Greek-Turkish Relations in the Post-Cold War Era: Crisis or Detente?

Panel B

Sorry for the weather for those who come outside Boston. And we have one casualty. Everybody managed to arrive by car, by plane, whatever. But unfortunately, we have lost Ambassador Tom Niles who won't be able to be with us to offer his concluding remarks at the end. He tried very hard to catch a plane, any plane, but unfortunately Logan Airport was closed down and he had to cancel. This will give us some time for discussion afterwards. I won't say anything. Just try to be out of the building by six o'clock the latest.

And let me turn to my left for the first panelist. Dr. Sabri Sayari, who is the Executive Director of the Institute of Turkish Studies at Georgetown University. Which has the reputation as the most well established and prestigious center for the comprehensive study of Turkey in the United States these days. He will talk on "Political and Social Change in Turkey: Implications for Greek-Turkish Relations". ...(inaudible) about it, you can find everything in this brochure that we have put together and that I want to for the rest of the panelists as well.

The only thing is, as an introducing remark, this is the perennial debate international relations and ...(inaudible) as a theories, supposedly, of international relations, the connection of domestic relations developments and external behavior in foreign policy, the theories of realism and neo-realism that push domestic politics aside, and the revitalization in the interests of domestic developments with the end of bipolarity. Somehow there is a decline in the ...(inaudible) on polar and polarity of theorists of international relations and more attention on what's going on within the state, how preferences are formulated and what kind of choices domestically Turkey is to make and how this will relate to its foreign ...(inaudible)

On the Greek side, I would say that there is a growing interest more and more on internal domestic Turkish politics. Which was not the case in the past and there is a more sophisticated today, more and more. Whereas, Turkey sometimes was portrayed as a monolith, maybe a military state or a military dominated state. That was a current Greek discourse. More and more there is an appreciation of the fluidization of Turkey's economy and society and the emergence of new agents and power centers within Turkey. For all these interesting issues, I am really anxious to here Dr. Sayari and please proceed.

Sayari: Thank you very much, Dimitris as well. It's been a nice occasion to be here, although I barely made it because of these adverse weather conditions. I was asked to speak briefly, and I won't take too much, about low politics issues. And when I mentioned to a colleague back in Washington that I was invited to a conference and I was going to talk about low politics issues, he said this was the perfect term for domestic politics in both countries. Actually politics sort of is at a low level.

Being more serious about it, I think when we talk about low politics, obviously this is a wide spectrum. It covers everything from domestic politics to political economy, to cultural matters and so forth. I personally am a strong believer in both official and non-official so-called track II efforts, diplomacy. I think creation of these multiple channels of communication certainly will increase interdependence between the two countries which hopefully, and you being a theoretician of course, hopefully, at least in theory, it will also lesson tensions between the two states.

And I think there are a number areas in which the two countries are becoming more independent in terms of things like trade, commercial relations, efforts of the NGOs on issues like environmental problems and so forth. I think, for example, that this recent effort by a group of Turkish and Greek businessmen to come together and discuss events is especially important. And that's one of the important changes that has been taking place in Turkey. Namely that, despite the problems of the Turkish economy and high rates of inflation and so forth, it is growing at a very sort of relatively high rate, 5, 6% a year, and this is despite the government. The economy is doing this dynamic growth process because really there's a very dynamic private sector in Turkey.

And the leading businessmen in the country have become much more interested, not just in making money, but also doing something about Turkey's domestic and international problems. There are a couple of think tanks which are essentially financed by businessmen and they are looking at domestic issues such as democratization problems in Turkey, the Kurdish issue. But also one of the think tanks, it's called TESOF(sp?) in its Turkish acronyms. Located at Bogazici(?) University in Istanbul. Is looking very seriously at Greek-Turkish relations and is doing a major study. And as I say, this is essentially an initiative that is launched by the economic and business elites in Turkey. So I think there is some hope and movement on that front.

There are broader issues. Such as, and it was mentioned earlier on, the teaching of history in both countries. I think this is a very important, very important issue. I think both sides need a radical new approach really in terms of how they view each other and how those views are reflected in their textbooks. I know there are couple of meetings that have taken place between Greek and Turkish academicians and educators looking at these textbooks. And I hope something useful will come out of those efforts.

But, and here is the big but, we of course look at these things in terms of rather long term processes and we have to deal with more immediate issues, I suppose. And there the domestic situation comes into play and comes into play with a great deal of force. I think what I have to say about developments in Turkey, political, social, economic, I just want to sort of briefly mention a couple of things. I can't cover a whole lot. But a couple of things. First of all, what I sense is that there has been an increase of linkage between domestic and foreign policy in Turkey. Of course that linkage has always existed. For example, the Cyprus issue in the 1960s had an impact on domestic Turkish public opinion.

But I think in recent years, especially in the post-Cold War ear, this linkage has become much more pronounced. A couple of examples on this. For example, an external event having an impact on Turkish domestic politics, I would say the Bosnian crisis. How this has really played up so strongly in Turkey and had a major impact, especially in terms of the electoral strength of the Islamist party, the welfare party, again it certainly was a very emotional issue which was played up big. So one example of that.

And on the other hand, domestic issues influencing foreign policy. Certainly you could talk about the impact of the Kurdish problem in Turkey having a major impact on Turkey's bilateral relations with its neighbors and also multilateral relations with other international organizations, including the EU.

What does this increased linkage mean in terms of Greco-Turkish relations? I think developments in Turkish politics and society, things like changes in the party system, the issue of Islam, the Kurdish question and so forth, I think these certainly impact on Turkey's policies towards Greece in more direct and significant ways than it was the case, let's say, a decade ago. And by the same token, I think foreign policy issues such as Turkish membership in the EU. Now these tend to become much more important in domestic politics. We witnessed this, for example, in the last parliamentary elections in Turkey in December 1995.

And of course there is a Greek connection to that. The whole membership issue is widely perceived in Turkey as very clearly linked to Turkey's relations with Greece. So the point is, I think, what is happening in Turkey, both domestically, is having a greater impact on Greek-Turkish relations and what happens outside of Turkey is certainly having a greater impact on Turkish domestic politics.

Now I think many of you in this room probably know that Turkish politics in the 1990s leave something to be desired in terms of stability. We have gone through a period, starting with the early 1990s, in which there has been a great deal of political fragmentation in the party system. This has been reflected in the parliament. No single party has managed to control a parliamentary majority. In addition to this splintering of the votes, we also had divisions in the center left and center right blocks. So that contributes to increased fragmentation. And also of course we have the rise of new parties which crop up and so forth.

Overall, you are looking at the situation in which there have been a series of weak and unstable coalition governments for the past six, seven years. The last parliamentary elections, December 1995, again turned out to be inconclusive. It failed to end political fragmentation. And as a result, in the last two years or perhaps less than two years, Turkey has had three different coalition governments. Less than two years. First we had a coalition of two center right parties; Motherland and True Path with Prime Minister Misut Yilmaz. That lasted barely four months.

Then we had a widely publicized and widely watched coalition government between Refah Islamist party and Mrs. Ciller's True Path Party. That lasted about 11 months and disintegrated last June after a protracted political crisis. And now since that time, we have a third coalition government. And this is a center right, center left minority coalition government. It's a coalition led by the Motherland party plus another small center right grouping together with Bulent Ecivit, Democratic Left party. This government doesn't have a parliamentary majority. It is able to stay in power only through the support of another Social Democrat party on key votes in the parliament. So basically this is not the best formula for a strong and effective government.

I think this contrasts sharply with what was going on in Turkey in the 1980s. And I sense somehow that there is this lack of fit between the two countries, Greece and Turkey, in terms of their domestic politics. When one country's domestic politics is stable, the other's is unstable. When it changes, it becomes otherwise. Because in the 1980s, Turkey enjoyed almost a decade of relative governmental stability. This was a time in which the late Turgut Ozal, head of the Motherland Party, was in power. First as prime minster, then as president. It was a majority party government for all those years. And that party pretty much had its way in terms of parliament and in key votes and so forth. And I think what Ozal did in the 1980s is very useful to remember since we're talking about Greek-Turkish relations because here was a man who was really interested, deeply interested in building new bridges, in initiating new policies. He did certain things which I think were both perhaps not great in the overall scheme of things, but symbolic. And symbolic changes are I think as important as substantive changes. Things like lifting visa requirements for Greek citizens visiting Turkey. He changed the policy regarding the ownership of property by Greek citizens in Istanbul. He toned down the official rhetoric about bilateral problems.

He declared a readiness to sign a series of agreements, including a non-aggression treaty. He very strongly pushed for economic and trade ties and visited Athens. And he was the first Turkish prime minister to do so in more than 40 years. So I think you could contrast that period with the current situation and perhaps think about that.

I think unfortunately, perhaps in the 1980s, the Greek side perhaps was not at the right mode in terms of perhaps making a better response to Ozal's initiatives. And I think this was probably a missed opportunity at the time. Now I think what we're seeing is that in addition to this very acute problem of political fragmentation in Turkey, there are a couple of other sources of potential instability. One is the growing electoral strength of the Islamist party, the welfare party in domestic politics. It finished first in the 1995 elections. Could not get a majority, but it was the first party with 21% of the votes. And it was in power for about 11 months.

This period witnessed really a very sort of marked intensified polarization in Turkey between the secularists and the Islamists. And we can talk about the implications of that, but certainly it was a period of, especially the last five or six months of that government, Refah Thruskut(sp?) government was a period of utter instability and ended up with a situation in which Mr. Erbakan, the prime minister, was forced to resign under not just pressure from the military, although the military was leading the way, but also from cross-secular civil society organizations, labor unions, the media and so forth. And of course it has now been established in the literature of political science as a post-modern coup.

Now I think this instability in Turkey, this governmental instability in Turkey has several implications for Greek-Turkish relations. At least on the Turkish side. First of all, of course, when you operate in that kind of an environment, there is a problem of formulating consistent policies. And Turkey has had seven different foreign ministers during the past seven years to give you just one idea. I think governmental instability, protracted political crises leads, and it has done so on certain occasions, to a kind of policy immobility. That is nothing seems to happen in Ankara. And we experienced that during the five, six months of this Islamic led coalition just this year.

I think there is this popular perception in Greece, and Van I think has left, because he mentioned something about this, and I think this is a widely-- Oh, he's here. I'm sorry. You're in the back. You're in the shadow there. He mentioned this and I read this from other Greek observers and commentators that this internal instability in Turkey is a reason for Turkey's behavior vis-a-vis Greece. That is, Turkey is so disunited and fragmented internally that in order to overcome these, it engages in these what are referred to as adventurous politics vis-a-vis Greece.

With all due respect to Van, I think this is a highly simplistic formulation. What has happened in fact is just the reverse. That is, internal instability has led the Turks to focus almost exclusively on domestic issues. If you were to look at Turkish newspapers in the past 11-12 months - the coverage of Greek-Turkish relations which has always been traditionally not too great, but at least - though is the major discussion, the major talk is about the Islamist, the Kurdish issue, falling of governments and so forth. That is, there is not much of an attention on Turkish-Greek issues and I think that issue gets attention only on sort of sporadic occasions. When there is a crisis brewing in the Aegean or Cyprus.

