which gave birth to the idea of democracy some 25 hundred years ago, is an ensemble of historically constituted cultural properties that has managed in the course of time to reconcile homogeneity and diversity. Today, Greece is a promising regional actor, capable of contributing further to the co-operation structures in its Balkan and Mediterranean peripheries. Greece has a clear interest in participating to its full capacity in the formation of a vibrant and viable Euro-Mediterranean space but also by a notable potential for regional systemic change. This is particularly crucial, after the EU’s ‘big-bang’, namely its enlargement to the east. A radically different EU - more supranational, more post-sovereign, more post-modern, more multi-cultural and more demanding - is ever more closely bound at its East European anxieties and has not paid due attention to the pressing realities of post-Cold War Mediterranean transformation.

On Greek Foreign Policy

Greek culture measures its greatness by its remarkable longevity in history. Since the Enlightenment, European intellectuals have posited Greece as the cradle of European civilization. However, another aspect of Greek culture links Greece with the Orient and its southern Mediterranean neighbours. The fact, however, that Greece was for several centuries under the Ottoman rule explains why the national identity discourse accepts Islamic cultures as constituting the ‘other’. Hence, Greece has been defined along the lines, on the one hand, of its Europeaness and, on the other, its affinity to the Mediterranean and the Balkans, with the Mediterranean itself constituting from a Greek perspective a Southern European periphery. Greece has good relations with most Arab countries and Israel, although it maintains relatively little contact with its southern neighbors as compared to its Balkan counterparts. Due mainly to traditional but also emergent security concerns, as well as to the centrality of religion in Greek identity, the country orients itself more towards the Balkans than the Mediterranean.[2]

Greece is a member of all important international and regional organizations and a full member of the EU, courtesy of the latter’s first Mediterranean enlargement in 1981. Since then, the evolution of European governance structures has had a direct impact on the country’s orientation. It is not surprising that an overwhelming majority of Greek public opinion has supported increasingly, and quite clearly since the mid-1980s, the country’s European orientation and its multifaceted integration into the mechanisms and institutions of the EU system, including foreign policy pursuits.[3]

Post-Cold War, Greek foreign policy was formulated in relation to the political and economic aspects of globalization and the necesity, to quote from former Foreign Minister George Papandreou, for Greece to redefine ‘at a deeper level … [its] identity in the multicultural settings of Europe, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean’. Greece exhibits a firm European orientation, but at the same time it maintains particular Balkan and Mediterranean concerns that relate to a growing set of internal and external security issues. Accordingly, the main long-term strategic objectives of Greece are to further the process (but also the quality) of Europeanisation within its domestic governance structures, to safeguard its territorial integrity (especially from the East), to project its civilian values in its northern and southern borders,[4] as well as, to develop new lines of communication for energy, and other infrastructure projects.[5] Greece is one of the firmest supporters for deeper integration in general, and the federalisation of the EU political system in particular. The once problematic relationship with the then European Community (EC), conceptualised along the lines of an “uneasy interdependence”, is long gone. Being an integral part of the Eurozone and with a generally increasing propensity to internalising European norms, Greece is a polity that strives towards a more profound deepening of the integration process, especially in the fields of Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP), perceiving them as a prelude to a truly common European defence and external action.

On the other hand it is also true that Greece used to become active in Europe’s Mediterranean politics only when issues on Cyprus or Turkey arise.[6] In this framework Greek foreign policy has been described as ‘irrational’, ‘parochial’, ‘incomprehensible’, ‘aggressive’, even ‘crazy’, underlying the absence of a systemic institutional framework.[7] It is also true, however, that Greece has often found itself in a delicate position between the dictates of complex interdependence and the quest for independent self-rule on sensitive national issues. It has thus often been accused of having a fixed preoccupation with the Aegean and the Cyprus issue, and of being a stumbling bloc whenever issues relating to Turkey have arisen in the Brussels headquarters.[8]

