NATO and the EU Dimensions in Greece’s International

With the outbreak of WW II, Greece took her place on the side of allied states and despite her comparatively weak and poorly equipped army won the first victory of the allied forces in October 1940: by repulsing the Italian troops that had attacked through Albania. Although Hitler was on his way through to invade Russia, the defeat of

Chr. Xifaras, G’ Gymnasíou - Neoteri Kai Synchroni Istoría. (Modern and Comtemporary History:

Grade 9), 107.

288 For Koliopoulos and Veremis, the Turkish Independence War and the compulsory population exchange made Turks –the feared contiguous enemies– in the eyes of Greeks. Greeks ‘demonized’

Turks, considering that they have all the negative aspects such as arbitrary rules, backwardness, and corruption. “The Turks were what the Greeks wished to leave behind; they represented the barbaric East, which had destroyed their ‘own’ idealized East”. See, John S. Koliopoulos, Thanos M. Veremis, Greece The Modern Sequel: From 1831 to the Present, 260.

289 Clogg, A Concise History of Greece, 123.

Italians diverted him into Greek territories. The German occupation of Greece started on 6 April 1941 and led massive bouts of high inflation, thriving black-market and a tragic period of mass starvation.

The decade of the 1940s stayed to be the darkest period in the country’s history. The Axis occupation of the country engraved on the Greek national memory and stored in such images like the Great Famine (Μεγάλος Λιµός), Civil War (Eµφύλιος Πόλεµος),²⁹⁰ and the Anglo-Soviet percentages deal made by Churchill and Stalin.

The German withdrawal from Greece took place in 1944 and Georgios Papandreou as the PM-in-exile and his government set foot on liberated Greek soil on 18 October,

“having delayed [their] arrival by twenty-four hours to avoid landing on a Tuesday, always of ill omen in the Greek world as the day on which Constantinople had fallen to the Turks”²⁹¹. Although the foreign occupation was ended, the country was still facing the bitter war ever between her citizens with their highly polarized ideals that can be narrowed as pro-communism and pro-monarchy. The Civil War between the leftists and rightists triggered the Truman Doctrine that on 12 March 1947 the US Congress declared to make a grant to Greece to alleviate the widespread communist threat and support ‘free peoples’ in the country and to avoid the remaining problem of returning the American munitions to the USA²⁹².

290 Vlavianos’s fruitful study provides detailed information about the topic. See, Vlavianos, Greece, 1941-49 From Resistance to Civil War. Accordingly, the Greek Civil War connotes armed conflicts between the communists and the royalists (supported by the United Kingdom) of the country, which took place between 1943-49 intermittently. Throughout the struggle, Joseph Stalin had deliberately refrained from providing any Soviet support to the Greek Communists. Generally speaking, during the WWII the KKE and communist-resistance groups, respectively, the National Mutual Aid (EA), the National Workers Liberation Front (EEAM), the National Liberation Front (EAM) and its military wing Greek People’s Liberation Army (ELAS) resisted the invasion and soon afterward EAM/ELAS (with more than 2 million members, nearly 30 % of the population) struggled against the pro-Britain government (the PM Georgios Papandreou was an anti-communist of Venizelist background) and the king in exile (George II) and his collaboration with the Metaxas dictatorship. With the help of the UK and the USA, the Greek military forces hardly managed to suppress the communists of the country; See, also Clogg, A Concise History of Greece, 133-141. According to Clogg, “Stalin had made clear his view that, given British and American naval domination of the Mediterranean, the communist cause in Greece was lost"; “Greek Civil War”, Encyclopedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/event/Greek-Civil-War. [13.12.2019].

291 Clogg, A Concise History of Greece, 136.

292 “The Truman Doctrine, 1947”, Office of the Historian, https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/truman-doctrine [14.09.2019]; Baskın Oran, “1945-1960: Batı Bloku Ekseninde Türkiye -1”, Türk Dış Politikası: Kurtuluş Savaşından Bugüne Olgular, Belgeler, Yorumlar (1919-1980), ed. Baskın Oran, 13th ed., v. 1 (İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2008): 485. As implied on the same page, because of the harsh postwar conditions in the country, the amount granted to Greece (USD 300.000.000) was 3 times the amount granted to Turkey (USD 100.000.000).

