I gratefully acknowledge the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict and the inspiration gleaned from listening to the many wise and knowledgeable Greeks and Turks who took part in the Carnegie Forum on the United States, Greece, and Turkey. My wife, Ellen Boneparth, Ph.D., made many helpful contributions from her perspective as a professor of political science and expert on the issues concerned. Valeriana Kallab did excellent work as manuscript editor.

Executive Summary

Greeks and Turks are at peace -- but it is an uneasy, often tense coexistence against a thousand-year-old, gloomy Balkan backdrop. Nonetheless, harmony reigned between them from 1930 into the 1950s, and today's disputes are decades, not centuries old.

THE END OF THE COLD WAR

Opportunities arising from the end of the Cold War have proved illusory or unrealizable. On the security side, NATO has been unable to reduce military tensions, and elimination of the urgent need to defend against the Soviets has weakened NATO's deterrent influence on Greeks and Turks. The new regional economic picture is more promising because there is a measure of Greek and Turkish cooperation, but grander possibilities for joint participation in the area's new market economies go begging.

The European Union is a strong potential catalyst for Greek-Turkish reconciliation. Its post-Cold War expansion into southeastern Europe could bring not only economic benefit but also a radically new and constructive political framework with the eventual entry of Cyprus and Turkey into the Union. Instead, EU handling of applications from the two countries has led the Turks to suspend political dialogue with the EU and halt all intercommunal talks on Cyprus.

DISPUTES THAT FESTER

The wellsprings of the Greek-Turkish confrontation arise from two conflicts: the rift between the two communities on Cyprus and competing claims in the Aegean.

On Cyprus, the British-designed bicommunal government broke down not long after independence, vicious fighting erupted in December 1963, and Turks withdrew into ghetto-like enclaves for protection (Turks count these developments as the beginning of the division of Cyprus). The UN dispatched its multinational peacekeeping force in Cyprus (UNFICYP), which remains in place. The 1974 Turkish military invasion, precipitated when Athenian Greeks fomented a coup, secured over a third of the island, still held by Turkish Cypriots, who comprise less than one-fifth of the population. UN-sponsored negotiations to reunite the island have repeatedly foundered, with bitter finger-pointing by each side and often at the UN and the United States as well. The outlook today is as poor as it has been since 1974.

In the Aegean, the complexity of the problems arises from Greece's ownership of almost all the islands, the easternmost of which lie only a few miles off Turkish shores. Thus, giving Turkey any substantial share of the Aegean will enclave Greek islands, which is unacceptable to Greece, whereas using the islands as baselines would give Greece most of the Aegean, which is unacceptable to Turkey. The three central disputes involve

1. Dividing up rights to the Aegean continental shelf, including any gas or oil deposits outside the territorial-seas limit, currently six miles around the Greek islands

2. Fixing the territorial seas. Greece says it has the right under the Law of the Sea convention to extend to twelve miles around its islands, and Turkey threatens war if Greece should do so.

3. Regularizing regimes in the air above the Aegean, including civil aviation rules and national air space. Greece has claimed ten miles around its islands, to which Turkey (and the United States) object on grounds that it should be six miles to correspond to the six-mile sea limit.

The United States, the UN, and European countries have helped to prevent conflict successfully for the 25 years since the war in Cyprus. Over the same period, they have failed to significantly advance reconciliation. All have declared renewed efforts and assigned top diplomats to the job. The United States is undoubtedly the best honest broker for the region, but has made little impact -- important bilateral interests inhibit Washington from offending either side and taking the tough actions necessary to improve the situation.

CONCLUSIONS

There is little reason to expect significant improvements soon. In the worst-case scenario, a serious military incident could get out of control in the Aegean (or less likely on Cyprus), and set back peace efforts for years. In the more probable "best-case" scenario, the EU could partially mend fences with Turkey, some confidence-building measures could be instituted, and a negotiating process for Cyprus could be restarted. The tragedy is that such a "best case" equates to political and moral stagnation -- little more than continuation of the unhappy situation that has existed with relatively minor ups and downs since 1974.

It is a given that any U.S. administration has to pursue an activist policy, with goals to advance peacemaking in Cyprus and the Aegean. For Washington, the safest approach is to do more of the same, using temporary solutions and equal pressure on both sides. It is a politically realistic course -- no matter that it promises few or no lasting results.

Greeks and Turks need to be jolted out of the ruts of hostility. It is in the U.S. national interest to try harder, and there is no reason to think there will be a better time to do so than now.