So I think we have to do away with this thinking that internal instability is leading, driving Turkish foreign policy vis-a-vis Greece. I think governmental instability and this fragmentation that I briefly described of course has an important impact on the behavior or Turkish political leaders. They are operating in a very precarious and very competitive environment. Which means of course that electoral concerns take priority over all other considerations. And in terms of Greek-Turkish relations, you never lose votes by taking a hard line position against Greece.

This has been true and perhaps, you know, for the past several decades, but much more true today than ever before. And as has been suggested earlier on, Mrs. Ciller's behavior during the Imia-Kardak crisis is a typical example of how some political leaders in Turkey have been very eager to exploit foreign policy issues for domestic consumption and even exacerbate political tensions between the two countries simply for personal popularity.

What is also important in terms of the behavior of parties, leaders, and so forth is public opinion. I think politicians certainly listen to that or care for that. We have, thanks to the mushrooming of survey research institutes and public opinion firms in Turkey, we have lots of data on these issues now. And when you look at this polls, you see that most Turks accept peaceful coexistence with Greece. That is, nobody is really adopting a hawkish position and saying let's go to war, let's be expansionist, let's take over these islands. You don't certainly find these things.

But these polls also suggest that there is considerable mistrust toward Greek policies and intentions. There is also a strong, if you want to use the term, bipartisan support, consensus for traditional Turkish policies towards Greece on bilateral disputes and the Cyprus question. The last poll that was commissioned by the USIA and done in Turkey about a year ago, on the Cyprus issue for example, 7 out of 10 Turks support the present policy. They are not interested in a major departure from that policy.

I think it is possible to defy public opinion and initiate changes in policy as Ozal did a decade ago. Because certainly his moves were not very popular in Turkey at the time. But then he was sitting sort of strong in terms of his electoral position and so forth. What is important in terms of shaping public opinion, one factor is the media. And this is one of the important developments that has taken place in Turkish society. That is you really have a situation in which there is a proliferation of both print media and TV channels, private TV channels. I think about 14, 15 of them at least in Istanbul. Islamists this, that. All shades of color and ideology and so forth.

And there has been a trend toward sort of monopolization of the media. That is a couple of people have become media tycoons who control at least four or five different newspapers and TV stations. And I think the sort of combinations of these tendencies, the flourishing of new media and monopolization, has led to some extent to a somewhere unfortunate situation in which hyping up nationalist sentiments, sometimes even actually paving the way for confrontation as it happened in the Imia-Kardak issue. And again, I agree with Professor Berktay that this whole episode was really an outcome of a media craziness rather than anything that was intended by the Turkish military at the time.

__: ...(inaudible)

Sayari: Right, right. In addition to these issues, and again I'm just briefly going over there, two areas which I think are important in terms of Greek-Turkish relations. One the issue of Islam in Turkey. The fact that the Islamist Party, Refah in Turkish or Welfare in English, that this party is now the strongest party in Turkey certainly is not just due to religions factors. It is not a party that is just supported by, quote unquote, "fundamentalists". It is a party which is trying to give new identity to some segments of Turkish society. It is a party which is speaking out in terms of social and economic problems. And, in a sense, it has preempted, it has preempted what the Turkish left used to count on; social and economic issues.

So that the decline of the Turkish left has led to growing strength of this Islamic movement and the Islamic party in particular. Of course the party poses a challenge in some ways to the Kemalist foundations of the Turkish state, to secular institutions and lifestyles in Turkey, and most importantly to Turkey's traditional Western vocation. Mr. Erbakan, the leader of this party, well, I cannot exactly say what he is today because he has changed so much since the elections and since he came to power. But certainly we know him quite well. He is a veteran of Turkish politics, he has been around for at least 20-25 years. And when he was in the opposition, he was very hawkish about Greece and especially hawkish about the Cyprus issue.

When the party was in power, one has to confess that it really did not engage in any kind of radical policies vis-a-vis Greece. In fact, Erbakan as prime minister literally ignored Greece. His thing was different. He was interested in building ties with the Islamic world, with Iran, and this and that.

Now I think in terms of Turkish-Greek relations, I don't think it would be in the interest of Greece to see a Turkey that sort of turns back on its established secular traditions. Certainly this would not be conducive for better relations. But one thing which is important there is that there is this widespread perception in Turkey which, with some justification, that Greece has been the major obstacle to Turkey's greater integration with the West and that, on EU issues, on other issues, it has really pursued a policy of isolating Turkey from Europe. And this is precisely the thing that the Islamists in Turkey would like to see.

So whatever the Greeks have been doing, officially or unofficially, intentionally, unintentionally, really plays right into the hands of the Islamist movement in Turkey because this is what they have been saying all these years. That Europeans don't want us, we should stick with the Islamic world and so forth. And I think Greece's best potential friends in Turkey, friends and allies in Turkey, are among the secularists. Although not all secularists are very warm towards Greece. Mr. Hikmet is a good example of that. But certainly I think there is the potential, if one wants to build bridges, the secularists groups in Turkey certainly would be a better audience than the Islamists. And I think the strategy of excluding Turkey from Europe, for whatever strategic, high politics issues, really doesn't sound like a sound strategy as far as I can see.

The second major issue in terms of social and political issues in Turkey is the Kurdish problem. It has come to dominate Turkey's domestic and foreign policy agenda in the 1990s. The PKK, this violent terrorist organization which is operating in the southeast, certainly poses a challenge to yet another Kemalist foundation. That is the notion of Turkey's identity, mono-ethnic identity. But more importantly of course, it's a challenge to Turkey's territorial integrity.

And here again, the Greek connection I think comes into play because there is widespread belief that Greece is supporting the Kurdish separatists in Turkey. That it maintains close links with the PKK. And of course the Greek government comes up and says this is nonsense, we're doing nothing, and so forth. But at the same time, you see certain things like a bunch of Greek parliaments going and visiting Abdul Urgilam(sp?) in the Dahuk(sp?) Valley, posing under a flag which shows God knows what.

Recently you have a large group of Greek parliamentarians extending an invitation to the same character to come and visit. All these symbolic moves. And there I think more to the symbolism. But certainly even if it's at the symbolic level, this is something which has become very irritating to the Turkish public because of the intensity of the Kurdish situation in the Southeast.

It might be, okay, my enemy's enemy is my friend kind of a theory. Sort of vulgar policy. But from where I sit and where I look at things, I think this is not a sound policy. Because if Greece fears that an unstable Turkey might present more problems for Greece, then the sensible approach will be to refrain from actions that force the social and political turmoil in Turkey. And supporting the PKK, either symbolically or more concretely, certainly will facilitate greater instability in Turkey. No question about that.

Let me conclude by saying a few things. Can we overcome these constraints in domestic politics? Any prospects for detente through low politics, as our organizers put it? I think despite all these problems that I mentioned, there are also several motives for change in Turkey's policies towards Greece. First of all, better relations with Greece certainly would resolve tensions with an important neighbor over the Aegean and the Cyprus. There would be one less foreign policy issue to think about. And given the fact that Turkey has quite a number of foreign policy issues, this will be an improvement. There is I think growing realization in Turkey, and you see this in the writings of the columnists, observers, and so forth, that Turkey should enter into a better dialogue with all its neighbors, including Greece.

The second motive, again an important one, is that improvement of relations with Greece certainly would be important for improving Turkey's relations with Europe and the U.S. And thirdly, I think there is, at the moment and this has been the case for some time, a great deal of focus on the Turkish economy, internal development. The present government, I think, is very much preoccupied because of the high inflation rates and budget deficits and so forth to do something about the economy. It is not just lip service or talk, but I think structural adjustment, economic reforms, privatization, all of these things are on the agenda. And preoccupation with Greece, tensions with Greece and so forth take away from that preoccupation certainly. So they would like to see this go away.

Where could new policy originate from? This was one of the questions that was sent to us by the organizers. I think it is quite clear that in Turkey these days the key foreign policy issues are decided in this body called the National Security Council. Which is an 11 member body. It has constitutional authority. It is not an ad hoc grouping. It has six civilians and five military and one of the civilians, of course, is President Dimural, who has become very important in terms of policy making in Turkey.

The military exercises influence, it has also exercised influence in Turkish politics. But I think, and I know again, there is this Greek perception of the Turkish military as some kind of a dinosaur emerging from someplace. But I think when you look at the military's behavior, perhaps if not on Cyprus, at least on some of the issues on the Aegean, they are open to change. There have been quite a bit of indications of this. More importantly, I think the military's hands are very much tied with what is going on in southeast in Turkey. That is, there's a great deal of concentration of troops, materials, and so forth.

No Turkish general in his right mind would want to have two fights, two wars at the same time. And this is very clear. And I think the reason why the Turkish military is interested in improving its relations with Greece at this point has to do with the fact that it sees this, the Kurdish issue, as a very important problem. And secondly, I think the military realizes that better relations with Greece would be a positive step toward arms transfers from the U.S. Earlier on, one of the speakers mentioned that the U.S. sees Turkey as a very strategic ally and so forth. True, yes.

But military arms transfers to Turkey has literally stopped. There is a virtual arms embargo on Turkey. It is not the so-called big ticket items like Cobra helicopters and tanks. These days we're talking about rifles. The Congress would not even permit Turkey to purchase with its own money. So the Turkish military is obviously interested in improving its relations with the U.S. And I think the present government, if there are no radical developments, would be open to such changes. I think I talked too much. Thank you.

M: I think one thing is for sure, that not only from an international relations perspective, but from a perspective of comparative politics, Turkey's a very important, a very interesting case. Greece, on its part, has become quite boring, I might say. Greek politics have evolved and matured the last year. It's lost much of there Latin American flavor, as was the characteristic of it in the 70s and 80s. This is not the case for Turkey. We have light coups or post-modern coups or the state and the interstate and all this other things that Dr. Sayari refers to.

And I think it will be very interesting in the discussion to talk about the cert(?) of a post-Kemalist consensus. What I term a post-Kemalist consensus, moving away from some of the premises. And Turkey has done this for the last 40 years. It's not something that began last year or so. Pluralization of the economy, the emergence of a vibrant private market, the reduction of the role of the state, moving away from a Jacobean secularism and its constraints, accepting and tolerating the multi-ethnic background of the Turkish nation, and so on and so forth.

I'm turning now to a very good friend, Elizabeth Prodromou from Princeton University, an assistant professor of comparative politics there. I'm really curious to find out what this laptop computer is going to come up with. She's been working on it the last four hours I've been noticing. And her topic is "Perils of Timing and Problems of Legitimacy: Challenges to a Greek-Turkish Rapprochement". Elizabeth is an old friend of the Center for European Studies and she was even a co-chairwoman of the Greek Study Group for around about four years ago. So welcome, Elizabeth.

Prodromou: I've been writing in my computer because Greek-Turkish relations change on such a moment to moment basis that I'm forced to continually update. I also fear that I have been rendered somewhat redundant by virtue of the insightfulness of the previous panelists. So I hope I won't repeat too much what they have said.