Greek and Euro-Turkish Relations

Greece in the mid 1970s found that it had neither institutional nor military safeguards against potential Turkish aggression. Therefore, Greece’s membership in the EC, though largely economically motivated, it was also meant to bolster the existing Greek government and, most importantly, to strengthen the country’s international position, especially its deterrent capability against Turkey.[9] Enjoying a comparative advantage as a full member of the EC, Greece tried to use the latter as a diplomatic lever against Turkey. As Greek and Turkish analysts argue, the EC collective approach towards the conflict was greatly influenced, if not captured, by Greece’s views and desiderata on Cyprus and Greek-Turkish relations.[10] Indeed, successive Greek governments have shown remarkable continuity in using the Cyprus issue for blocking EU-Turkey relations since the 1980s.[11] At the same time, advancement in relations between the EC and Turkey have remained linked to the exercise of Greece’s veto power, unless Turkey first meets particular criteria - related mainly to the state of democracy and the respect for human rights - and/or abandon its revisionist policy in the Aegean.[12] Unsurprisingly, the EU was perceived by Turkey as just another platform through which Greece, taking full advantage of its position as a member, could exert pressure on Turkey and pursue its national agenda with respect to Turkey.[13]

However, in the 1990s a drastic change in the logic of the conflict between Greece and Turkey had occurred and, as a result, they seem much better off today in terms of bilateral relations than they were seven years ago and/or over the course of their three-decade conflict. The new era in Greek-Turkish relations was ushered in mainly due to a visionary strategy that was inspired and implemented by the former Greek government of Costas Simitis and is being continued - although with particular changes and/or ‘refinements’ - by the current leadership of Costas Karamanlis.

Interestingly, the phenomenon of the Greek-Turkish conflict - which so far has been heavily biased by policy-oriented perspectives - has long constituted an anomaly in the security community of Europe.[14] Especially with regard to NATO, the Greek-Turkish conflict is a case that goes against the conventional wisdom of alliance cooperation, and it is thus dismissed as an exception to the positive identification achieved among the other Alliance’s members.[15] Despite the loosening of the structural constraints of the Cold War, the reconstruction of the Alliance’s identity, especially after NATO’s eastern expansion and the strengthening of the institution’s status as a community of ‘like minded democracies’,[16] and the strategic upgrading of the Mediterranean region as the new Central Front of the Alliance seemed to constitute the very factors why the new NATO would be more likely to adopt a bolder approach toward the settlement of the Greek-Turkish dispute. Interestingly though, the Greek-Turkish conflict was exacerbated after the end of the Cold War. Although one may argue that the EU and NATO institutional contexts have restrained the two states from full-scale war, they have not succeeded in generating the sense of collectively being part of a security community given that both states have continued to consider military means a rational and justifiable way to relate to each other.[17]

The rise of Costas Simitis’ ‘modernizers’ to the leadership of the country in 1996 has steered Greece away from its nationalist foreign policy to a truly modernist-Europeanist direction and from the so-called strategy of ‘conditional sanctions’ to the one of ‘conditional rewards’ in relation to Turkey’s EU candidancy. The new policy of ‘conditional rewards’ was received positively by the Turkish elite, who started reconsidering past views that decisions in the EU are fully captured by Greece. They were now prepared to accept a compromise deal for the resolution of Turkey’s long-standing conflict with an EU member.

Following the demands of globalization, the need for domestic modernization and reform and, mainly, ‘common sense’, the Greek government in the mid-1990s opted for a medium and long-term policy endeavouring to anchor Turkey in the European integration system, where European norms of behavior and certain European-style ‘rules of the game’ had to be followed by Turkey. This strategy reached its climax in the EU summit in Helsinki in 1999 when the EU acknowledged the linkage between Turkey’s EU orientation, the resolution of the Greek-Turkish conflict over the Aegean issues, and the end of Turkey’s occupation of the northern part of Cyprus.[18] Greece had thus managed to enmesh both the Cyprus and the Aegean issues within the context of the EU –where Greece enjoyed a comparative advantage vis-à-vis an aspiring member state - and ensured that both issues remained closely linked to Turkey’s European accession path. The first fruitful results of Greece’s strategy came shortly after: in December 2002, at the EU summit in Copenhagen, Cyprus was admitted to the EU, although its political problem remained unresolved with Nicosia remaining the last divided capital in Europe.

