The Greek-Turkish Boundary: Conflict at the Interface

Abstract

How far can conflict be avoided by the separation of actual or potential adversary groups into politically discrete territories ? The experience of Greeks and Turks suggests that such stability cannot be guaranteed in the long term because the strategic, demographic and other elements taken into account in a 'settlement' are themselves likely to change, perhaps radically and rapidly. The Greek-Turkish interface shows a variety of types of boundary/frontier at different stages over the course of time. It shows that where population (and other 'movables' such as political institutions) are relocated to conform to a new boundary, the line in question is neither wholly antecedent nor subsequent to the pattern of distribution of such population but is a special, composite case. Today, the stability of the boundary between Greece and Turkey established as a result of the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne is questioned because the significance of the Aegean itself has changed-especially for Turkey which looks to new questions about resources and access. Moreover, both countries share a new concern for another variable in their relationship, the question of Cyprus. Meanwhile, at the level of non-spatial, inter-communal relationships, the experience of Greece and Turkey suggests that the concepts of boundary and frontier may be as relevant as they are to patterns of territorial space. Such intergroup relationships may be demarcated (i.e. institutionally defined) with the precision which attaches to political boundaries or they may be broad 'cultural frontier' zones of contact and intermixing. TURKEY'S western boundary in Thrace and the Aegean has remained unchanged since the establishment of the Republic in 1923. This followed a century of conflict in which first Greece in 1832 and, later, other states emerged to independence from the shrinking, 'multinational' Ottoman Empire. The last to appear was the new Turkey itself which arranged to exchange 'minorities' with its Greek neighbour. Uncompromisingly effective, this 1923 settlement at Lausanne was the response to the call for a homogeneous nation-state unencumbered by large minority communities holding the promise of disaffection and conflict. In spatial terms, national groups demanded exclusive territories in place of a cosmopolitan imperial system which had invested its Greek Orthodox and other religious minorities with certain communal rights but with no identification with particular territories. The Lausanne settlement of 1923 was thus a response to territorial conflict which established a linear interface between two states in the form of a boundary which promised to be stable because it was agreed by both parties and was mostly drawn through sea, and because minorities were largely cleared from the territories which it separated. Certain institutions, such as the Orthodox Patriarchate in Istanbul, were not moved but were taken into account in the overall settlement. Meanwhile, incidental features such as Greek words in the Turkish vocabulary or mosques in a Cretan village remained as relics of changed cultural patterns. Overall, the Lausanne boundary between Greeks and Turks was seen as eminently stable in the circumstances of 1923 because it separated two national groups and thus supposedly reduced the basis for conflict between them. However, it is clear that this stability has lessened as circumstances have changed: Ankara now wishes to renegotiate the agreement over the Aegean in face of the prospect of oil under the sea bed. In Cyprus, a de facto partition in 1974 achieved the sort of population exchange which did not occur there in 1923 because the island was then under British rule. Just as the international boundary is a political interface, cultural features such as language