turkish-greek civic dialogue - AEGEE Europe

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Civil society needs political freedom, economy needs social mobility and political
power controls the rules of the game but still needs legitimacy. Ideology is the
fruit of a long process through history, which has been elaborated between the
three actors. It is well-known that Greek and Turkish national ideology has been
forged as mirror opponent element. Underlying bad memories of each other
keep alive a mutual distance and hostility. Maybe, starting considering the
issue not from the unilateral perspective of Turkey or Greece separately, but
dealing with both countries as a totality, a common space of human activity, in
political terms would be a new scientific and political approach. What seems
to be an extremist idea, in which I believe, is to work for the deconstruction of
the components of both ideologies. At least, if we are obliged to live with our
respective nation-state, let’s make them harmless and tolerant.
Nonetheless, is cooperation and civil dialogue sufficient to overcome the
problem of mutual distance and distrust? What is the political question behind?
Greek-Turkish relations over the past are characterised by a severe antagonism
over the land and the population. Even worse, conflicts which were conducted
centuries ago in a completely different political context have been baptised as
national and put into the Greek-Turkish current situation, creating anachronism
fully accepted and believed to be our national history. We should not forget that
nationalism is the ideology, which has no problem to create history for its own
purpose and at the same time has no problem to forget history selectively.
The research on the population exchange is not a mere field of contact
susceptible to scientific research: it has to do with the core element of the
political and military antagonism between Greece and Turkey. Nationalism
determined the fate of millions of people in our area. It was religion which
turn into national affiliation: race or national origin became the coverage of
such affiliation, as the attempt to create imaginary bonds among people with
their common national past which always is defined as the opponent of another
nation. Turks, Greeks, Albanians, Bulgarians, Serbs all are almost incompatible
identities to each other. In the time of nationalism, nations replaced cultures.
Homogenisation cut all elements, which would not fit into the national
stereotype. A Turkish speaking Christian was not tolerated anymore in Greece,
the same way as a Greek speaking Muslim was not living very comfortable in
modern Turkey.
Talking about and studying the population exchange, even 80 years after the
events took place, in the conference of Istanbul last November, was not an easy
exercise. After all, these very events had become the basis for the construction
of the modern myth of both nations: the catastrophe for the one, the birth for
the other, in both cases, Greece and Turkey refer to the same events from an
opposite point of view with the same connotation: 1922-23 is the starting point
of their state emancipation: it’s the beginning of modernity, according to their
respective specificities. The population exchange is always a bad and inhuman
event, but after all it has been blessed for the purposes of the new era of
nations: Who can imagine Turkey to have today more than 3 million of Greeks,
Armenians and Christian Arabs. Who can imagine Greece to have today more
than a million of Muslims, Turks and Albanians? It would be a great challenge
for the process of nation-building in both cases. If I could, personally I would
bet for a possible success of a multicultural modern state, in case history was
different with no population exchange in the Balkans. Others could argue that
the cases of Bosnia or Kosovo justify the ethno-linguistic homogenisation of
modern states in order to avoid ethnic clashes and political destabilisation. To
my point of view, this opinion skips the reason of clashes and deals only with
their symptoms.
However, what we have to bear in mind is that the dialogue itself demands a very
concrete effort. To overcome ideological impasses, which rendered for the last
80 years, such a dialogue is quite impossible. To take part in such a dialogue,
one should have to demystify his own national identity, which in the most of
the cases prevails and determines the national so-called scientific discourse.
This so-called scientific research aims at enforcing the political position of the
one or the other national ideologies. So, dealing with the population exchange
one should demystify the hard core of both national myths: that the Greek and
the Turkish nations were by nature always existent, rooted to the beginning of
history. That Greek and Turks from their own perspective are determined by
racial elements. Superiority over “the Other” is a consequence of the quality of
the nation. All these and many more are myths that have to be deconstructed
and analysed by scientific methods. If this is done by Greek and Turk scientists,
it will be a great gain for our goal.
In the conference of last November in Istanbul what happened is that the
majority of the participants were not dealing with their topic from the national
point of view of their respective country: they were not saying what they
should have said as Turks or Greeks, but they did it as scientists. And this was
the huge success of that conference, part of the program of AEGEE. It was the
first very important step after 80 years of frozen immobility on this topic.
Final Conference Association des Etats Généraux des Etudiants de L’Europe