In the aftermath of WW II, while other European countries were trying to heal their wounds and rejuvenate their international relationships, Greece found herself suffering from another grieving period –a second war that was much more violent than that fought against the Axis forces. According to Koliopoulos and Veremis, the country’s post-war period therefore started on 30 August 1949 when the final operation against the communists in the northwest completed by the government. The repercussions of the civil war on the domestic affairs lasted for nearly ‘four decades’, during which the country endured bitter inner turmoil that conferred a sort of popular political legitimation on the US involvement in Greek undertakings by the Truman Convention and the Marshall Plan²⁹³. During this period, concerning the country’s national preference, two major themes were prioritized: making progress towards economic reconstruction and being under the umbrella of the western defense system. Since Greece surrounded by pro-communism countries such as Albania, Yugoslavia, and Bulgaria, security issues had the top priority, whereas efforts at facilitating political reconciliation with the West remained the second on the national agenda of the country. Consequently, as constituting the key area of confrontation against communism, both Greece and her neighbor Turkey, on 22 October 1951, concomitantly got admitted to NATO though neither of them was a North Atlantic country. It was an anti-communist structuring whereby the two countries’ leaderships would tilt themselves towards the glowing USA in that not only because of the US funds and resources but also of the policies it conducted. US concerns and interests were in tandem with their national strategies. Speaking for Greece, “Americans, who were perceived to be more sympathetic to the Cypriots’ desire to be rid of colonial rule, had displaced the British” that had long been her ‘external patron’²⁹⁴.

Greek Cypriot aspirations, however, were counterbalanced when Britain encouraged and motivated Turkey to claim an interest in the issue²⁹⁵. The 1955 Greek-Cypriots’

riots demanding enosis provoked Turks, subsequently to ease the strained relations on the island, in 1959 Menderes and Karamanlis signed an agreement that upgraded their

293 John S. Koliopoulos, Thanos M. Veremis, Modern Greece: A History since 1821 (Malaysia: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 127 On the same page: “Greece’s total share of the Marshall Plan, which was proclaimed in June 1947, was $1.7 billion in economic aid (loans and grants) and $1.3 billion in military aid between 1947 and the 1960s”.

294 Clogg, A Concise History of Greece, 148-150. It should be noted that their official membership would be on 18 February 1952.

295 ibid, 154.

positions towards Cyrus as the co-guarantors of the proclaimed independent Cyprus Republic. Yet, during the Greek coup of Colonels, when Brigadier Dimitrios Ioannidis declared enosis, which meant the abolishment of the London-Zurich Agreements, Turkey launched a military landing to save Turks living on the northern part of the island, which was perceived that “the US had ‘tilted’ towards Turkey, [and] prompted violent demonstrations in which the US ambassador was shot dead” by the Greek-Cypriots²⁹⁶.

The military dictatorship or as commonly cited ‘the Regime of the Colonels’²⁹⁷ ruled Greece between 1967 and 1973. The coup d’état of the far-right military figures seized power on 21 April 1967, precipitated by Turkey’s Cyprus landing on 20 July 1974), and entirely toppled down on 24 July 1974. Mainly, there were two grave repercussions of the military junta: the start of the presence of the Turkish army on Cyprus and the re-structure of the the Communist Party of Greece. Although the coup had produced the pretexts of an imminent communist seizure of power, stripped of such embellishments, the fact was seemingly just the opposite. According to Clogg, neither Greece was on the brink of a Communist take-over nor the Greek Communists were ready for such a venture, and conversely, this very ‘unpreparedness’ precipitated the eminent split in the exile leadership of the communist party the following year (1968) into two factions, one unwaveringly loyal to the Soviet Union, the other (KKE Interior) to ‘Eurocommunists’ in orientation²⁹⁸.

Broadly speaking, during the 70s and 80s Euro-Communists formed a distinct current that criticized Soviet-type communism and corroded its influence in Europe. Greek Communists were also affected by the Cold War division between East and West following the Prague Spring (1968) and the Greek Communist Party (KKE) was divided into two factions: KKE Interior and Exterior. The first group, favoring a more pluralistic approach to socialism and supporting Alexander Dubček (the secretary of the Czechoslovak Communist Party), forged a close bond with Eurocommunism, while the second one remained loyal to the Soviet ideal.

Prior to the dictatorship, to strengthen and secure the country’s bonds with the West that were forged by the NATO membership in 1951, PM Karamanlis following the

296 ibid, 170.

