Short Dictionary of Greek-Turkish relations

ELIAMEP’s Working paper no 11 by Dr .Thanos Dokos, ELIAMEP’s General Director and Visiting Lecturer PD. 407 in the department of Turkish and Contemporary Asian Studies of the University of Athens, underlines that in the course of the last fifty years, Greece and Turkey have been dragged several times in serious crises or even in the verge of warfare: Septemvriana (1955), crises in Cyprus (1963-1964, 1967, 1974), Aegean (1976, 1987, 1996-Imia), Cyprus S-300 (1997-98), the case of Otsalan (1999).

In the same period and, especially, from 1974-1999, there is observed an intense and progressively climatic arms race between the two countries. In essence, a low intensity conflict has been taking place over this entire period (with remission intervals).
The present paper is published on the occasion of the Turkish Prime Minister’s, Rejep Tagip Erdogan, visit to Greece, attempting to provide the average reader a concise picture of the general state of Greek-Turkish relations and the bilateral problems. It is hoped that this – inevitably – short “dictionary” of complicated legal and political issues will not work against the accurate depiction of reality.

Full text available in greek only.