Turkey Greece And The Borders Of Europe

The Republic of Turkey has long aspired to join Europe both politically and culturally. However, its attempts to do so have been met with scepticism, and there is no unequivocal answer to the question of whether or not Turkey is accepted and viewed as European. This question is of particular interest in the case of Germany, the engine of the European Union’s economy which is not only home to millions of Turkish immigrants, but also has a history of cooperation with Turkey unique among European countries. With its analysis of West German prestige newspapers printed between 1950 and 1975, this study looks into how Germans viewed Turkey from a cultural and political perspective during a critical period of Turkish integration with the West and Europe, and compares this with perceptions of Greece, whose path to Europe was far less problematic by virtue of its classical legacy and Christian heritage.

Biographical note: Douglas Reynolds received his B. A. degree from the Florida State University in 2001, and his M. A. from the University of Erfurt in 2004. His post-graduate research concentrated on Turkey's cultural place in Europe and the West.

Seminar paper from the year 2010 in the subject Politics - Other International Politics Topics, grade: A, University of Flensburg, language: English, abstract: In this paper will be examined the cross-border cooperation between Greece and Turkey and more specifically the cross-border region of Thrace will be analyzed in detail. The case of the Greek-Turkish cross-border region is becoming more interesting than other cross-border regions, since Greece is a member of EU from 1981 and Turkey is a candidate member since 2005, that is to say the cross-border area in between these countries consists of the external borders of the EU with a potential member state of EU. Furthermore, the region of Thrace (Western Thrace for Greece and Eastern Thrace for Turkey) not only consists of an important region in geopolitical terms for both of the countries, but also the current situation of cross-border cooperation in this particular region represents and in to some extend explains with the most concrete way the prevailed situation of cross-border cooperation in the whole cross-border area of Greece and Turkey, including the border region of the Aegean Sea with coastal Turkey, the sea borders between these countries. Namely, it is indicative that the region of Thrace participated in Interreg IIIA but was excluded in Interreg IV, fact that complexes the cross-border cooperation and will be analyzed in detail in the following chapters. Before analyzing the case of Thrace, it is essential to mention that Greece and Turkey have long history of conflict, which goes back to the dissolution of Ottoman Empire and the formation of the Greek independent state. Currently, there is no military conflict but there are still political matters that are questioned form the one or the other side. The disputable sea borders, the air space, the FIR of Athens and the minorities in both of the countries are some o-border cooperation in a successful way. In specific, in the case of Thrace, the Turkish minority in the Greek part of Thrace plays an important role for cross-border cooperation and can be considered as a parameter that is responsible for the current situation of non actual cooperation.

In this extraordinary work of narrative reportage, Kapka Kassabova returns to Bulgaria, from where she emigrated as a girl twenty-five years previously, to explore the border it shares with Turkey and Greece. When she was a child, the border zone was rumored to be an easier crossing point into the West than the Berlin Wall, and it swarmed with soldiers and spies. On holidays in the "Red Riviera" on the Black Sea, she remembers playing on the beach only miles from a bristling electrified fence whose barbs pointed inward toward the enemy: the citizens of the totalitarian regime. Kassabova discovers a place that has been shaped by successive forces of history: the Soviet and Ottoman empires, and, older still, myth and legend. Her exquisite portraits of fire walkers, smugglers, treasure hunters, botanists, and border guards populate the book. There are also the ragged men and women who have walked across Turkey from Syria and Iraq. But there seem to be nonhuman forces at work here too: This densely forested landscape is rich with curative springs and Thracian tombs, and the tug of the ancient world, of circular time and animism, is never far off.

Borders of states, borders of citizenship, borders of exclusion. As the lines drawn on international treaty maps become ditches in the ground and roaming barriers in the air, a complex state apparatus is set up to regulate the lives of those who cannot be expelled, yet who have never been properly ‘rooted’. This study explores the mechanisms employed at the interstices of two opposing views on the presence of minority populations in western Thrace: the legalization of their status as établis (established) and the failure to incorporate the minority in the Greek national imaginary. Revealing the logic of government bureaucracy shows how they replicate difference from the inter-state level to the communal and the personal.

It is generally assumed that regional integration leads to stability and peace. This book is a systematic study of the impact of European integration on the transformation of border conflicts. It provides a theoretical framework centred on four 'pathways' of impact and applies them to five cases of border conflicts: Cyprus, Ireland, Greece/Turkey, Israel/Palestine and various conflicts on Russia's border with the EU. The contributors suggest that integration and association provide the EU with potentially powerful means to influence border conflicts, but that the EU must constantly re-adjust its policies depending on the dynamics of each conflict. Their findings reveal the conditions upon which the impact of integration rests and challenge the widespread notion that integration is necessarily good for peace. This book will appeal to scholars and students of international relations, European politics, and security studies studying European integration and conflict analysis.

In recent years the borders of Europe have been perceived as being besieged by a staggering refugee and migration crisis. The contributors to The Borders of "Europe" see this crisis less as an incursion into Europe by external conflicts than as the result of migrants exercising their freedom of movement. Addressing the new technologies and technical forms European states use to curb, control, and constrain what contributors to the volume call the autonomy of migration, this book shows how the continent's amorphous borders present a premier site for the enactment and disputation of the very idea of Europe. They also outline how from Istanbul to London, Sweden to Mali, and Tunisia to Latvia, migrants are finding ways to subvert visa policies and asylum procedures while negotiating increasingly militarized and surveilled borders. Situating the migration crisis within a global frame and attending to migrant and refugee supporters as well as those who stoke nativist fears, this timely volume demonstrates how the enforcement of Europe’s borders is an important element of the worldwide regulation of human mobility. Contributors. Ruben Andersson, Nicholas De Genova, Dace Dzenovska, Evelina Gambino, Glenda Garelli, Charles Heller, Clara Lecadet, Souad Osseiran, Lorenzo Pezzani, Fiorenza Picozza, Stephan Scheel, Maurice Stierl, Laia Soto Bermant, Martina Tazzioli

This report is about obstacles placed at the Greek entrance to the EU that prevent Iraqis and other asylum seekers and migrants from entering the European Union or that summarily expel them when they do. It includes testimonies from Iraqis and other asylum seekers and migrants on both sides of the Greek-Turkish border about pushbacks and summary expulsions from Greece, inhuman and degrading conditions of detention in Greece, Greek police and coast guard brutality and harassment, and the blocking of access to asylum in Greece as well as the denial of asylum and other forms of protection to those needing it. This report is also about abusive treatment of migrants by Turkish border authorities in the border region with Greece, including inhuman and degrading conditions of detention in direct violation of Turkey's obligations under the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (ECHR).