Interestingly, in March 2004 the thorniest and most ambivalent issue Greece’s newly elected conservative government had to deal with was the rejection of the UN Secretary General Plan by the Greek-Cypriot community in the referendum that took place in Cyprus in April 2004 regarding the reunification of the island. The half-hearted position adopted by the Premier Karamanlis regarding the ability of European integration to eventually restore certain provisions of the Plan detrimental to the Greek-Cypriot side proved unable to convince the majority of the Greek-Cypriots to vote in favor of what was known as the “Annan plan”. The fact that seventy-six percent of the Greek-Cypriots rejected it while sixty-four percent of Turkish-Cypriots voted in favor, negatively affected --if not delegitimized—the Greek strategy. Indeed, Turkey’s ability to secure EU membership no longer hinged on its stance regarding the Cyprus issue, as the international community gave the Turkish government full credit for its sincere and successful efforts to neutralize and finally replace the intransigent Turkish-Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash in order for the Turkish-Cypriot community to support the Annan Plan for the reunification of the island. By implication, and viewed from a purely instrumental logic, Greece also lost much of its leverage it had possessed to check Turkey’s European path through its stance on the Cyprus issue.

The lack of success in resolving the Cyprus problem in April 2004 could have had negative consequences for Greek-Turkish relations. Most importantly, it would have made a compromise deal between Greece and Turkey on ‘high politics’ in the Aegean before the end of 2004 an issue of high political risk for the newly elected Greek government. Indeed, faced with a Greek public educated to the uncompromising position that besides the delimitation of the continental shelf all other issues are considered as unilateral Turkish claims, is hard to think of a Greek government willing to deal with the political cost entailed in any resolution agreement with Turkey.

In the aftermath of the Cyprus’ referenda, Karamanlis’ government was not hesitant to decouple the Cyprus issue and Greek-Turkish relations by stating that Greece would not consider resolution of the Cyprus issue to be a precondition for Turkey’s accession to the European Union. In other words, Greece would continue to support Turkey’s EU accession process even if Greek-Turkish differences were not resolved by the Helsinki timetable, which had set December 2004 as a deadline for the resolution of the conflict either through an agreement between the disputants or via the compulsory reference of the Greek-Turkish dispute to the International Court of Justice.[19]

The decoupling of the resolution of the Cyprus issue and that of the Greek-Turkish dispute from Turkey’s accession to the EU was further enhanced by the December 2004 EU summit conclusions in Brussels which, with Greece’s concession, had withdrawn the Helsinki deadline. It seems that by de-linking progress on Turkey’s membership with the resolution of its dispute with Greece, the 2004 EU summit decreased both disputants’, especially Turkey’s, incentives to search for a –solely bilateral—compromise solution.

The basic rationale for this decision on the part of Greece was that it would be to its benefit to concede to and promote a resolution of the Greek-Turkish dispute at a later stage when Turkey’s Europeanization process would have produced a much more favorable situation to Greece’s demands and interests. At the time the management of the conflict and its eventual transformation seemed to constitute the two main goals of Greece’s strategy. For achieving the first goal the temperature in the Aegean had to be kept at the lowest level possible, while the transformation of the long standing conflict with Turkey was expected to come through Turkey’s Europeanization. The EU was thus expected to act both as a trigger and an anchor for Turkey’s reform.

However, although an adoption of the EU’s legislation, norms, rules and requirements was put into motion after Turkey’s EU candidacy in 1999 and one may observe certain normative and internalization effects of the EU on the process, style and content of Turkey’s foreign policy towards a more rationalized and multilateralist stance, no one can deny that there was a serious setback at the 2004 summit on the EU’s willingness to actively contribute the resolution of the Greek-Turkish conflict.