What I would like to do is to try to present a kind of synthetic pre-epilogue to the preceding presentation. And I want to do this by focusing on the two themes that are in the title of my talk. First the perils of timing and secondly the problems of legitimacy. So I'll state my unhappy, tentative conclusion from the outset. Which is that difficulties of timing created by a confluence of international and domestic factors on the one hand and complications related to legitimacy of the primary actors that are involved in the Greek-Turkish relationship minimize the likelihood for any kind of bilateral rapprochement. At least until the end of 1998. And towards the end of my talk, I will say why I chose 1998 as a possible time of change.

Okay, having offered up the thesis, let me sketch out the supporting claims. And I'll begin with the whole question of timing. And timing is central to understanding the motivations for, as well as the constraints on prospective Greek-Turkish rapprochement. And I would like to say that there are three ways that timing I think mitigates the possibilities for any kind of a normalization in the near future.

First, and some of this has been I think quite elegantly addressed by Dr. Gordon in the morning session, but to elaborate a bit, the international context is one that's marked by ongoing fluidity and uncertainty. And the nature of that fluidity is weakening the prospects for a Greek-Turkish solution. Specifically here, the simultaneity of the debates on EU expansion and NATO enlargement means that those actors who would normally be most invested in the process of negotiation, to bring about a normalization, are in fact preoccupied with far more pressing decisions on consequent costs, real and symbolic, of naming new members for both of these architectures; European and trans-Atlantic architectures.

And more specifically, I want to follow up this, we're seeing in the EU/NATO simultaneous or harmonization. Actually a process of disharmony or deharmonization. We're seeing a kind of trans-Atlantic divergence. Where Brussels is very much preoccupied with the European project of the EMU and the Washington policy elite is very much focused on convincing the US Congress to accept the costs of enlarging the NATO alliance. So within this temporal context of EU/NATO simultaneity, Greek-Turkish I think will begin to take a back seat paradoxically. Except where they're directly relevant to the questions of expansion and enlargement.

Furthermore, I'm moving to the specific question of Cyprus and the US in particular. I think that the timing, interestingly enough, is bad here again. Both Brussels and especially Washington and Secretary of State Albright's team are interested in what they're calling deliverable. The jargon of, you know, the State Department. Concrete results. The pressure in that respect then is not on Washington and it's not on Brussels. From the perspective of Washington policy elites, the pressure is on Athens, Ankara, and Nicosia to come to the table and deliver results to Washington in the form of solutions on the Cyprus stalemate and actually put some, you know, some skin and bones to the ghost of Madrid and Crete.

And if solutions aren't forthcoming, then I think the attention span of Washington, although quite intense, is also quite short. And Washington will either lose interest or, most importantly, will turn its attention to an already full plate of other so-called intractable conflicts. Salvaging what's left of the Middle East peace process, trying to push forward the quite difficult and complex Dayton process, etc., etc. And for its part, while again the Washington time span is intense and brief, Brussels is unlikely to take anymore daring action than it already has done in terms of the bluff that we spoke about this morning.

So again, in terms of the time frame at the international level, I think that although on first glance, we see all sorts of opportunities and a real focus of attention by both capitals in Europe and the United States, that the subtext for their engagement is telling us a quite negative message.

Now to turn to timing as it relates to domestic factors. I think there's one general over arching constraint that bears mention here. And that concerns again the divergence in the political economic profiles of Greece and Turkey. And in simplest terms, the qualifiably positive changes in Greece is political and economic performance are matched by I think an equally negative tendency in terms of Turkey's political and economic spheres. And again, I'll be highly elliptical here in the interests of time. But again, I'd like to set out the apparent and then the not apparent ways in which factors of timing at the domestic level constrain the prospects for a rapprochement.

And I'll begin here with Greece. And again, I'm very much broad brushing each country and speaking in shorthand. Which may suggest superficiality, but I'd be happy to elaborate in discussion. In terms of Greek politics, I think that we can safely say that the Greek political system is undergoing a significant maturation based on what we call the qualitative and structural depending of democracy. 25 years after the events of 1974, Greece has consolidated its democratic regime according to any theoretical or empirical tests of consolidation. And in fact, I think that the maturation, although be it peripatetic at times of the country's party system over the past two years, is something that is quite notable.

We have seen successful leadership transition in each of the two major parties. With the two Constantines, Karamalis and Simitis consolidating their positions in new democracy and Pasok respectively. And these kinds of party transformations or transitions have been completed through pluralist transparent democratic processes. The convergence of these institutional change with what I think is a crucial generational shift in Greek politics, the gerontocracy is little by little coming to an end, suggests again a revitalization and maturation of the political system that is quite consistent with EU norms.

And then finally, I think the positive spin again on Greek politics is that by virtue of membership in the EU's supernational framework, the country is forced to further deepen and improve upon these real gains.

Now on the economic front, we see a positive but qualifiably positive picture. Greece's economic policy is dictated by the over arching goal of joining the EMU as quickly as possible. And I think Simitis' most recent public declaration of the target date was 2001 for Greece. And towards this end, the government has undertaken quite aggressive efforts at improving the country's public finances. A variety of policies here. Reduced public sector spending, tax reform designed to boost public sector revenues, a lowering of the inflation rate, and adjustments in the domestic labor market in conformity with single market legislation.

Now the results of what amount to basically an austerity program of structural adjustment have been quite positive in terms of most indicators. And I won't bore you with the numbers from the OECD and other sources, but I'd be happy to quote those in the discussion. But the point is that, you know, in terms of this larger, positive tendency in terms of Greek economic performance, there are some very important negatives. And those are an ongoing problem with the current account, which is likely to remain in deficit, exceeding the EU targets. And also very high, in fact, the highest in the European Union, external debt service ratio for Greece.

So overall, the political and the economic profile of Greece is I think qualifiably positive. More positive on the political front and cautiously optimistic on the economic front. Now if we take this positive cast--

Prodromou: --frees up Simitis to work on an improvement in Greece's bilateral relationship with Turkey. However, or here similarly, the economic restruction speaks to a Greece I think with positive prospects for a relatively rapid inclusion in the EMU, albeit delayed, nonetheless a full inclusion. But the timing perils or the timing constraints emerge in the following manner. Primarily around the so called democratic dilemma.

As participatory democracy makes Greek political leaders increasingly accountable to popular evaluation in terms of electoral results, the unavoidable costs of economic convergence may actually weaken the Simitis government's resolve and its motivations to undertake potentially risky foreign policy initiatives with very uncertain returns. So again, we're confronting the deliverables question in the context of Greek politics. So this timing of political and economic improvement at home makes for a complex series of calculations by Athens vis-a-vis its willingness to engage Turkey.

Finally, and I jump back to the international level, the perception and the reality of a Greece that's part of the EMU and with, I think, a decidedly greater degree of respect within the European context, may paradoxically further mitigate against the motivations of any government in Athens to engage in bilateral initiatives when in fact it might feel more comfortable using the EUWE EU architectures as a kind of protective shield whereby Europe is forced to take the initiative and Greece doesn't expose itself in a unilateral fashion. So taken as a whole then, I think timing, paradoxically, suggests that for Greece there's a low likelihood of a rapprochement with Turkey.

Now I turn to the Turkish case and, again, Professor Sayari has actually sketched out or done more that, the political economic profile on Turkey. I think that we basically agree, although I would be a bit more categorical on some of the things I'll say. Again, I think that the timing constraint for Turkey is even greater than in the Greek case. Now at the most fundamental political level, I think that it's safe to say Turkey is in a state of crisis as the utility of the Kemalist world view is really, for the first time in the country's history, being openly, and this is a good thing in fact, openly critiqued, evaluated, and contested.

I think the origins of Kemalism's fall from grace are most explicitly rooted in the unachieved agenda of the Ozal period. And in fact the proximate cause of the Kemalism and crisis situation was the run up to the short lived Islamist coalition lasting from June '96 to June '97. There's no time to go into the details of the circumstances which precipitated the Refah government's fall. But the main point that bears emphasis on this respect is that the democratic regime that was implemented in Turkey with the constitution of 1982, has been replaced by a qualified democratic or, in the view of some, neo-authoritarian regime whose main hallmarks are an unstable coalition government, the Prime Minister Misut Yilmaz and Foreign Minister Ismael Jem(sp?) are hamstrung by the national chauvinism of Deputy Prime Minister Ecivit and the Islamists wait in the wings.

And finally, the country's other major center right party, the True Path of Tansu Ciller, is unlikely by most Turkish analysts' account to make the 10% minimum for parliamentary representation in elections if they were to be held early in 1998. Which is unlikely.

Above all, however, and I would like to stress the importance of the military, not as a monolith, but in the following sense that using whatever euphemism suit you, soft coup, coup light, post-modern coup, the fact is that the military used the 1982 constitution, they used a democratic constitution or constructed as a democratic constitution, and the national security council as the legal and institutional basis for continuing direct involvement in Turkish politics.

Now I think that these instabilities of the Turkish political system, I agree with Professor Sayari, certainly wouldn't provoke Turkish foreign policy adventurism. But at the same time, they make it nearly impossible for any civilian government to undertake significant initiatives with Greece without the military's approval. The Simitis-Yilmaz announcement notwithstanding, I think that joint Turkish, Turkish Cypriot military maneuvers two days after the Crete summit, as well as the ongoing technological intelligence and geostrategic gains of the Turkish-Israeli security accord, suggest that Turkey's military might not, at this temporal conjuncture, calculate the benefits of normalization of with Greece as outweighing the costs.

And finally, I think until the domestic political situation normalizes in the form of some sort of reconfiguration of Kemalism, that again, most Turkish political elites will be unable, they may be willing, but I don't think able to engage in a meaningful dialogue with Greece towards normalization.

Now I'll conclude here with a bit of discussion on timing and the economic picture in Turkey. And I think again timing is a huge constrain. Turkey's economic strategy is one of continuing competitive integration of the economy into the international and especially European and trans-Caucasian markets, emerging markets of the trans-Caucasus, based on the Customs Union agreement, ongoing privatization and structural readjustments that are designed to improve the country's gross income inequalities and the overall quality of life index.

Now this economic agenda remains I think handicapped by many of the problems actually which beset Greece with the public sector bureaucracy. Turkey has a bloated and costly public sector bureaucracy. And in addition, there are the expenses associated with the ongoing military operation against the Kurds in the southeast. Finally, the failures of Ozal's privatization program to take off as he had envisioned it also creates economic problems with overall adjustment of the economy. And I should throw in here galloping inflation of 80% in 1997 in Turkey.

And I think more than anything these economic problems reflect the underlying political crisis that has really made, as Professor Sayari pointed out, successive governments unable to make consistent, hard domestic political economic choices and have really mitigated against Turkey's goal of becoming a regional economic powerhouse. So while the motivations for Turkey's political elites to bring about a Greek-Turkish resolution are high, the latitude for undertaking those initiatives towards this end is highly circumscribed. And timing again is key.

If we move from the assumption that in fact Turkish economic elites are committed to substantial improvements with Greece and we can point to a state of evidence. For example, efforts by the Turkish Chamber of Commerce, TAUB(sp?), the Turkish Businessmen and Industrial Association, TUSIA(sp?). All of these point to the willingness of Turkish economic elites to reach some sort of resolution with Greece. However, precisely because the Customs Union hasn't paid off in economic terms for Turkey and precisely because Greece continues to block the dispersal of funds under the Customs Union to Turkey, there is a linkage in Turkish popular perceptions about full integration with Europe in economic terms and Greece as holding the card that will determine the outcome in that respect.

