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Greece Turkey
https://photius.com/countries/greece/government/greece_government_turkey.html
Sources: The Library of Congress Country Studies; CIA World Factbook
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    In late 1994, relations with Turkey remained Greece's most intractable international problem, with strong ramifications in domestic economic and defense planning. For Greece the end of superpower politics and the enlargement of the EU had little effect on the long-standing disputes with Turkey over Cyprus and adjacent sea-lanes and airspace. The end of the Warsaw Pact meant that both Greece and Turkey found themselves competing even more intensively than during the Cold War for the attentions of their common defensive patron, the United States. Meanwhile, Greece's advantageous position in the EU appeared to intensify Turkish intransigence and complicate any compromise settlement of bilateral conflicts.

    After the fall of East European communist regimes in 1991, several of the conflicts and stresses that occurred to Greece's north and west had an effect on its relations with Turkey when Muslim populations, chiefly in Albania and Bosnia and Herzegovina, were threatened. Greece's position as an economic supporter of Serbia, blockaded by NATO because of its role against the Bosnian Muslims, injected additional distrust into relations between Greece and Turkey.

    Disputes between the two countries over treatment of minorities date back, however, to the aftermath of the Greco-Turkish War of 1921-22. Following the end of that war, which was a disaster for Greece, the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne prescribed the exchange of large numbers of each state's nationals living within the other country's boundaries (see The Interwar Struggles, 1922-36 , ch. 1). The exchange did not include two significant groups, however: Greeks living in the Istanbul area and Turks living in Greek Thrace, across the border from European Turkey. Each community numbered approximately 100,000 in 1923. The treatment of the two ethnic minorities has been an issue ever since.

    A partial solution to the establishment of minority rights was achieved in 1968, when Greece and Turkey signed a treaty agreeing to allow the groups to be educated in their own languages. But the press in both countries continued to publish inflammatory articles on the issue, and the groups were the objects of periodic hostility from the indigenous populations of their adopted countries.

    Turkey has sought to relocate members of its Greek community to Greece. Whereas in 1965 some 48,000 inhabitants of Turkey claimed Greek as their mother tongue, by 1990 official estimates put the number of Greeks at about 3,000. On the other hand, Greece has not attempted to repatriate its Turkish minority. In 1990, unofficial estimates placed the size of the Turkish population in Greece at approximately 120,000. Some Greeks were reportedly worried that the size of the Muslim community might serve as a justification for future Turkish territorial claims in Thrace, although no hint of such a claim had been observed. Meanwhile, the Muslim minority in Thrace appeared to be generally tolerated by the surrounding Greek population.

    In the mid-1990s, Cyprus remained the primary issue that defined and limited relations between Greece and Turkey. Together with Britain, the two neighbors were the guarantors of Cypriot independence under the 1960 treaties. Since the island republic was partitioned de facto in 1974, the Cyprus problem has been a vital national issue for Greece and a critical election-year litmus test of the patriotism of Greek candidates as well as Turkish intentions and policies. Both Greece and Turkey have taken the position that they have the legal right and obligation to render active support to the Cypriots of their respective nationalities--a Greek Cypriot majority and a Turkish Cypriot minority. Since 1974 the UN and Western nations have sponsored numerous talks between the Cypriot communities, but no permanent settlement has been reached.

    Essentially, the Greek Cypriots advocate a strong central government, a single constitution, a parliament with representation proportionate to the Greek majority and Turkish minority populations, and substantial autonomy for the bicommunal regions. Seeing such a division of power as prejudicial to their own interests, the Turkish Cypriots demand a federation of the two regions, each with its own constitution and an equal voice in decision making on major intercommunal issues. To protect their minority status, the Turks also demand veto power over majority decisions.

    Intransigence on both sides--each accusing the other of failing to negotiate in good faith--hardened the split on the status of the island republic. In November 1983, the Turkish Cypriots unilaterally declared the northern region (about 37 percent of the island) to be an independent Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. Greece was quick to condemn the "pseudostate" as a base for aggressive expansionism, declaring that no solution was possible without the withdrawal of Turkish troops.

