La Grèce et la Turquie dans les Balkans : la complémentarité introuvable

Abstract

Since the end of World War I, Greece and Turkey have cleared their disagreements regarding the Balkans to be facing one another. Since the dislocation by the communist bloc the Balkans strategies of Greece and Turkey have presented themselves as the middle course between the bilateral relationships of the two countries and the relationships that each of them keeps with the EU. Greece’s policy towards its Balkans bordering countries is aimed at reasserting its position within the EU and at imposing it as a regional power acting as a go-between between this area and the rest of Europe. As for Turkey’s Balkans policy, it sets itself in the same kind of search for the reassertion of its regional position towards the EU, but is in an inferior position regarding Greece since Turkey is not a member of the Union, and that its formal application is still in abeyance.At bilateral relationships level, it is more a matter of “marking out” the opponent, in order to prevent it from carrying out an encircling than a question of Greek-Turkish cooperation. Nonetheless the bringing together of Greece and Turkey has been on the more since 1999. In spite of persistent stumbling blocks regarding their points of view, the prospect of their relationships seems to be promising in as much as their differences of opinion are progressively transferred within the EU.

Keywords

• Greek-Turkish relations
• Commercial relations
• Diplomatic relations
• Greek-Turkish cooperation
• European interventions
• Pipelines