As the delay of the dispersal of funds continues, the willingness and the ability of Turkish economic elites to argue for rapprochement and full integration I think declines with time. And finally, I'm being told to conclude eight minutes prior to our previous speaker according to my electronic clock on my computer, I will take five more minutes and quickly sketch out problems of legitimacy. And again, I'll try to be as brief as possible.

I think that we can think about the legitimacy problem as a systemic problem. It's one that I think bedevils all of the actors involved in Greek-Turkish relations; Brussels and Washington, Athens and Ankara. And quickly on each of these. I think that Washington and Brussels both suffer from legitimacy problems. I think that the speakers this morning outlined why that's so. Most importantly in terms of Greece's willingness to believe in the legitimacy of Washington as an honest broker, I think the mixed messages that came out of Washington during the Imia crisis really have added constraints to Greece's willingness to trust in the good offices of Washington. Ultimately I think Washington's failure to take a categorical stand on the question of sovereignty around Imia has really undermined the legitimacy of Washington from the perspective of Athens.

Conversely, from the perspective of Ankara, Washington is seen as, I think, hostage to the so-called Greek lobby. And this may in fact have an element of truth in it in terms of the importance of the Congress in Washington's actions towards Turkey. As for Brussels, again, I think the speakers this morning touched on the legitimacy problems that Brussels has vis-a-vis both Athens and Ankara and I'd be happy to go into detail in the discussion with this.

Finally, in terms of Greece and Turkey. I think that for Greece, the primary legitimacy problem derives from the tensions associated with managing what I spoke about before, the democratic dilemma. The country's democracy continues to deepen, electoral outcomes are increasingly taken into account in terms of political strategy, and the social costs of EMU convergence will rise in the short term. So the ability of Greek political elites to manage this kind of tradeoff I think will constrain their legitimacy vis-a-vis the voting public.

And then in terms of Turkey again, I think that the constraints emerged in terms of my discussion of the timing factors, the fact of the matter is, there is a crisis of the political class in Turkey today. The two major center right parties in the country suffer from a legitimacy problem vis-a-vis the voting public. The Welfare Party itself suffers from a legitimacy problem vis-a-vis the secularist voting public in Turkey. And what you're left with is a party crisis in the broadest sense of the word which undermines the legitimacy of the political class as a whole in Turkey and therefore its ability to undertake negotiations with Greece. Thank you.

M: Thank you, Elizabeth. Our next speaker is Dr. Halil Berktay, associate professor of history from Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey. We've been very lucky to have him with us this past year. I am a personal fan of him for his both integrity and insightfulness. I think he's a living example of the vitality of Turkish civil society. I'm creating ...(inaudible) I'm trying to embarrass you as much as possible. And I cannot resist the comment saying that from the modernity of the laptop computer of my Greek colleague, I hope that the notes here and all these asterisk does not reflect the level of technology in Turkey. Or does it?

The topic is "National Memories: Understanding the Other, Taming your Own". I won't try to restrain the speakers, just let's try to be done with the presentations by 5:05 and leave some time for discussion.

Berktay: Well, I don't know how to cope with that introduction. I'd like to say right at the outset that I don't understand much about international relations or international law or international politics or things like that. I don't mean to say that I don't appreciate them. I do believe in institutions and institutional restraints and the constraining impact of supernational binds or arrangements in terms of exercising, if not a civilizing, at least a partial domesticating impact on potentially violent national states and nationalisms.

And in my vision of the Turkish-Greek situation is that, while these nationalisms in nation states, etc. may be contained, may be restrained, etc., there is a profound problem of political culture behind the situation that can explode again and again at any given time. And that the institutional arrangements or negotiations or diplomatic bargainings that we are talking about can be effective only in so far as they provide a new lease of time for other factors to get going and to ultimately change the political culture of these societies. I mean, that is my understanding of the dialectic of short run and long run and of diplomacy and political culture in this context.

I suppose I've made it clear what I think about the Turkish-Greek situation, but I'll spell it out anyway. For me, Greece and Turkey are two societies that are smoldering or perhaps festering with two moribundly narrow minded nationalisms that are constantly transferring their enormous feelings of inadequacy and self-pity into huge reserves of hatred or blame for the other. That is for me the situation in a nutshell. (Applause) And I mean, these festering nationalisms and their grand narratives and their recyclings through the school system and the quasi-criminal media, etc. are actually constantly trapping the two countries into the past and preventing them from thinking about the future or looking to the future.

In saying this, I'm aware that as a historian dealing in historiography, perhaps I'm cultivating my penchant for deconstructing ideology and being interested in ideology above all else. That is to say, I'm in effect saying that the essence of the Turkish-Greek conflict does not lie in claims over land or in economic interests or the military establishments or their supposedly innate expansionism or this or that. It lies in the dead weight of nationalisms and national memories on Greek and Turkish public opinion. Ultimately, that is what has got to change.

Everything else, I've already tried to indicate it during the first round this afternoon, a lot of it is opportunism, a lot of it is seizing the moment and, in effect, trying to create a new bargaining plan out of the aftermath of the Kardak issue. Not that they really believe in it or anything like that. But the point is, as long as this climate exists, as long as these extreme nationalist public opinions and their grand narratives are constantly socialized into new generations of students and citizens, these problems will, as I've already said, erupt again and again. I don't think so much about land or economic interests, etc. in this matter.

Having said that, I would like to interpolate, taking my cue from several other presentations and comments, I would like to emphasize some degree of difference between Turkish and Greek society. First of all, with respect to nationalism. Well, no, rather first of all, with respect to heterogeneity versus compactness. Turkey is much larger than Greece. Of course most Turks do not realize how large Turkey looms from the other side of the Aegean, caught up as they are in their messy, pessimistic view of their own society. But Turkey is much larger and by that token it's less developed and by that token also much more heterogenous and diffused than Greek society.

And Greece is not only small, but it is very compact and homogenous in a common middle class kind of way. I mean, it is possible to, in contrast with Turkey, it is possible to describe Greece as a virtually universally middle class kind of society. Turkey's a mess in contrast. It's enormous, it has its pockets of underdevelopment, it has its Kurds, its Islamists. I, myself, have often written in the past that there is a European Turkey and an Asian Turkey. That there is a continental shelf of Europe that comes under Turkish society from the northwest and there is a continental shelf of Asian society that comes under Turkey from the east and the southeast.

You have the Turkey of the coastal areas and the major urbanizations like Istanbul, Izmir, and Ankara and much of trade and most of, 90% of communications and industry and the business community and the working class and the intelligentsia. And you have the central Anatolian plain receding into the east and the southeast and these are the heartland of the Kurdish question and of the Welfare Party. Just look at the areas that they keep carrying thoroughly in both the local and the national elections.

So first of all, Turkey is enormously heterogenous. In fact, I would like to add that, given the present sclerosis of politics in Turkey as superbly described by both Sabri Sayari and Elizabeth Prodromou, I'm willing to consider the possibility of Turkey coming apart in the next ten years or so. If a new social contract cannot be negotiated between all the various, well, competing demands in Turkish society at the moment, it is very possible that the maximalism, the confrontationism, the annihilationism of Turkish political culture embodied in all the various contesting parties can very well cause Turkey to fall apart. You know, I don't want to start a whole chain of speculation on this, but I do not exclude this possibility for the next 10 or 15 years in Turkey.

Now the second point has to do with Turkish versus Greek nationalism in the context of this heterogeneity versus relative compactness. My point in this regard is that nationalism in Turkey is much more of a state idealogy, whereas it is much more of a popular ideology in Greece. This has to do with the way the Greek revolution and the nation state was made versus the way the Kemalist revolution and the Turkey nation state was made.

That is to say, relatively speaking - I'm not willing to say that the Kemalist revolution was entirely from the top down, but the from the top down elements of the Kemalist revolution were so strong relatively speaking compared with the relative localism of the Greek Independence War and Greek revolution in the 1820s and aftermath - that because of the way nationalism was redefined by the Kemalist elite in the 1920s and 1930s, the social time of the earlier nationalism of the 1910s was erased and replaced by a monumental kind of state defined nationalism in the 1920s and 30s which has basically remained a state ideology.

I mean, if you simply go to Greece and Turkey, go to Athens and Ankara or Athens and Istanbul on Republic Day or Independence Day and witness the national day parades, this comes out very, very strongly. Turkish people will not, I mean certainly intellectuals and middle class people or middle class students or youth will not go to these parades. I mean, they are attended by school children forcibly dragged out of their schools. Whereas if you go to national day parade in Athens, all of Athens is there waving Greek flags and young men and women, you know, teenagers kissing and embracing and making a social festivity.

__: That's not true.

Berktay: I've observed it. I've observed it. I've been in Athens on two Greek national days and I've observed it. And I mean the kinds of students and youth that I've observed in Greek national day parades, they have counterparts in Turkey. Like, for example, the Turkish students of my university, Bogazici University or Middle East Technical University, if they belong to a subculture that allows for kissing and embracing and holding hands in public, they will not be seen dead waving a Turkish flag around on national day. I mean, this is a totally different framework and that is perhaps why Turkish intellectuals tend to be overall, I wouldn't vouch for everyone, but tend to be more alienated relatively speaking from Greek nationalism than Greek intellectuals. Speaking on the average.

But the point is that these differences aside, as I've said, nationalism is very strong in both countries and they have a built in animosity towards each other. After all, these are the only two countries on earth I think, each of which has waged its decisive nation state formation war against the other. I mean, they are locked into that kind of mental space in their terms of national memories. And each side has its narratives, grand narratives, in which it itself is only the victim and always the victim and the other side is always the oppressor, the perpetrator of injustice.

And in effect these are narratives, if they were put together, they would form the complete picture. But each side, in virtually total lack of empathy with the other, sees its side of the story, sees the traumas to its own psyche and does not stop to think about what might have been happening to the other side, etc. in that regard.

Again, here there is a slight asymmetry between Greece and Turkey. Several speakers have remarked that in terms of leverage in international politics, Turkey enjoys a just strategic advantage. And this operates particularly with respect to the United States it was remarked this morning. I would say that this is true. On the other hand, when it comes to emotive considerations or the accessibility of the Turkish grand narrative or its credibility or in terms of identifying with it, Greece enjoys enormous emotional advantage over Turkey and this again operates particularly with respect to European public opinion.

We all know, a lot of people know what happened to the Greeks after 1923. Huge amounts of people, including Turkish intellectuals, know what happened to the Armenians in 1915. But people don't know what happened to the Turks. For example, if you take a recent publication like the Atlas of the Diasporas edited by Jirah Shaliam(sp?) and somebody else whose name I forget. There is a representation of the Greek diaspora, of the Armenian diaspora, etc., but there is not a word about the Turkish diaspora or rather what might be called the reverse Turkish diaspora, that's the Turkish implosion.