Turkey officially started accession negotiations with the EU in October 2005, yet the road to membership looks long and strewn with obstacles. Obviously, the ‘refinement’ of Greece’s strategy since 2004 – by decoupling progress on Turkey’s membership from the resolution of its dispute with Greece and by withdrawing the Helsinki deadline for the resolution of the Greek-Turkish dispute - negatively affected both the credibility of the EU to be ‘an active player’ in the resolution of the Greek-Turkish conflict and its ability to be viewed ‘as a framework’ with potential positive effects in the long-run.

Furthermore, a series of other developments could also worsen the EU’s ability to constructively intervene and contribute to the resolution of the Greek-Turkish conflict. Indeed, in the years to come the resolution of the Greek-Turkish conflict is expected to become even more secondary to the EU’s priorities in its enlargement policy. Moreover, representations of Turkey as ‘non-European’, especially after the rejection of the European Constitutional Treaty by France and The Netherlands, resurfaced in many EU countries, Greece included, as the European identity discourse began to emphasize the ‘non-European’ characteristics of Turkey. Such developments may move Turkey back to an ambiguous, if not threatening, institutional position in relation to the EU and, thus have detrimental consequences for the resolution of its conflict with Greece.

Greece’s Mediterranean contribution

It is true that different perceptions of interest persist about the EU’s Mediterranean relations among its southern members themselves. The latter, although they share some identifiable elements of a common identity, these are not strong enough to be reflected in permanent and structured political solidarity.[20] Southern EU members have not yet formed a cohesive block in relation to the EU’s eastwards enlargement and, even more so, with regards to the future of the EU itself.[21] Especially France, Spain and Italy bring Mediterranean issues to the fore of the EU’s agenda, for they traditionally maintain a plethora of strong ties with the countries of the region. As Veremis put it, the proximity of Portugal, Spain and Italy to North Africa and the common borders of Greece and Italy with the troubled Balkans, helps explain each country’s regional line of work.[22] Although France is generally seen as the ‘champion’ of EU Mediterranean interests, it has displayed a rather ‘inchoate strategy’ towards parts of the Mediterranean (e.g., Algeria). Moreover, countries like Spain and Italy are not willing to accept a French leadership in the formulation of the EU’s Mediterranean policy.[23] Another contradiction is that, while those three countries play an active role in setting the EU’s Mediterranean agenda, smaller countries like Greece, Malta and Cyprus face in a more direct manner the potential tidal waves of regional instability.

Although the Greece’s accession to the EU from the early 1980s has advanced its’ external relations, its Mediterranean policy has been generally reactive, thus letting other actors determine the parameters of the EU’s respective policy. This was changed in the mid-1990s (Corfu European Council- 1994) and even more in the framework of the Hellenic Presidency of the European Counsil in 2003. With Greek politics being re-formulated, new strategic orientations emerged, including the Euro-Mediterranean setting. Greece played an important role in promoting peace and stability in the region, as part of the European integration project and its regional security building through ESDP.

With the launching of the Barcelona Process in 1995, Greece has intensified its efforts to develop diplomatic links and to promote economic and cultural ties with southern Mediterranean states. In doing so, it has made use of existing opportunities to act as a factor of stability throughout its partners’ transitional phase. In response to the new challenges posed by economic and commercial opportunities in this region and other emerging markets in the world, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has been actively promoting Greek business abroad by setting up a department to co-ordinate with other agencies and private sector organisations. Instructions have been sent to Greek embassies and consulates to foster economic and commercial ties with the business community of the host country. Furthermore, entrepreneurial activities and historical ties can ensure Greece’s positive contribution to the development process, prosperity and well-being of Mediterranean people. Also the initiative of the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs in organising two meetings between Palestinian and Israeli politicians, journalists and academics in Athens in July and December 1997 is a good case in point.

