Comparetive analysis of interstate crisis processes: Turkey-Greece sample

As a result of the increasing wars in the world, peace has been the phenomenon that humanity needs most. The parties must end their acts of violence by accepting each other's existence in order for conflicts to end and people to continue their lives in the eventual peace environment. Considering the existence of the international system and power factors, establishing balances between the parties can be one of the important steps towards solving crises. Turkish-Greek relations have come to a point of tension from time to time due to reasons based on beliefs, lifestyles, historical and cultural background and national interests. The relations between the two countries are based on delicate balances, with the exception of the Atatürk-Venizelos Period, the meeting of Turgut Özal-Andreas Papandreou in Davos in 1988 and the friendship relations between İsmail Cem and George Papandreou during his duty as the Minister of Foreign Affairs in the late 1990s. These two societies, which lived under the rule of the Ottoman Empire until the middle of the 15th century, started to experience problems in their relations due to border conflicts and minority issues after Greece gained its independence. The second important event after the independence was the defeat of Greece, which the Greeks called "Asia Minor Disaster", during the occupation of Izmir and its surroundings during the years of the War of Independence between the years of 1920 and 1923. After these events, the Cyprus problem started to emerge, bringing the relations to a breaking point. In this study, where intra-state actors and leader perceptions come to the fore, it is aimed to achieve lasting peace by using peaceful methods. The steps taken towards ensuring world peace and for people to continue their lives within the scope of fundamental rights and freedoms sometimes lead to different events. Within the scope of this study, which aims to find meaningful explanations for these variables by determining which variables are affected by the crises between states, it comments on which variables leads the countries to success or failure as a result of the crises in the relations between Turkey and Greece. From a theoretical point of view, Neoclassical Realism, which is one of the most basic application areas of the discipline of international relations and reveals a new and holistic method of foreign policy analysis, will be used. The crises between Turkey and Greece are evaluated from a Neoclassical Realist point of view and the steps taken by the countries to resolve these crises are evaluated. Key Words: Conflict Resolution, Crisis, Neoclassical Realism, Turkey, Greece