That is to say from the Hapsburg wars on, from the Russo-Turkish War of 1878 onwards, the Balkan Wars onwards, Turko-Muslims immigrated, fleeing, refugees, millions of refugees fleeing into Anatolia from the Caucus, from the Balkans, from Eastern Anatolia, from Crete, from the Crimea, etc. So much so that, I have argued in the past, that Turkey, modern Turkey is a nation born out of immigration. Not emigration, but out of immigration. That is to say there has been an enormous implosion of the outlying Turkish Muslim populations into Anatolia. It is in effect what happened in 1922-1923 was that the Kemalist revolutionary elite had to rediscover Anatolia. It was really in a strange country, it was not in this country.

You go and visit the Gallipoli cemeteries and look at the names and the birth places of the officers' tombstones, on the officers' tombstones and 50% or more are from outside the limits of present day Turkey. Ataturk himself was born in Salonika. And you have a deracinated elite and a nation that was half constituted out of refugees or emigres trying to create a new existence for itself in this God forsaken, underdeveloped, backwards, unknown land of Anatolia, to which they were really strangers. The heartland of the Ottoman Empire had always been in the Balkans.

And I would like to read just one thing. Not from a Turkish witness, but from a British witness who was in Constantinople in the winter of 1913-1914 after the disastrous rout of the Balkan Wars. This was Aubrey Herbert and he wrote a poem watching a snowstorm in the winter of 1913-1914. "There falls perpetual snow upon a broken plain. And through the twilight filled with flakes, the white earth joins the sky. Grim as a famished wounded wolf, his lean neck in a chain, the Turk stands up to die." It's extraordinary. I mean, this is the eve of World War I and the image of the Turk is "grim as a famished, wounded wolf, his lean neck in a chain, the Turk stands up to die."

It is perceived that the Turks had their backs to the wall in the winter of 1913-1914 and that they're about to be crowded out of existence in history. And this is what also the British expect of course in their landings in Gallipoli in 1915. That it will be a walkover. That this is the last stroke and, you know, one little blow and it will all collapse. That is why they so undermanned and underprovisioned the Gallipoli campaign from the start, because of this underestimation until it is too late. Then it is a matter of pouring in reinforcements too late and they never catch up with the Turkish build up.

But I would just like to say that this is not often recognized. There was recently an article by Robert Carver in the Times Literary Supplement about Islam the tolerant, question mark, in which the author managed to write about the Armenian massacres, yes, and also the Greek massacres of 1915, 1922, without mentioning a word about the landing of the Greek Expeditionary Army in Anatolia. I mean, it is as if somehow the Turks had suddenly set about to, you know, massacring the Greeks in western Anatolia without anything else happening.

By this I don't mean to apologize for ethnic cleansings attendant upon the creation of nation states by any means. I mean, there is a saying in Turkish, (Turkish), it takes two hands to make a clapping noise. Hm?

__: ...(inaudible)

Berktay: Oh, okay. Sorry. Well, forgive my-- Well. What I would like to say in conclusion is this. There are these grand narratives, with some asymmetries, etc., and with more of an emotional deficit suffered by the Turks. But nevertheless, there are these grand narratives that are only half the story and present we, ourselves, as the victim and the other as the perpetrator of oppression and injustice. Frankly, this is of course renarrated and recycled constantly through the media and officially through the national education systems. History books have been already mentioned. I've been working on Turkish school books, history books, for the last 10 or 15 years. Writing repeatedly on them. And they're ghastly.

They are constantly being readjusted and made worse and worse in response to the perceived exigencies of foreign politics. In the 1950s and the 60s, Turkish school books used to be on Greece and Greek history, they used to be incomparably better. They had ample chapters on ancient Greece and ancient Greek democracy and ancient Greek philosophy and all that and they did not have an obviously anti-Greek bias. This was because the Kemalist Republic in the 1920s and 30s had tried to engage in an act of forgetting or unremembering vis-a-vis the traumas of the Balkan Wars and the Greek-Turkish War of 1919 and 1922.

This reversal was quite striking. They really tried to civilize Turkish society from above in a way. I don't hesitate to use those terms. And this was the time when the Kemalist regime explicitly repudiated Turkish irredentism and pushed a very active policy of peace in the League of Nations. And the friendship between Ataturk and Venizelos became their underlying slogan of Turkish foreign policy and they also tried to push a little detente in the Balkans, a kind of proto-nonalignment policy that was too early for its day in the pulverized inter-war wars.

But together with all this, there was a massive official act of trying to forget and unremember. They deleted the social time and the concrete references of the years 1908 to 1922. But what did filter through the sieve was some abstract emotions of always having been persecuted, always having been ostracized by Europe, always having been bullied by the great powers posing as the protectors of the Greeks or the Serbians or the Bulgarians, whatever, and a general kind of xenophobia did not entirely disappear.

Then what happens when things like the Cyprus crisis, etc. started to come along from the 1950s onwards was that certain elements of those new tensions or contradictions began to resonate very, very dangerously with this flattened out landscape of Turkish memory. Nobody really remembered the event of the Balkan Wars and things like that, but there was a cliche to the effect that (Turkish). You take a priest, you take an Orthodox priest, he becomes a ...(inaudible) This is a constant refrain, this is a constant, for example, in the short stories of Anasay Fetin(sp?).

And of course Vaselesky(sp?), the Bulgarian national leader, the Bulgarian national hero, was a priest who turned a ...(inaudible) And then when you see then Turkish nationalism with this kind of memory was faced with Makarios, Makarios immediately fit into the cliche of (Turkish) the priest becomes the ...(inaudible) This is what I mean by if things are not really brought out into the open and redressed and addressed concretely. If you engage in artificial acts of forgetting or unremembering, the later resonances that could be brought up can be even more dangerous.

The people who fought against each other and who killed each other in the 1910s or 1920s at least also knew each other as human beings. They were neighbors. As with Turks and Armenians in Eastern Anatolia, they murdered each other, they stole from each other, Turks more than Armenians of course, and they engaged in massacres. But at least they had lived together and they knew each other. But what happens as later generations and later generations no longer have, because of all these ethnic cleansings and populations exchanges, etc., they no longer have actual physical human communal contact, what happens is that the recycled memories become ever more abstractly binding like tribal taboos.

The longer you are removed from, the further you are removed from the point of origin, the more binding, the more dogmatic, and the more intransigent these memories get.

I have no overall recipes. But I would like to say that enormous responsibility, I'm not a populist, I think enormous responsibility rests with intellectuals. Intellectuals and scholars. What is needed, among many other things, in Turkish-Greek relations is to create safe havens or common spaces and common intellectual projects in which impeccably impartial scholars and intellectuals can sit down. Not as Greeks and Turks, but as human beings and enlightened scholars to see if they can renarrate the joint history of these two nations by producing model pamphlets or model textbooks, by institutionalizing in continuity such publications so as to gradually engage upon yet another process of, very slow and torturous perhaps, of enlightenment vis-a-vis their respective societies. Thank you.

M: And in this process, thank you. You were not blessed with an electronic clock, but still.

Berktay: I used my notes.

M: And in this process of renarration, it's also recreating common public spaces where people from both countries, intellectuals from both countries, and students, scholars from both countries, from both nations can come together in this traditional role that you mentioned in the past ...(inaudible) scholars and other great institutions in the Near East played in the past and stopped playing since the emergence of the nation state. This, if it's not possible within Greece or Turkey, it is maybe possible here in the States and at Harvard where people from across both sides come together to debate and engage in such a dialogue.

I'm now turning to another friend, Diana Chigas, who is the vice president of the Conflict Management Group organization here in Cambridge, Massachusetts and responsible for Europe, former Soviet Union, and the international programs of the organization. From the scholars and the academics to action, Diana has been working on Cyprus for the last couple of years in various projects and in trying to bring the two communities back together. And she's going to talk to us about this experience, about the practicalities of how to rebuild the common space there and what are the challenges.

For many people forget, even with a solution to the Cyprus problem, in many respects the problems will just have begun. And that the two communities will have, even if a political settlement is found, find to a way to live together for the future. Many believe that then the real problems, the real obstacles, the real uncertainties will arise. So preparing for this, Diana has a lot of things to tell us, I think.

Chigas: Hopefully in a short period of time.

M: A very short period. I'm abusing my friendship here.

Chigas: I'd like to thank Professor Berktay because I could not have described more beautifully the challenges to building a sustainable peace on Cyprus. Those are really the underlying issues with which these societies are going to need to deal if any kind of agreement is going to be sustainable. As a practitioner, I'm forced to be optimistic. If I were as despairing as some of our previous panelists, I couldn't do my work. And working on Cyprus for six years, you really have to have a lot of optimism.

But I think in the bleak political and regional picture that many of the previous panelists have painted, it hides a more positive and promising feature of the relations between the two sides. At least on Cyprus. I'm not talking about Greece and Turkey. And that the step by step process that has been advocated by Tozun and others is actually beginning to take place on Cyprus. Though you can't see it because of the deadlock of negotiations.

So to divide into two parts, I'd like to just describe the growth of, over the last five years or so, of a pretty large and increasingly bicommunal movement on Cyprus doing the kinds of things that Professor Berktay has described and describe also and take a look at its impact on the conflict itself and on the prospects for a sustainable peace.

This movement started probably before, and certainly before I got involved, but it started really with the activity of a small number of American and non-governmental organizations, including my own, Conflict Management Group and an organization based in Washington, D.C., the Institute for Multi-Track Diplomacy, were to provide conflict resolution training to groups of Greek and Turkish Cypriots from a wide range of sectors. My colleague at IMTD, Louise Diamond, began this initiative in 1991.

And remember, in 1991, it's hard to look at it from now, but 1991, bicommunal contact was nearly non-existent. There were a handful of mostly people, leftists, very brave, who were meeting, but it was very difficult. The Turkish Cypriots couldn't obtain permissions to go into the buffer zone, Greek Cypriot police made it difficult, press, media would brand everybody as traitors if they met with the other side. It was extremely difficult at that time. And so there was a lot of work done just really just to promote the whole issue of conflict resolution. Just looking at the relationship in a different way because the situation was so polarized that even that voice was very silent.

And so two events started in 1993. It took two years to even get to the point where you could really bring the two sides together. One was a workshop facilitated by my colleague Louise in Oxford, England, which brought together ten Greek Cypriots and ten Turkish Cypriots for an intensive ten day workshop on conflict resolution. And that was particularly significant because a daughter of Clerides and the son of Denktash were present. So that immediately through it into the public light.

The other significant event is really the start of US involvement in this. Which was that the US Agency for International Development, which had managed the money that has been appropriated every year by Congress for Cyprus, decided to start investing in conflict resolution and asked for a pilot workshop for Greek and Turkish Cypriots students studying in the United States on conflict resolution. It really is a pilot to see if this was worth investing and if it could work.

So 1993 was really a turning point and it really marks a takeoff of a citizen based track II diplomacy effort on the island. And three particular events in 1993 and '94 really sort of sent it taking off. One was when both the students that we trained and the ten Greek and Turkish Cypriots trained in Oxford returned to Cyprus. On the Greek Cypriot side, they were subjects to a vicious and protracted attack by the media. Saying traitors, engaging in secret negotiations, it's a British-American conspiracy. Many of these people, their lives were threatened, death threats, graffiti on their houses.

