Drivers of crisis in the Greek-Turkish protracted conflict: a Neoclassical Realist reading

ABSTRACT

Greece and Turkey have been involved in a protracted conflict over the Aegean Sea for decades. After a period of relative calm, Greek-Turkish relations started to deteriorate again in the mid-2010s, culminating in a months-long crisis that began in 2020 and ushered the two countries into unchartered waters. This article focuses on what led to the rekindling of the Greek-Turkish protracted conflict and, particularly, the breakout of the 2020 crisis. Adopting a Neoclassical Realist framework and tracing the international systemic and domestic level drivers that triggered an international crisis prompting each state to engage in a cycle of disruptive interactions, this article argues that shifts in the international and regional system since the late 2000s were crucial in creating a strategic environment conducive to a crisis. At the same time, leader images and domestic considerations had a critical intervening role in filtering systemic stimuli and contributing to the outbreak of the crisis.

KEYWORDS:

• Eastern Mediterranean
• protracted conflict
• Neoclassical Realism
• Greece
• Turkey

Acknowledgements

A large part of the research for this article was conducted during the author’s affiliation with the Peace Research Institute Oslo Cyprus Centre between 2020 and 2021.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. For a complete and detailed timeline of events see, Karakasis (2021).

2. Interview with Greek journalist, March 2021.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Zenonas Tziarras

Zenonas Tziarras is a Lecturer in the Department of Turkish and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Cyprus. He holds a PhD in Politics and International Studies from the University of Warwick (UK) and also taught at UCLan Cyprus, the University of Warwick and the Cyprus Police Academy. He completed a Post-Doctoral Fellowship on Turkish foreign policy at the University of Cyprus and collaborated with a number of think tanks in Cyprus and abroad on matters pertaining to foreign policy, international security, Turkey, the Middle East and the Eastern Mediterranean. He participates in the editorial board of New Middle Eastern Studies and, among other publications, he authored Turkish Foreign Policy: The Lausanne Syndrome in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East (Springer, 2022).