Analysis of Greek foreign policy towards Turkey in the late 1990s through conflict resolution frameworks

Despite a number of crises and tensions in bilateral relations in the 1990s, rapprochement began between Greece and Turkey in the late 1990s. Frequently mentioned reasons regarding improvement of relations in the late 1990s include the Europeanization of Greek foreign policy, political dialogue process initiated by the two Foreign Affairs Ministers, George Papandreou and Ismail Cem and growing social empathy on both sides as a result of devastating earthquakes which hit Izmit and Athens in 1999. Greece, for the first time, supported Turkey's EU accession process which resulted in Turkey's granting of EU candidacy status in the Helsinki Summit in 1999. However, despite improvement of relations between the two countries in areas concerning low politics, problems related to high politics including the Cyprus and the Aegean disputes have remained unsolved. Accepting the contribution of the above-mentioned factors to the improvement of Greece-Turkey relations in the late 1990s, this thesis intends to explain the scene behind the rapprochement between Greece and Turkey in the by employing three conflict resolution frameworks: Peter Wallensteen's approach with a particular attention to the seventh mechanism, Frank R. Pfetsch's approaches regarding conflict resolution and the track two diplomacy. Keywords: Greek Foreign Policy, Greek-Turkish relations, rapprochement, conflict resolution.