Greece also held the presidency of the ESDP from July 2002 (following Denmark’s opting-out) until the summer of 2003, something which came as both a great opportunity, and a great responsibility. According to the then Defence Minister, Yannos Papantoniou, it gave to Greece the possibility of making an effective contribution to building Europe’s ESDP, and a great responsibility, because in this 12-month Presidency too many issues have arisen in the international agenda.[24] Following the mobilization of the Greek presidency during the Informal Conference of Defense Ministers in Rethymno, in 4-5 October 2002, the prospect of ESDP have been set on a more stable basis. Doubtless, the further integration of foreign, security and defence policies in the EU context is bound to have an impact on Euro-Mediterranean relations.

Demands for greater transparency become central to the political governance of the Mediterranean, especially in relation to the multilogical structures of the Barcelona Process. At a normative level, mutual trust-building, combined with the development of common understandings among the partner-nations and a culture of rule-governed state behavior, should be at the top of the regional agenda. In that respect, Mediterranean stability-building cannot be properly handled without devising ways to give non-EU partners a greater voice in correcting existing asymmetries, giving their concerns as much consideration as possible. Hence another function of the attempts of the 2003 Greek Presidency’s seminars on the Mediterranean Dimension of the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) in Rhodes 1-2 November 2002 and Corfu 9-10 May 2003, to act as platforms for a constructive discourse.[25]

The war against terrorism, the situation in the Middle East and the increasing emphasis given by the EU to illegal immigration matters, have raised questions in the South regarding the deeper motives for the setting up of ESDP, in view of NATOs’ new priorities on international terrorism and the Middle East.[26] Important in this framework is the Greek initiative on ESDP, which aimed to carry forward the work done by the Spanish presidency, in order to further develop the capacity for dialogue with all Mediterranean partners, so as to identify the common Euro-Mediterranean interests and aspirations. Co-ordination mechanisms for bilateral cooperation between the EU members and southern partners should not be excluded from the agenda. The aim would be to incorporate important bilateral relations between different partner countries and EU members, at least at the level of exchange of information. This could then be extended to other sub-regional initiatives where security is a clear issue, such as the Mediterranean Forum.[27]

Most analysts, in the light of the negative experience with Eurofor and Euromarfor, have underlined the need of complementary measures to support the ESDP. Given the low level of information about the ESDP in the Arab world, it the EU decided to pay greater attention to the misperceptions and fears of its Mediterranean partners regarding the strengthening of its military capabilities. Thus the ESDP acquired its own Mediterranean dimension, courtesy of the initiative taken by the Spanish Presidency during the first half of 2002. The Hellenic Presidency that followed, played a decisive role to that end. Its proposals on transparency, trust-building and the institutionalisation of security dialogue will allow EMP partners to gain better access in the making of a co-operative regional space and to reduce the existing levels of regional asymmetry. Thus the Hellenic Presidency’s seminars on the Mediterranean Dimension of the ESDP, in Rhodes and in Corfu, acted as platforms for an open exchange of views to clarify EU strategic intentions and to alleviate any possible misperceptions, thus promoting mutual understanding.

Conclusions

Although Europe is fundamentally important for the Greek polity, it cannot be regarded without also considering its unstable peripheral areas, the Balkans and the Mediterranean. Greece maintains particular Mediterranean concerns that relate to both internal and external security.

Α major question in the region is whether conflict-prone areas such as the Middle East, will manage to integrate into the emerging regional system of stability or cling atavistically to patterns of local conflict. Greece has been active in supporting every effort towards diplomatic, non-military solutions in the Middle East, presenting an interesting position in this context, potentially useful for all parties. Greece’s objective in the Middle East is crystal-clear: to carry forward dynamic initiatives in order to establish a coherent framework of principles and rules of justice and democracy, which will take effect throughout the region. This policy is guided by the principles of the respect for international borders, stability and security, as well as by full respect for human rights.

Despite the many complex problems faced by the littoral countries, Greece aims to develop both bilateral and multilateral links based on historical and cultural ties and affinities, as well as on common economic and commercial experience. Greece has also intensified its efforts to foster links with its neighbours, by acting as a factor of stability throughout their transitional phase. Building on the EU’s Mediterranean approach, the new regional space becomes a rediscovered land of opportunity for Greek policy-makers, representing an embodiment of a long-standing view that Greece has to strike a balance between its European, Balkan and Mediterranean identities.