The two sides are unlikely to be beguiled by clever formulas or intimidated by bullying demands. One vehicle for provoking new departures would be the pronouncement of a comprehensive American peace plan, based on principles the United States has long (but tepidly) advocated, to serve as a foil for debate and reconsideration. Elements should include military crisis-avoidance and confidence-building measures, resumption of Cyprus negotiations based on the 1992/3 UN Set of Ideas, and specific proposals for the Aegean. Above all, it is critical for the governments to commit to real change by institution of private sector exchanges at all levels, to encompass commercial, environmental and development cooperation, and people-to-people contacts.

These are familiar ideas. The requisite "jolt" will not come from just repackaging them, but from showing in the process that the United States will not choose between the positions now advanced by the two sides. They themselves must seek mutual understanding and come up with the compromises essential to accommodate each other's legitimate interests. Only then can the United States commit its full weight to the balance.

Moving Beyond Conflict Prevention to Reconciliation

GREEKS AND TURKS: A TENSE AND COSTLY PEACE

Ethnic violence between two civilized and cultured peoples is always difficult for Americans to understand, all the more so when it happens in Europe. In the case of Greeks and Turks, it is tempting to write off the mutual hostility as driven inexorably by history -- suggesting that one thousand years later, they are (like Robert Kaplan's other "Balkan ghosts") still dueling over religion, territory, and regional influence. But most Americans who know the two modern countries and peoples well do not believe the past is any more inescapable for Greece and Turkey than it was for France and Germany after World War II.

When you question Greeks and Turks themselves, some only condemn the other side, but others describe how the generations of their parents or grandparents once lived in mixed communities harmoniously, without animosity or serious problems. Even today, they add, individuals from the two ethnic groups -- as individuals -- often get along with one another splendidly. But if you then ask how they explain the enmity that in the last few years has nearly sparked war in the Aegean and killings on the Green Line in Cyprus, many, if not most, deny that it grew out of the past millennium of conflict between Orthodox Greeks and Muslim Turks. They point instead to modern-day politicians and militarists in government and media who whip up the masses with compelling appeals to false patriotism. Such demagogues, they argue, exist in both countries, but are predominant "on the other side," blocking reasonable solutions.

The persistence of Greek-Turkish confrontation, whatever its roots, runs counter to the common-sense conviction that, with reason and good will, civilized people in decent economic circumstances can settle their problems amicably. Greece and Turkey, for their part, are increasingly pluralistic and prosperous -- qualities commonly supposed to be sure foundations of lasting peace and stability. In the United States and Europe, there is, moreover, widespread belief that the end of the Cold War makes such hostility anachronistic -- that the positive new global and regional circumstances foster the healing of old divisions such as the bilateral Greek-Turkish antagonism and the long-standing problem of Cyprus.

Many nonpartisan Americans involved in Greek-Turkish issues over the years have thought solutions to be eminently possible. The elements of settlement appear evident, whether in Cyprus, where the challenge is reconstituting a power-sharing government, or in the Aegean, where it involves dividing up space and resources. Western intermediaries approach the problems like sophisticated puzzles: one just has to keep resizing the parts and trading them back and forth until the two sides balance out. Sadly, however, whether because of process or content, it just has not worked that way. In the Aegean, Greeks and Turks do not even agree on a procedure to examine the pieces of the puzzle; in Cyprus, one or the other side has rejected comprehensive and balanced arrangements laboriously cobbled together over the years by UN, U.S., and European diplomats.

Indeed, the prospects for reconciliation between the two communities seem to be receding. Promising starts, such as the 1989 Greek and Turkish prime ministerial meeting (dubbed the Spirit of Davos), or the U.S.-promoted bilateral Madrid Communiqué of 1997, led nowhere. Worse still, there has been a dangerous downward spiral since early 1996: Greece's temporary harboring of a Kurdish rebel in early 1999, which incensed Turks; Turkish questioning of Aegean boundaries, especially in the aftermath of a 1996 incident, which outraged Greeks; military confrontation over a 1997 (Greek) Cypriot order for Russian missiles, even though deployment was canceled at the end of 1998; and the collision course over the accession of Cyprus, and eventually Turkey, to the European Union (EU). Strongly adverse reaction from the Turkish side to the EU's perceived 1997 "slaps in the face" severed diplomatic channels: Ankara suspended all political dialogue with Brussels, and Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash declared the end of intercommunal talks.

High-powered diplomats -- with U.S. Presidential Envoy Richard Holbrooke most prominent among them -- have been hard at work to improve Greek-Turkish relations and/or to get Cyprus negotiations started. However, leaders in Ankara, Athens, and Nicosia continue to reprove the other sides and show no sign of movement toward the bargaining table. As of March 1999, the necessary flexibility and compromises seem to have become less possible than at any time since deadly conflict divided the island in 1974.

The failure to bring about reconciliation between Greeks and Turks has been costly. Defense expenditures take an exorbitant share of national budgets in Greece and Turkey. There is little bilateral trade or cultural exchange. Regional development opportunities go begging. From an American perspective, the tensions undermine progress and stability across a wide area of great strategic importance.

