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Sustaining engagement? On symmetries and asymmetries in Greek–Turkish relations

1999 was an important year for change and promise in Greek–Turkish relations when the two states embarked upon a new journey of rapprochement in defiance of their historical burdens of suspicion and antagonism. This entailed reframing the relationship as a positive-sum interdependence in the context of a common European future and engagement in new areas of economy, trade, civil society relations (Anastasakis, Nicolaidis, and Oktem 2009). The time, namely the early 2000s, was one of European optimism, characterized by the EU’s central and eastern enlargement, economic growth and prosperity and a trend towards democratic change. The transformation of bilateral relations marked for some a ‘regional success story’ (Rumelili 2007) – a new vision many argued – in a geography long characterized by conflict in its Balkan and Middle Eastern theatres. While long-standing security or high political issues in the Aegean and the division of Cyprus remained frozen, there was engagement in many other spheres at the economic, societal and cultural levels. Over the course of the past 15 years, this undoubtedly created a dynamic and multifaceted bilateral relationship and allowed the two countries to look at their common border not exclusively as a dividing line but as a space for cooperation. Yet how enduring was this new configuration predicated on engagements at the level of ‘low politics’? In the view of one scholarly assessment, the Turkish-Greek story entailed a transition from the ‘fragile détente’ that had punctuated earlier eras to a new threshold of ‘sustainable rapprochement’ (Onis and Yilmaz 2008). Sustainable rapprochement occurs when high-level engagements foster and, in turn, are galvanized by contacts at the non-governmental level. The value of ‘bottom-up’ engagements was clearly demonstrated in the 2000s, when initial diplomatic contacts at the foreign ministerial level yielded agreements in diverse areas from trade and tourism to telecommunications and cultural activities. In the same period, civil society contacts flourished between businesses, tourists, students, scholars, journalists and artists among others. Yet, for these new dynamics to settle into an enduring form of reconciliation – ‘durable partnership’ – progress on so-called low politics must be accompanied by addressing outstanding security problems, as had happened between France and