297 Other names are ‘The Junta’, ‘The Dictatorship’, and ‘The Seven Years’.

298 Clogg, A Concise History of Greece, 163.

Treaty of Rome of 1957 placed Greece’s application for becoming a member of EEC in 1959. The Greek government of the time (ERE²⁹⁹) succeeded in signing the Association Agreement (as commonly cited the Athens Agreement) on 9 July 1961 but due to the military takeover the process was ‘freezed’ until 1974. According to Kassimeris, the background motive of the country in her application for a membership was “to secure her position and status within the Western camp, improve her economy and contain communism”³⁰⁰. Among these objectives, particularly the third one might have been considered far more important since the country was surrounded by three communist states, fighting in the civil war, and witnessing her leftists' strong ties with Moscow. Following the topple-down of the junta and the restoration of democracy, in 1975 PM Karamanlis of the ND government applied for the full membership in the EEC; holding the belief that becoming a part of the western would strengthen democracy, political stability, and economy. It was regarded as a new period wherein the relations with the West that embodied in the NATO membership would be balanced and to an extent replaced by the newly established bonds with Europe, for the country withdrew from NATO’s military wing after the Turkish military movement against Cyprus³⁰¹.

Getting admission in the EU, however, was not an easy prospect for Greece since there were intense concerns among the existing members about the country’s economic and political capability, and the common values she shared with other member states. The Greek government of the time, took a further step to restore the democratic structure of the country, and in 1974 following the national elections, PM Karamanlis called another monarchy referendum that would be the sixth in the country’s history (after 1920, 1924, 1935, 1946, and 1973) and would formally abolish the monarchy. PM Karamanlis conducted skillful diplomacy and exploited Europe’s sensibility caused by its inertia during the Greek dictatorship, which led the members “to ease the path to entry of the country which they liked to hail as the fount of European civilization”³⁰². Thus after a six-year intense negotiation process, Greece got admission to the Community as the tenth member in 1981³⁰³.

299 Ἐθνικὴ Ῥιζοσπαστικὴ Ἕνωσις (National Radical Union).

300 Christos Kassimeris, Greece and the American Embrace: Greek Foreign Policy Towards Turkey, the US and the Western Alliance (London and NewYork: I.B. Tauris, 2010), 139–40.

301 ibid, 147.

302 Clogg, A Concise History of Greece, 177.

303 Official website of the European Union. https://europa.eu/european-union/about-eu/history_en

Greece’s EU journey towards becoming a core member, however, took more than anticipated or according to some others never achieved at all. Throughout the 80s until the collapse of Yugoslavia Greece described as a ‘footnote state’ and in during the period of 90s as an ‘irrational state’³⁰⁴. It was a fact that national and emotional positions of the country, especially her high level of support for Serbia’s Slobodan Milosevic and her confrontational approach to the Republic of (North) Macedonia/FYROM led Greece to a state of loneliness where her arguments about the both political events were interpreted in relation to her national historiography and concerns by the others.

According to some, Greece had never got a chance to fully Europeanize her foreign policy due to the fact that she had to deal with the so-called ‘national issues’ such as Turkey, Cyprus, and the Balkans (i.e. Macedonian Question)³⁰⁵. Having been a member state in the Community, Greece followed three interrelated policies towards Turkey-EU relations. Throughout the 80s, Greece strictly obstructed any possible negotiations between Turkey and the EEC/EC regarding the customs union. Secondly, during 90s, Cyprus and the Aegean issues constituted the top priority of her foreign policy agenda, and thirdly, she stayed intransigent and uncompromising in her policies towards Turkey’s possible membership in the Community (including also the prevention of Turkey from the EU funds and aid under the Fourth Financial Protocol)³⁰⁶. However, following some striking events such as the capture of Abdullah Öcalan, who is notorious for being a ‘baby-killer’ and the ringleader of a separatist Kurdish terrorist organization in Turkey, in the residence of the Greek ambassador to Kenya, the solidarity among Greece and Turkey aroused by the earthquakes, and the approach that a positive stance on a Euro-Turkey might contribute to the process of Cyprus’s membership in the Community, during the second half of the 1999, Greece portrayed a clear shift in her foreign policy towards Turkey’s EU route.

304 Charalambos Tsardanidis, Stelios Stavridis, “Greece: From Special Case to Limited Europeanization”, National and European Foreign Policies: Towards Europeanization, ed. Reuben Wong and Christopher Hill (London and NewYork: Routledge, 2011), 111. It has to be noted that the terms given in single quotation marks were used by the writers to define the country’s position within the EPC, which was superseded by the CFSP following the Maastricht Treaty of 1993.

305 Charalambos Tsardanidis, Stelios Stavridis, 113.

306 ibid, 116.