Without doubt, Greece today is being called upon to play an important role in promoting peace and stability in the Euro-Mediterranean space, by undertaking conflict prevention initiatives as well as actively participating in the elaboration and planning of the EU’s foreign policy. The 2003 Greek presidency of the EU has renewed the interest in the initiation and the institutional consolidation of a political dialogue on matters of Mediterranean security and defence. The Greek proposals for extra-transparency, trust-building and the institutionalisation of political dialogue in the Mediterranean, will enhance the internal cohesion of the Barcelona Process.

More important perhaps from a Greek perspective is that the chances for substantive regional co-operation would dramatically increase if a viable solution for the Cyprus question were to be found, and Greek-Turkish relations were further enhanced, so that both countries can take advantage of the benefits stemming from their geostrategic position at the regional crossroads. The strong optimism that Greece and Turkey would seek ways of resolving their longstanding territorial dispute was emerged after 1999 due to Turkey’s candidacy and potential accession into the EU. It seems, however, that the EU is itself a contentious issue between Greece and Turkey. This is due to the fact that Greece has been a member of the EU since 1981, whereas Turkey, although recognised as a membership candidate at the Helsinki European Council in 1999 and in spite of accession negotiations which began in October 2005, is still generally seen as being a long way from full membership. The Greek government should develop a strategy that would allow for the absorption of the turbulence that a probable deterioration in relations between the EU and Turkey would entail for Greece’s security, in what promises to be a very contentious year for Turkey in the Middle East.

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[1] VERY FIRST DRAFT – NOT FOR QUOTATION.

[2] On this issue see M. Pace, Rethinking the Mediterranean: Reality and Re-presentation in the Creation of a Region, Ph.D. Thesis, University of Portsmouth, June, 2001, especially chapter 4.

[3] M. J. Tsinisizelis and D. N. Chryssochoou, ‘Images of Greece and European Integration: A Case of Uneasy Interdependence?’, Synthesis, Vol. 1, No. 2, 1996, pp. 22-33.

[4] T. Dokos, ‘Greece in A New Regional Security Setting’, Defensor Pacis, Special issue on the Greek Presidency, No 13, Defence Analysis Institute, Athens 2003.

[5] I. Lesser, ‘Greece’s New Strategic Environment’, in I. Lesser et. al. Greece’s New Geopolitics, RAND-Kokkalis Foundation, Santa Monica, 2001, p. 2.

[6] C. Rozakis, ‘Greek foreign policy 1974-85: Modernization and the international role of a small state’, in A. Manessis et al. (eds.), Greece in Motion, Exandas, Athens, 1986 (in Greek).

[7] P. C. Ioakimidis, ‘The Model of Foreign Policy-Making in Greece: Personalities versus Institutions’, in S. Stavridis et a l., 1999, p. 140.

[8] Greece has in the past vetoed financial protocols in relation to the Association Agreement with Turkey, and caused a delay in the conclusion of a Customs Union between Turkey and the EU.

[9] In the words of one senior Greek official: ‘Turkey would thus think twice to attack an EU member state’, see The Economist, 26 July 1975 and The Guardian, 19 May 1976 (as quoted in Y. Valinakis, With Vision and Program: Foreign Policy for a Greece with Self-Confidence (in Greek), Paratiritis, Thessaloniki, 1997, p. 279. See also the speeches of the Premier Constantine Karamanlis, Kathimerini (Greek daily), 11 April 1978 and 1 January 1981, as quoted in Valinakis, p. 283).

[10] See T. Couloumbis, “Introduction: The Impact of EC Membership on Greece’s Foreign Policy Profile” in P. Kazakos and P. C. Ioakimidis (eds.) Greece and EC Membership Evaluated, Pinter Publishers, London, 1994, and S. Guvenc, “Turkey’s Changing Perception of Greece’s Membership in the European Union”, Turkish Review of Balkan Studies, 4, 1998/99, pp. 103-30.