The turning point was many of them, including Kate Clerides and Serdei(sp?) Denktash decided to step out and support this process. And so it really brought it into the public discourse and brought a new voice because of the legitimacy of those two actors. The media attack in fact backfired. The secretary general really upbraided the Greek Cypriot press for engaging in the attack and just the conversations that it started generating because the attack was so extreme really started to bring it into the mainstream.

The second major event was that USAID, pleased with the results of the first set of workshops, decided to invest a massive amount of money into these workshops and commissioned eight workshops in a period of about five months in 1994, training over 250 people. 250 doesn't sound a lot, but Cyprus is also a very small island. So 250 is a lot in that short of a time.

Significantly one of the things that they did commission was a workshop for political leaders from all the parties, from all the sides which took place in Washington that year and really brought this work into the mainstream because those political leaders who were using many of these workshops to increase their own political capital, now knew what it was all about. They couldn't claim that it was traitors and negotiations. With the failure of the talks on the confidence building measures that year in 1994, these workshops in fact were the only confidence building measures happening that year.

Finally, the US government also decided to hire somebody to be on the ground full time to help the groups that were coming back from the workshops, help them develop projects, form new groups, really expand the work into something both concrete and expand the numbers of people participating. And so that really made the whole thing take off. By 1997, this year, I just got back about two weeks ago, we have trained over 800 people, including people from critical sectors like in the education sector, like the media who are big factors in keeping the conflict going.

We've trained trainers in Cyprus. Greek and Turkish Cypriots trainers now working together, doing introductory conflict resolution workshops for Greek and Turkish Cypriots. There's an office now in the buffer zone for the conflict resolution effort and over two dozen projects, including a lawyers project that is translating the legislation that has been developed on both sides since 1974, a project to rewrite a textbook, a joint textbook on the history and to examine the history textbooks. Cultural education, a project for business. A number of activities going on. And interest by thousands and thousands more.

So what's the impact of all of this work? I mean, if you look at the negotiation process, it looks quite as stalemated as ever. And in fact, violence has increased in the last year. You see more activity by extremists. An increasing arms race. A lot of people have said, "So what good does a citizen based kind of movement do?" And in fact there is no impact on the negotiations. But I think the impact can be measured with reference to some of the underlying driving forces of the conflict and what makes the conflict work and really what has made it intractable and what has sustained the conflict and kept it in such a vicious cycle for, as some people will say, 23, I'd say probably 35 to 40 years, ongoing.

And when you look at those underlying driving forces, I think you can see that the impact is quite significant and there is a groundwork being laid now for sustainable peace on Cyprus. I believe, as Tozun and others have said, that the search for a comprehensive solution on Cyprus is not going to work. And partly because the essence of the conflict lies not in what are the property arrangements, what--

Chigas: --set of norms and a set of images that create a self-perpetuating dynamic on Cyprus that really is largely independent of the originating issues and the substantive issues. And norms, some norms that require the parties to be militant and unyielding, not to back down to the other side, to establish that one is right, to really see the conflict as a zero sum game. And also the sense of loyalty to one's family, one's ancestors. I don't think I've met anybody in Cyprus who has not been touched in one way or another by the conflict. And a sense of loyalty to one's ancestors makes it very difficult for people to come to some sort of rapprochement.

The images, I think Professor Berktay has described the images much more clearly and poetically than I could ever describe them, are really of the other as an enemy, barbarian, out to destroy us. And these images are reinforced through a number of psychological and perpetual processes that make it difficult to develop even a modicum of trust. One is what some psychologists have called a process of autistic hostility. The party's needs and fears act, in a sense, as a cognitive constraint on their ability to process new information. So they find evidence that confirms their own views of the other side. They resist evidence that disconfirms it and tend to attribute hostile intent.

I'm reminded by an incident a few years ago when I had landed in Cyprus in December. I went over to the north of Nicosia. There was no electricity. The north receives their electricity from the south and that had been cut off. And I heard stories from very significant decision makers, ministers in the north, saying, "Well, if the Greeks really cared about us, they would just look over here and see that we are suffering, see that we are cold and we don't have electricity and do something for us." They were entirely persuaded that this was a hostile, intentional, strategic move on the part of the Greek Cypriots.

Further investigation by the UN revealed that this was just over demand for electricity. And some of those who got their electricity free were cut off in favor of those who paid for their electricity. But it was very difficult even to get that kind of understanding and particularly in a situation where the parties are completely separated. When communication is broke off, there are no telephone lines, there's no way of communicating, the parties have no experience with each other to correct these kinds of misunderstandings and they maintain their views, in a sense, autistically through their own psychological and perceptual processes rather than through direct experience with the other.

The other piece of the images is sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy or what I would call reciprocal causation. This is a vicious circle where behavior by the other confirms our original images of them as aggressive or barbarians or hostile. And because our own behavior elicits from the other the behavior we first thought, originally thought that they would engage in. So we end up in a self-fulfilling prophecy which leads to, first, a perpetual cycle of aggression - this is very hard to break - and a perpetual cycle of mistrust.

And I think one of the fundamental questions in Cyprus right now, and perhaps also between Greece and Turkey, is there's not even a first level of trust and it will be very difficult to persuade either leader of the others even good will and, in a sense, give them a motivation to engage in any kind of negotiation process which is risky by definition without that sort of breaking that cycle of mistrust.

So what's the impact of this growing bicommunal movement? The impact is largely at the attitudinal level. And we've witnessed in the workshops and I think more than in a broader society at large, a transformation in attitudes about both how to deal with the conflict and especially about each other. Particularly in three areas. First, we've called connection. In many cases, in fact in most cases except for the older generations, this is the first time any Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots have ever met each other. I've gotten comments of, "Oh, they eat the same food as we do."

It's amazing even on a small island such a Cyprus in the modern, you know, post-modern world, in a highly technical world and technological world that people know that little about each other. But in fact it's true. So in these workshops, people will form very deep connections with each other, develop trust. In fact, most of the groups have continued to meet over the last years and started expanding. These have started to form some coalitions across conflict lines and many people have started to say, "Well, we have more in common with each other than we do with some of the parties on our own sides." These can be the building blocks of a sustainable peace, even if they're not building blocks to a negotiation agreement.

They've developed empathy and compassion for each other, start seeing the historical perspectives and really completing the picture in a way that makes them able to start working together.

The second area is unconscious and sort of awareness and developing new perceptions about each other and the conflict. New images of an enemy. Not of an enemy, but of a partner. And I think the best way to describe these kinds of developments is really just through a couple of anecdotes. We did a few years ago a workshop for political leaders and prominent journalists and businessmen. And there was a prominent nationalist journalist from the Greek Cypriot side who had been invited and decided to come. We put them in suites, a Turkish Cypriot and a Greek Cypriot. Two bedrooms and a living room. Had them drawing out of hats(?).

He looked over across the room and saw the right hand man, the advisor to the head of the right wing party on the Turkish Cypriot side which has been anti-federation, anti-unification. He said, "God help me if I draw this guy's name." Which he promptly did. The first night he said, "I locked my door. I didn't know what this man was going to do to me. I locked my door." Well, those are the kinds of things. By the end of the workshop, they were the best of the friends. I think but more significantly, when he went back to Cyprus the first thing he did was go over to the north, which he had never done since 1974, to interview Injuvit(sp?). And he started changing his language. He said, "Now I can't use some of the aggressive language I used to use because now I think of people on the other side, I know people on the other side. I know who I'm having an impact on."

Another person even this past week when we were in Canada, another person said, "I always thought that the Turkish Cypriots didn't want a solution." He said, "I didn't realize that there are people who do want a solution, they do want to work with us and now I feel like I can talk with them." Those kinds of transformations are the building blocks on which some sort of sustainable peace can happen. And it's very hard to do internally. There is some sort of need for contact between the two sides. Another Turkish Cypriot said, "In my heart, I've always thought that I wanted two states, the two state solution. But now I'm realizing that it's against my interests and I need to start rethinking some of my original ideas." Get those kinds of transformation of ideas.

Incompetence. The format in which we've done this has been in conflict resolution training. I will move and conclude. Yes, give me three minutes. Developing skills and communication, joint problem solving. That many are using both in their private lives, but especially to continue their discussions about Cyprus. And I think this leads them, I witnessed this last week even, to be able to discuss very, very sensitive hot topics in a very deep way and come to a very deep understanding about each other in a way that allowed them to be creative about the kind of solutions that they might propose.

The individual impact may not be enough to have a significant impact on the entire system. But I think the cumulative impact has been significant. Firstly, as a model. These workshops are microcosms of the conflict and microcosms of how the conflict might change. And as a model, I think they can be very powerful. They've gotten a lot of publicity on both sides. They've been attacked by both sides, but they've also started to get a lot of positive publicity and people are starting to see, contrary to the official wisdom, that in fact, yes, we can work together. Yes, we can discuss very sensitive issues and we can meet together.

UN events now regularly attract between five and ten thousand people from both sides. And the person who led the media attack in 1993 is now part of one of the bicommunal groups. And so you've seen a real shift in the attitudes of society. I think that goes partly to the institutionalization issue. This citizen based movement has started to really eat away at what I would think of as the conflict habituated nature of this society and the institutionalization of the conflict. What do I mean by institutionalization? The people who have vested interest; the media, education now, some of the bureaucrats, some businesspeople who have a vested interest in the conflict.

But further than that, sort of the grand narratives, that Professor Berktay has referred to, that are being recirculated that really determine the way of thinking, patterns of thinking and feeling within the two communities. That needs to be broken. And I think this movement has started to kind of eat away at that institutionalization. I'll take two seconds just to describe three ways in which it has. First it's working at several levels and at several sectors and creating pressure to open up more contact. The technological revolution, Internet, and cellular phones have been a big help to that. People are now exchanging cellular phones and being able to communicate directly with each other at all levels.

It's creating some vested interest in peace. There are some business projects that are now being proposed. There are education projects, legal projects, there's a management center that is now working its way towards being built. These will create at least a vest constituency for peace. And finally, I'd say it's strengthened the moderate voice in both communities as a counter to the extremists. The last couple of years we've seen a rise in the activity by nationalists and extremists on both sides. The Grey Wolf on the Turkish Cypriot side. We saw the motorcyclists and some of the extreme nationalists on the Greek side.

It was interesting to see after the Dorinia(sp?) incident, for example, that these bicommunal groups were able to organize a meeting, inviting all the participants in the workshops which, a month after Dorinia, which produced 600 people. The UN then proceeded to run its own events at which people kept showing up. What we're finding is that these kinds of extremists events, the bicommunal event is able to organize against it. And many of these things, the recent military exercise, was not even noticed on Cyprus. It did not do anything to the bicommunal activities. Several years ago, it would have stopped all communication for several months.

So you're seeing a growing movement that has the potential of laying groundwork for peace and creating a context in which a successful negotiation can happen. And just in conclusion sort of what can be done, I think the international community, and specifically American, focus and investment in this process as a part of the peace process has been a big factor in its growth.

So continuing international investment and particularly at this moment is very important in creating pressure on the leaders to continue to start to negotiate and to continue to lay the groundwork for a sustainable resolution and to start to create and implement a infrastructure for sustainable peace if the international community itself does not want to stay involved for the next 30 years after a resolution is reached. That's the short version.