    In the 1980s, despite occasional rapprochement between the two sides and regular Greek-Turkish summits at Davos, Switzerland, PASOK administrations deviated little from the nationalist course of the Karamanlis era. In 1993, after a period of relative inaction under the 1990-93 ND administration, the new Papandreou government announced a "common defense policy" for Greece and Cyprus, to counter the psychological pressure of the Turkish military presence along Greece's eastern borders. At the same time, Greece committed itself to regional "confidence-building measures," to be sponsored by the UN and the United States as part of the Partnership for Peace doctrine advanced by United States president William J. Clinton in 1993.

    By late summer 1994, however, the Turkish position in Cyprus had not changed. The UN Security Council Resolution 938 registered strong international displeasure over the twenty-year-old military occupation of the island, and it also noted Turkey's unwillingness to participate in the UN confidence- building program. During the same period, as it was working on the addition of four new members to the EU, the Greek presidency was also promoting full EU membership for Cyprus. In response, Rauf Denktas, the president of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, complained that UN resolutions did not guarantee the rights of Turkish Cypriots, and that further efforts to include Cyprus in the EU would be viewed as a national threat that would be answered by annexing Turkish Cyprus to Turkey.

    The Greek government has also been critical of Turkey for its human rights practices and the treatment of the Kurdish minority in Turkey. In mid-1994, terrorist bombings on the island of Rhodes, believed in Greece to have been carried out by Turkish agents, caused a new wave of suspicion and bitterness between the two neighbors. In the bilateral negotiations of fall 1994, Greece placed its hopes on demilitarization of Cyprus and rapid inclusion of the island into the EU. These hopes were partially founded on a recent decision by the European Court of Justice refusing to recognize products from the Turkish-Cypriot north as coming from a separate state.

    The Greek-Turkish conflict involves several additional issues, such as the demarcation of the continental shelf for the purpose of establishing underwater mineral rights. Authority over airspace and air traffic control in the Aegean, militarization of the Greek islands near the Turkish coast, and the deployment of the Turkish Aegean Army in western Turkey are also key concerns.

    Greek oil exploration in the Aegean began in 1970 and resulted in small natural gas and oil strikes off the west coast of Thasos, close to the coast of Thrace, in 1974 (see Energy , ch. 3). In 1973, however, Turkey also granted concessions to Turkish oil companies in several parts of the Aegean. Greece regarded some of those areas as within the limits of the Greek continental shelf, entitling Greece to economic rights, if not full sovereignty, over the area. The islands are part of Greece, so Greece applied the 1958 Geneva Convention on the Continental Shelf, which provides that a state has the same seabed rights in its offshore islands as it does in its mainland coast. In short, islands extend a state's continental shelf past the landmass to which they belong politically. Turkey's position was that strict application of this principle would deprive Turkey of a continental shelf in areas where Greek islands were very close to the Turkish coast, thus requiring a special exception in this case. In August 1976, Greece brought the question before the UN Security Council and the International Court of Justice. The council adopted Security Council Resolution 395, urging the Greeks and the Turks to resolve their differences by negotiation, a recommendation reiterated by the court. In mid-1994, the continental shelf issue remained unresolved, and no negotiations had been scheduled.

    In late 1994, all Greek political parties regarded Turkey as the principal threat to Greek security. This perception has been used to justify increased emphasis on military spending in the 1990s (see Defense Expenditures , ch. 5). That spending has included deployment of military forces to demonstrate Greek resolve at a time of reduced reliance on NATO--an organization that Greece has decried for its inability to prevent the invasion of Cyprus by another member of the alliance. In 1994, demonstrating the "common defense space" of Greece and Cyprus, the Greek navy executed a series of exercises in Cypriot and international waters, under the close observation of the Turks (see Greece in NATO , ch. 5).

    Data as of December 1994


    NOTE: The information regarding Greece on this page is re-published from The Library of Congress Country Studies and the CIA World Factbook. No claims are made regarding the accuracy of Greece Turkey information contained here. All suggestions for corrections of any errors about Greece Turkey should be addressed to the Library of Congress and the CIA.

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