[11] It was not until March, 1995 that Greece decided to lift its veto towards the EU-Turkey Customs Union agreement. In exchange for the removal of the Greek veto on the Customs Union accession negotiations between the EU and Cyprus would begin in March 1998. Cyprus would thus be included in the next round of enlargement accession negotiations. With regard to Turkey’s European orientation, decisions made in Luxembourg and Cardiff, in January and June 1998 respectively, further burdened the already tense and fragile Greek-Turkish security agenda, as the postponement of Turkey’s accession negotiations remained linked to Greece’s deliberate policy of keeping the doors of the EU closed. See more analytically in H. Kramer, “Turkish Application for Accession to the European Community and the Greek Factor”, Europa Archive 42 (10), 1987, pp. 605-614, and C. Stephanou and C. Tsardanides, “The EC Factor in the Greece-Turkey-Cyprus Triangle” in D. Constas (ed.) The Greek-Turkish Conflict in the 1990s: Domestic and External Influences, St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1991, pp. 207-30.

[12] In 1986, Greece vetoed the resumption of the Association relationship between Turkey and EC and the release of frozen aid to Turkey. A year later, when Turkey applied for EC membership, Greece was the only member that openly opposed referring the application to the EC Commission for an Opinion. See Guvenc, op. cit.. It is characteristic that even up to the EU-Turkey Association Council in April 1997, Greece maintained its veto and continued blocking EU aid to Turkey worth 375 million ECUs. As explained by the then Greek Minister of Foreign Affairs, Theodoros Pangalos, the veto was to be maintained until Turkey stopped disputing Greek sovereignty in the Aegean. See Athens News Agency, Daily Bulletin, 30 April 1997, statement by Foreign Minister Pangalos.

[13] See K. Kirisci and A. Carkoglu, “Perceptions of Greeks and Greek-Turkish Rapprochement by the Turkish Public” in B. Rubin and A. Carkoglu (eds.), Greek-Turkish Relations in an Era of Détente, Frank Cass, London, 2003, and M. Ugur, The European Union and Turkey: An Anchor/Credibility Dilemma, Ashgate, Aldershot, 1999.

[14] Greece and Turkey have been allies in NATO since 1952. They have also been associate members of the European Community since 1961 and 1963, respectively. Greece became a full member in 1981, and Turkey became a candidate of the European Union in 1999. However, despite their joint participation in and/or close association with these institutions, Turkey and Greece have continued to maintain antagonistic relations. In addition to armed conflict over Cyprus in 1974, Turkey and Greece have been in numerous near-war situations in 1964, 1967, 1976 and in 1996 over Cyprus and the continental shelf, airspace and small islets in the Aegean.

[15] Law, M. D. and S. N. McFarlane, “NATO Expansion and European Regional Security” in D. G. Haglund, (ed.) Will NATO Go East? The Debate Over Enlarging the Atlantic Alliance, Queen's University Center for International Relations, Kingston, Ont., 1996, p. 39.

[16] Hampton, N. M., “NATO, Germany and the United States: Creating Positive Identity in Trans-Atlantia”, Security Studies, Vol. 8, No. 2/3, 1998/99, pp. 235-69.

[17] Particular efforts have also been undertaken to investigate the effects NATO and the EU have had on the Greek-Turkish conflict. Building on various theoretical strands, research into the effects of NATO and the EU on Greece’s and Turkey’s strategies toward cooperation and positive identification and, more specifically, into their conflict transformation has shown whether these institutions matter and, more importantly, how they matter even though their impact may have ‘perverse’, undesirable, implications. See more analytically in P. Tsakonas, Security Institutions and Interstate Conflict in the Eastern Mediterranean. Parochial, Necessary or Insufficient?, EKEM Papers, EKEM, Athens, forthcoming.