M: Thank you, Diana. Of course now it's my turn for a 20 minute long paper. I'm joking. I will skip that and I will turn directly to questions and I will follow my predecessor's practice. Five questions per set. That will increase the time. Ambassador.

Stearns: There seems to be a consensus that a top down approach to these problems has not worked and that we need a bottom up approach which is ...(inaudible cough) the bottom up approach should have begun about 20 or 30 years ago. And we may not have time for these culminations to take place. I wonder whether, for example, there are any shortcuts. Whether by concentrating, as Professor Berktay suggested, on intellectuals this would work or not. I'm a little more skeptical about the enlightenment of intellectuals ...(inaudible) In part because I recall one of the first associations to the breakup in Belgrade in '89 was the Author's Association. I hope to be proven wrong. Are there some shortcuts is my question.

M: Eleni.

Odoni: I am asking my questions very late to Ambassador Stearns as I wanted to ask, you have actually described sort of a far more active civil society in the making, then we would talk about these issues of peace in this context either in Greece or Turkey. And what do we do about the institutional frameworks that seem to be holding things back? If you have any ideas. I also want to add those, with respect to what Ambassador Stearns was saying, it is my feeling that Greek intellectuals kind of shifted a lot on their positions and there are a number of centers and research and knowledge, the kind that were described before, how sophisticated they have become now. And that is a ...(inaudible)

M: Thank you. Yes, please.

Q: A brief ironic observation. The Greeks of course have been arguing which way the ...(inaudible) It's an acquired taste for him. Mark Vincent, ...(inaudible) professor of Balkan history. And I created a course called "Ethnic Problem in Balkan History", tracing three areas; Transylvania, Macedonia, and Cyprus, from the middle ages to the mid-20th century. It's offered(?) for ten years at Tel Aviv University, neutral territory. ...(inaudible laughter) Mr. Butaraz(sp?) wanted me to be able to offer this course. He found several open students who also wanted to do this course at ...(inaudible) University. No department, censor, programs, conflict resolution, nothing was even willing to discuss the possibility. So that's where I see the arguments(?).

M: Thank you, thank you. Mr. Butaraz, he has a proclivity to get in trouble, both the junior and the senior I suppose sometimes. Yes.

Q: Yes, I wanted to ask Mr. Halil Berktay what ...(inaudible) is the ideal political framework in Turkey that will make an improvement to Greek-Turkish relations after all?

M: Yeah. There is only one mister in this table, that's me. All others are doctors here. I didn't mean it this way. So we have our five questions and five comments. So Dr. Berktay, you may proceed.

Berktay: Well, shortcuts. I've been trying to say that there are no shortcuts basically. And what I offer, I offer not, you know, in any great optimism or anything like that. But more in terms of what I feel myself and some other people capable of doing in ...(inaudible) of doing nothing. I mean, it's that kind of little bit pessimistic, if you will, and minimalist approach. Now there is movement. There is movement in this regard. And I perceive movement in intellectual circles in both Turkey and Greece. I mean, I can think of several things that have happened in the last two years or so regardless of whether these are likely to Turkey and Greece in the next five years.

But, for example, two years ago we had a conference on history education and the others in history at my university. I organized it. And this was an attempt at Balkan wide rethinking of these various narratives and victimization stories and it was attended by historians from all over the Balkans. Including a very strong Greek contingent from the faculty or department of pre-school education at the University at Athens led by Anna Frangudakia(sp?) and Kardia Dragonous(sp?). And it was a very successful conference. I mean, it was a conference of, you know, 30 people. Okay, it was a very successful conference.

One thing it led to was a first ever bilateral agreement between the University of Athens and Bogazici(?) University and this was signed by the two rectors last fall finally, fall of 1996. And it now allows for regular exchanges of students, regular exchanges of faculty, regular exchanges of annual lecturers and things like that. And the agreement signed, the text of the agreement signed explicitly put in charge as executors, Niki Folousdemanderous(sp?) and Kardia Dragonous from the Greek side and myself from the Turkish side.

And one thing that has happened is that there has already been launched a Turkish-Greek-Israeli-Palestinian project, a psychology kind of project, involving narrate biographical, autobiographical narrations by young people. Greeks and Turks and Palestinians and Arabs and Israelis. Take their autobiographies at point X in time, subject them to contact and information and multi-cultural education and take their autobiographies again in two years time and see whether there is any change from perceptions of enemy to perceptions of potential partners.

Whether the life histories, traumatically intersecting as they are, change over a period of years, etc. That kind of project, for whatever it is worth, has been launched by a quadrilateral academic scholarly cooperation.

Well, I think that intellectual think tanks, if they are properly organized, if they are not addressed to show and if they can be effectively isolated from public opinion clamors for at least some crucial time of initial germination and if the right people are chosen, etc. and if businessmen, and businessmen can become very important I think in terms of subsidizing such projects, such institutionalized think tanks and regular contacts can in fact achieve a lot. They can take together Greek and Turkish history and go over point of dissension after point of dissension and devise new non-we centered ways of narrating a joint history.

And at the same time, made part of a national history of Greece and the national history of Turkey, blend them together into something else. Perhaps a now styled regional history, perhaps a kind of Aegean wide or Balkan wide multi-cultural history. But if human understandings are going to change, regardless if it is going to be easy or not, I think such pioneering ventures are going to be very important.

Chigas: I would agree with you on that. I think my answer to Monty's question is related to my answer to your question, Eleni. Is that in Cyprus specifically, I think one of the problems is that every step, every confidence building measure, everything that you do contains the seed of the entire conflict. So it's very hard to do anything in an institutional fashion. I mean, people are having problems. There is now a list of 20 desired projects that businesspeople are getting together, trying to plan joint ventures, a number of things going on and they get stopped by, you know, how are we going to find a legal framework.

So I think although there are no shortcuts, there may be a way for the international community to come in and speed things up a little bit by focussing rather than on the comprehensive package, focus on opening up maybe even a sort of a federal zone in the green line or something where people can actually go and do these types of things. I think you'll find that civil society will sort of organize itself if they have the opportunity and the framework to do that.

Sayari(?): Well, I already mentioned the sort of emergence of these think tank type of activities in Turkey. I don't know what is happening on the Greek side, but certainly in Turkey this is something which deserves a little attention, support. And it is happening. I mean, people are interested in coming up with both policy oriented studies and attempts to do something about the Greco-Turkish relations. Certainly.

M: One question of course is the independence of these think tanks and how much state connected they are and state dependent. The other issue is that precisely because of this lack of studying the Balkans and the region, we at the Kokkalis program are trying to promote this. I have to take now(?) some advertising I hear. And actually, consciously or unconsciously, prominent Turkish and the prominent Greek businessmen already have collaborated.

Maybe they don't know about it, but we had just a videotaped interview sponsored by the Kokkalis Program at the Kennedy School with the ...(inaudible) professor of Turkish studies here at Harvard and was just aired on Greek TV on Republic Day, October 29. Mega Tarnel(sp?), together with Felinberg(sp?) and Professor Kohoda(sp?). So there are projects of collaboration with thinkers who ...(inaudible) outside and etc. Now let's go on. Any other questions? Yes, please.

Q: Yeah, it's just a brief comment. It's not a question, but it's a comment to what you were talking about. The Cyprus bicommunal talks and negotiations and what now approach. It was interesting to hear what you were saying. I'm a Greek Cypriot and you and I lived with all the negotiation and rapprochement that's taking place. And I can safely say that still the groups are viewed as isolated and many people are still not getting used to the idea of the rapprochement and everything. But whatever we say about understanding the other ten year old(?) on the ...(inaudible) of Cyprus, there's a reality I think in Cyprus which will never change that.

The Greek Cypriots are not willing to recognize an occupation regime. And everything is going to happen on the part of the Greek Cypriots. That they're going to be able to live with the people who are, a, occupying their houses and taking over their properties. And however much we try to communicate with the Turkish Cypriots, unless a just solution is found to the occupation problem(?), it's ever going to be so.

M: Okay. Any other questions? Yes, Kalypso.

Nicolaidis: Just a comment on the comment. In history there has been hundreds of situations unfortunately where people were expulsed from their houses and did live, maybe not happy ever after, but in other houses with(?) the people who occupied their houses. So I wouldn't say never or else you can't get anywhere. But I had a comment maybe that can transform into a question. I think that the presentations all echo some sort of thinking about symmetries and asymmetries between a situation. And one type of a symmetry that's really the extent to which the destiny of the other side is in the hands of the other side.

And Zaya Fajadi(sp?) was telling us-- Well, actually, Mr. Berktay was, in talking about the nationalism creation of the two sides, made this very interesting rhetorical remark that these are the only two nationalisms that were created against each other. I would think about the French and German in part as along the same lines. But that would be a very long debate. Let's accept your point then that these are the only two and we could go(?) on this. Now that's a very interesting remark and I think its echoed in the current historical conflict by Professor Sayari's remark that on the one hand, the Turks see the Greeks as being their one obstacle to integration with the West.

And, I'm sorry, the Turks see the Greeks as that. But I would say, again here, we have a symmetry where the Greeks, little by little, might start recognizing that their conflict with Turkey is also their obstacle to a true integration with the West, including in the EU. Part of the negative perception of the Greeks and their half-hearted integration in the EU has to do with the conflict. The ...(inaudible) of this world when they put Greeks with the other, with the East or the rest or however we want to call them, it's in part due to the constant rivalry.

So I would say again here we see a symmetry where also the Turks constitute, the Turkish problem, constitutes a central obstacle the full integration of Greece in the West. And in this sense, you know, when we speak about a symmetrical antagonism as we've done in this panel, we are also led to extend it. There's a symmetrical problem, but therefore, there is a symmetrical solution too. Maybe on the side of nationalism, the irony we each has a stake in the survival of the other and even in the strength of the other to uphold its own national identity. There's no other there. That is the basis of your existence and we have less reason not being.

But, more seriously, on this question of the other side being the obstacle for integration to the West, here it also means that the other holds the key. The potential positive attitude of the other country, in a way, holds one of the central keys for each side to integrate in the West. And as you've all alluded to, each of these countries has a very fundamental split in its domestic politics between a Western side and an Eastern side. Between modernizers and traditionalists and that's very much of a signature between those two countries, although in very different ways.

So this would lead to a kind of advance in terms of discourse at two levels. One to the Westerners of Greece and Turkey that if they can change their discourse, and those intellectuals, to say and to make it understood in their societies that if they really feel that they want to be part of the West, it's the recognition and the engagement of the other side that is key. It's a hard thing to be said that such an important part of your identity is held by the other side, but I think it's important.

I also see that the US and the EU could be saying much more, "Look, you're full integration in the West, the key to this is held by the other side." And that's the kind of discourse that is not always necessarily put straight by the US and the EU because, again, that would diminish their own importance and their own role in the region. So I'm wondering if you could speak a bit more about how the symmetric antagonism leads to this interdependence. The discourse can be easily changed in that sense.

M: Yes, please. Do you have? No? Yes.

Q: I have a question for Elizabeth Prodromou. You laid out very effectively the different perils of timing and the different problems of legitimacy that are confronted in the situation. I was wondering if you could address what potentials do you see for overcoming these problems?

M: No more questions? Yes?

Q: I'd like to know, considering the difficulty of the Islamic relationships in Turkey, why the EU, which was described by a former secretary general as an economic giant, a political dwarf, and a moral worm, did not consider the possibility of a major Marsh Plan style of structure working cooperatively with Turkish industrialists? It would really help Turkey catch up with the European standards so that they then could follow Foreign Minster Panzales(sp?) excellent suggestion that Greece could help Turkey enter the EU.

M: Elizabeth, you had a question?

Prodromou: No, I just have to make my question in the form of my answer, so that's fine.

M: ...(inaudible)

Prodromou(?): In terms of what can be done to overcome the impasse? I admit straight up front that I have absolutely no prescriptions other than ones which have been made many times. But I have a couple of observations. One of them is from Diana Chigas' presentation.

__: We can't hear you.

Prodromou: One of the observations is from Diana Chigas' presentation where you said that the track II efforts which are moving forward are the building blocks of a sustainable peace. But they're not the catalyst for the real solution. And the only observation I have to offer with that is that somehow the horse is before the cart in this case. You're suggesting in fact that there are the foundations for a workable peace and that it's really a question of getting the elites to the table to broker a deal.

So I would suggest at some level, in this particular instance, focusing on elites. After all, however unpalatable nationalism is and I certainly agree with Professor Berktay, we live in a world of nation states and ultimately, until we don't, it's going to be political elites which broker the solutions. And then also I guess in terms of another observation which is by way of an answer and also a question to Professor Sayari and Professor Berktay, renegotiating the grand narrative, I am participating in some of the projects that you've actually spoken about and I'm both intellectually, as well as morally, sympathetic to the kinds of renegotiation of grand narratives that are necessary on both sides.

But I have a question in terms of the Turkish case. And that is that it seems to me that in many respects, the grand narrative has been so well institutionalized at the popular, and if by that we mean the Kemalist vision of an integrated, ethnically homogeneous secular state, that even where there is the political will on the part of elites to try and renegotiate that grand narrative, in some ways they are captured by the institutionalization of that vision at the popular level. So this is something that needs to change. And I guess the only way to go about doing that is through these kinds of track II and track one and a half efforts. But I'd welcome a response.

M: Yeah, we're trying to conclude with concluding comments from our panelists.

Berktay: It seems that I missed a question from you, right? I mean, I was so flabbergasted by what Mr. Keridis said about not calling me mister or whatever it was that I forgot the question. But I seem to recollect that it was about what internal conditions or internal transformations in Turkey might be conducive to a solution. Political circumstances. Well, in view of presenting a utopia, my utopia for the democratization of Turkish society, I'll just try to point out a few things.

Elements of this have already been mentioned by Sabri Sayari and others, but I would like to just make some observations about the present situation. While it is true that there is both internal instability and an enhanced role for the military in Turkey, I don't think this translates directly into an enhanced Turkish threat for Greece. On the contrary, and this is very, very paradoxical, I mean apart from the fact that something like 75 or 80% of Turkey's best troops and military hardware seem to be concentrated in the Southeast at the moment, apart from all that, there's also this aspect. The rise of political Islam in Turkey has suddenly confronted the Turkish military as an important element of the Turkish debate(?).

They've confronted the Turkish military with a new problem. That is to say I think they have started to worry enormously about whether Turkey is drifting away from the West. That is to say whether Turkey's identity is being redefined somehow uncontrollably as Eastern or Islamic or Near Eastern, whatever, Oriental, horror of horrors. And therefore, I mean somehow reasserted Turkey's credentials for belonging with the West, an integral part of the West or of Europe, has become now a top priority with them alongside the Kurdish question. Now these are contradictory of course, but nevertheless, this has become a top priority.

I think it is possible to infer from this that at the moment the Kurdish question aside, the military are paradoxically one group in Turkey, one very powerful element in Turkish society, who would like to make offerings of peace to all those elements among Turkey's neighbors or in Turkey's vicinity who can be intermediaries with improving Turkey's relations with the West or through improving relations with which Turkey can reassert its nature as a peaceful state and as rightfully belonging with the West and so on and so forth.

I think that is how the military's mind is actually working at the moment. And here of course I differ from Elizabeth, something that Elizabeth Prodromou said. I mean it was not any accident that leading overtures in the direction of improving Turkish-Greek relations have recently come suddenly from the Turkish chief of staff, etc., stepping over the civilian politicians, as it were. I'm not trying to make an argument about the enhanced power of the military in Turkish internal affairs simply for the sake of improved Turkish-Greek relations. But I mean history works sometimes in unexpected ways. That's all that I'm trying to say.

One thing about Turkey's EU membership or not. I wanted to say something stronger, it's something that I've said before. That is to say this is a very strange and tragic situation in that, on the face of it, on paper, yes, Turkey does not fulfill, you know, a reasonable criteria for really admission to the European Union or the European Community. But the point is, that as long as Turkey is not admitted, all those problems are going to get far worse. Because at the heart of the problem is a political system, a political class that has really ...(inaudible), that has really sort of delinked itself from the legitimate demands and requirements of civil society and is no longer really responding to civil society and has also totally failed in rendering the state and/or the deep(?) state accountable.

That is to say, we are having a political class delinking from civil society and a nation state that is becoming evermore non-accountable in this process. And frankly, I may be too pessimistic, but in the next ten years or so, looking at Turkish political parties, looking at their leaders, looking at their horrible, measly lack of vision, their lowliness, their utter mediocrity and mental narrowness, I don't know words to use, I frankly don't see internal dynamics coming out from within Turkish society to render the Turkish state accountable to civil society.

I think in fact that, well, this is a shortcut, alright? Shortcut, a material ...(inaudible) I frankly and many, many other people and scholars and intellectuals in Turkey look upon Turkey's admission into the European Union as something of a last resort in terms of if we are for the time being unable to make the Turkish nation state accountable from below, at least let it be made accountable from above in supernational ways.

Q: You're assuming there's accountability in your huge--

Berktay: Look, I mean admission to the EU would redefine the terms in which the Kurdish question is posed. Right? I mean, it would redefine the terms in which questions of human rights, of torture, etc. are posed. And these are very real questions for Turkey.

M: But Turkey has been a member of the Council of Europe for 40 years which is the main instrument of human rights in Europe and has presented an enormous challenge to the human rights structures, post-war structures of Europe to this respect. And some would say that this has been somehow helpful, but not decisive despite the membership there.

Sayari(?): No, I think there's an enormous qualitative difference between belonging the European Council and being ...(inaudible)

M: That's true. But as far as human rights is concerned, the Council of Europe is the one instrument.

Sayari(?): Yes, I would certainly second Dr. Berktay's sentiments. I think for the Turks, at least the secular segment of Turkish society, becoming a member of the EU or having closer relations with the EU, has much more political implications than economic or social implications. And for the same reason. That is there is the experience of Greece, there is the experience of Spain, there is the experience of Portugal. These are countries which made the transition from authoritarian rule to a democracy under the auspices of the EU. And I think within that institutional framework, democratization process in Turkey would certainly be hastened.

And I think this is something which many Turks, again those who support the idea of membership in the EU, are looking forward to. In terms of the broader issue, I think one should also see that there is no other Muslim country in the world that I know of which, for the past 150 years, at least a segment of its leadership has been trying to associate itself more closely with the West. You do not see Egyptians claiming that they want to be part of this. You do not see this, you do not see that. But in Turkey, this demand, this wish has been going on for over a century.

And I think it is something to be taken note of and it is very depressing to see documents such as the EU's latest, the year 2000 document, which talks about all these other countries, you know, countries like Bulgaria and Rumania, this and that, who are now on the list to get into the EU whereas Turkey is not even mentioned. So this is something which I think is not just politically very critical, but certainly something as far as Turkish-Greek relations, is very essential. And I think the perception that Greece is doing something negative on this issue certainly hits Turkish intellectuals and secularists very hard.

M: Diana, please.

Chigas: Just partly to respond to Elizabeth's comment. The track II, sort of a citizen by communal effort, is definitely not going to solve the problem. But I think there's a special circumstance in Cyprus that makes it particularly difficult because there are, in the current movement, there are elites participating. In fact, there is an infrastructure for a very successful negotiating process. There are a lot of people that I think if you stuck them up in Canada, where I just was, for a few months, they could probably come out with a pretty reasonable solution.

And unfortunately, they don't participate in the process. It's one of the few processes I know where the two leaders are pretty much alone in the negotiating process and they don't have an infrastructure surrounding them, an infrastructure of advisors or task forces. I think one thing the international community could do in terms of the process in order to bring this peace into the actual negotiating process, is rather than sitting back in the UN with a few unnamed and unknown experts drafting up constitutions for Cyprus, start putting pressure on and forming some of the task forces out of these groups who do have the understanding and they do have the skill and the ability to work together and are capable of coming up with these ideas, to actually bring that input into the negotiating process. I think it might begin to change some of the dynamics.

M: Thank you, Diana. Yes.

Q: The citizens group, you seem to ...(inaudible) the issue of the conflict that these groups are addressing--

M: Five more minutes and we'll be done.

Q: But the citizens groups, it's my understanding that they're not negotiating a political solution to the Cyprus problem.

Chigas: No.

Q: Therefore they're not addressing the Turkish army, they're not addressing the provision of ...(inaudible) more in the scope of the Greek Cypriot position. And I wanted to make also a couple of other comments and I know that you wanted to be optimistic about the ...(inaudible) efforts. I would view it as an exaggeration of what is actually happening. And I say that because what's on paper really isn't what is going on, are really skeletons. And there really isn't a whole lot of movement, a whole lot of progress being made in these various projects.

M: Yes, unfortunately, I have to interrupt you.

Q: I was making a point.

M: I know. But you had the time to ask the questions before. I remember very vividly that I asked for more questions and there weren't any and this is misplaced.

Q: This is a very interesting point to make ...(inaudible)

M: I understand, I understand. But we have to respect the audience as well. That I think they empathize with you all, but it's kind of tight. If you can conclude in ten, 15 seconds, just whatever. Time over. I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

Q: Okay, I can very briefly say is that it's exaggerated. I think the US involvement, it's an impediment in this effort. I know of groups who are unmediated by party structure, seem to have their own interest in the process(?), who are doing better actually than the groups that you were describing in getting together and understanding each other. And it's disappointing to me that because of their involvement, we cannot(?) do what we want to do. I'm sorry, I lost my ...(inaudible)

M: I'm sorry. It is a question that for many Greeks, Cyprus is a problem of invasion. For me and Diana, I think it goes much before 1974. There was in the communist strife in the island in the 60s. The UN dispatched a peacekeeping force already in 1964. And building again the bridges there. And it's very important how you view the Cyprus problem. Because if you focus on 1974, you miss half of the story and you(?) have missed basically the Turkish Cypriot part of the story.

Now it is an understanding, and I'll be very, very brief, just one minute and conclude in this, that here we have a missed opportunity between the two countries. And that in their efforts are the modernization at home, precious resources have been diverted for too long in this competition in antagonism. And there is an understanding that some more engagement must be advanced. And here I depart company with Van Coufoudakis. I don't think there has been enough engagement. Trade figures are abysmal. We're talking about a $300 billion in--

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