[18] The 1997 European Council in Luxembourg was the first one to introduce the conditionality factor in the EU’s intervention in the Greek-Turkish conflict. Thus, the settlement of the Greek-Turkish dispute and the establishment of stable relations with Greece appeared as a condition for strengthening EU links with Turkey. Yet the Luxembourg EU decisions were not addressed to Turkey, identifying its dispute with an EU member as an impediment to its candidacy and asking Turkey to comply with this norm and/or condition without offering it, however, the carrot of candidacy. Unsurprisingly, the EU’s introduction of a ‘negative conditionality’, without being followed by any carrot or reward, was interpreted by Turkey as a policy of ‘conditional sanctions’ imposed by Greece on an ambivalent, if not reluctant, EU with regard to Turkey’s membership. See B. Rumelili, “The Microprocesses of Hegemonic Influence: The Case of EU and Greece/Turkey”, EUBORDERCONF Project, Bogazici University/University of Birmingham, 2004, pp. 17-18.

[19] The Greek government that emerged from the parliamentary elections in March 2004, burdened with the rejection of the Annan Plan by the Greek/Cypriots and hesitant to pay the cost a compromise settlement with Turkey before the Helsinki deadline (i.e. the end of 2004) would entail, opted for a transference of the dispute’s resolution to the future. For an analysis of Greece’s ‘socialization’ strategy vis-à-vis Turkey prior to Helsinki and after it, see P. Tsakonas, Breakthrough in Greek-Turkish Relations? Understanding Greece's Socialization Strategy, Basingstoke and Palgrave, New York, 2007.

[20] R. Aliboni, ‘Southern European Security: Perceptions and Problems’, in R. Aliboni (ed.), Southern European Security in the 1990s, Pinter, London 1992, p. 2.

[21] D. Constas, ‘Southern European countries in the European Community’, in Holmes (ed.), op. cit., pp. 127-150.

[22] T. Veremis, ‘International Relations in Southern Europe’, in J. Loughlin (ed.), Southern European Studies Guide, Bauker-Saur, London 1993, pp. 207-210.

[23] For comprehensive analyses of Spain’s increasing role in the Mediterranean see R. Gillespie, Spain and the Mediterranean: Developing a European Policy towards the South, Macmillan, London, 1999; and, ‘Spanish Protagonismo and the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership’, Mediterranean Politics, Vol. 2 No 1, Summer 1997, pp. 33-48; R. Gillespie, ‘Spain and the Mediterranean: Southern Sensitivity, European Aspirations’, Mediterranean Politics, Vol. 1 No 2, Autumn 1996, pp. 193-211; and C. Echeverria Jesus, ‘Spain and the Mediterranean’, in Stavridis et. al. (eds.), op. cit., 1999, pp. 98-113. Respectively for Italy see J. W. Holmes, ‘Italy: In the Mediterranean, but of it?’, Mediterranean Politics, Vol. 1 No 2, Autumn 1996, pp. 176-192; E. Greco and L. Guazzone, ‘Continuity and Change in Italy’s security policy’, in Aliboni (ed.), op. cit., especially pp. 71-83; and, R. Aliboni, ‘Italy and the Mediterranean in the 1990s’, in Stavridis, et. al. (eds.), op. cit., 1999, pp. 73-97.

[24] Y. Papantoniou, ‘The Mediterranean Dimension of the European Union’s Security and Defense Policy and the Hellenic Presidency’, Inaugural speech delivered at the seminar organised by the Greek Presidency of the European Union, Ministry of Defence, Rhodes, 1-2 November 2002.

[25] D. K. Xenakis and D. N. Chryssochoou, ‘The 2003 Hellenic Presidency of the European Union: Mediterranean Perspectives on the European Security and Defence Policy’, ΖΕΙ Discussion Papers, C. 128, Zentrum für Europäische Integrationsforschung, University of Bonn, 2003.

[26] First Year Report of the Euro-Mediterranean Study Commission (EuroMeSCo) Working Group ΙΙΙ, ‘European Defence: Perceptions vs. Realities’, EuroMeSCo Papers, No 16, 2002.

[27] Workshop on ‘Measures for Conflict Prevention in the MedForum Countries’ Framework’, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Rome 21-22 June 2002.