Why has reconciliation proven so elusive? What are the central issues, the lessons learned, and the new steps that should be considered? The following sections first consider the resurgence of Greek-Turkish ethnic violence since the 1950s, and why the end of the Cold War has brought little change despite the positive new regional opportunities. This paper then examines the central unresolved issues between the parties, the mechanisms that have helped prevent further major conflict since 1974, and the contrasting inability over the same period to institute a successful peace process. It concludes with consideration of American diplomacy's relative ineffectiveness on this latter score and a prescriptive look ahead.

TODAY'S DISPUTES: DECADES, NOT CENTURIES, OLD

In this century, harmony reigned between Greeks and Turks from 1930 into the 1950s. The period is sometimes cited as proof that the two nations can coexist and cooperate if only there are strong statesmen to show the way. The reference is to the two renowned national leaders -- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and Eleutherios Venizelos -- who put the cooperative framework in place with the bilateral Convention on Establishment of Commerce and Navigation they signed in 1930. Less than a decade earlier, the same two men had played decisive roles in the last great Greek-Turkish military campaign and the consequent Treaty of Peace with Turkey signed at Lausanne, July 24, 1923.¹ The fighting ended in disaster when the Greeks were driven into the sea at Izmir (Smyrna). The Lausanne treaty, brokered by the European powers of the day, dictated the peace and drew the boundaries of the two modern states, in the process sanctioning "ethnic cleansing" with an exchange of populations involving nearly two million people.

The interlude of peace framed by the Atatürk-Venizelos convention ended in the 1950s, when ethnic violence reappeared. The major focus of renewed discord was Cyprus, where Greeks and Turks had lived peaceably together in mixed communities under British rule since 1878. The prospect of independence raised the tinderbox issue of how power would be shared in the new government, given the ethnic imbalance, which in this case heavily favored the Greek side.

The debate over the island's future rapidly kindled deep mistrust between Greeks and Turks. In 1955, a jingoistic pan-Hellenic organization known as EOKA (from its Greek-language initials) initiated a campaign of terrorist violence intended to drive out the British and bring about the island's unification (enosis in Greek) with Greece. Turkish Cypriots feared that such an outcome would empower the Greek majority to dominate the island and expel Turks -- as had happened decades earlier when Crete was freed from Turkish rule. Emotions ran high, not only in Cyprus, but in the two mother countries as well. In September of 1955, a pogrom was unleashed in Istanbul against the Greeks still living there. Many Greeks were injured or killed, their shops destroyed, and their churches desecrated. Today only a few thousand Greeks remain in Istanbul.

The British thwarted EOKA's bid for enosis, and in 1960 the United Kingdom, with Greece and Turkey as co-guarantors, granted independence to the Republic of Cyprus. The new nation was given a complex, delicately balanced bicommunal government that proved problematic from the beginning and broke down entirely in December 1963. Vicious fighting erupted, and Turks withdrew into ghetto-like enclaves for protection (Turks count these developments as the beginning of the division of Cyprus). The UN dispatched its multinational peacekeeping force in Cyprus, UNFICYP, which remains in place to this day.

After the 1963-64 crisis, a decade of international peacemaking efforts failed to effect reconciliation. In 1974 deadly conflict exploded on the island when a rightist Greek group, supported by the junta then in power in Athens and echoing EOKA's earlier theme of union with Greece, mounted a coup in Nicosia against the government of Archbishop Makarios. Turkey reacted by invoking its guarantor role and unilaterally sending a military force, which quickly seized a substantial slice of the island. A subsequent Turkish military operation expanded Turkish positions and consolidated control over the northern third of the island, including a section of the capital, Nicosia.

A cease-fire was declared, Greek Cypriots fled south, Turkish Cypriots went north, and a "Green Line" was drawn between the two sides, leaving the Turkish Cypriots (comprising 18 percent of the total population in 1999) with over 36 percent of the island, which they still hold. The Greek Cypriot administration was reinstated and recognized worldwide (with the exception of Turkey) as the one legitimate government of Cyprus. Turkish Cypriots refused to participate until a new structure was agreed upon, and set up their own administration on their side of the truce line. In 1983, they declared themselves a state: the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, an entity so far recognized only by Turkey.

The tragic events of 1974 are remembered by Turks as a legal intervention to prevent the bloodbath that in their view was certain to follow the coup attempt. Greeks recall the history as an invasion by the Turkish Army, which seized and still illegally occupies territory of the sovereign nation of Cyprus. Washington, which conceivably could have prevented the brief but costly war, was distracted by the Watergate investigation, and acted too late to do anything except help bring about a cease-fire and freeze in place an unhappy situation. Many Greeks remain convinced that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger encouraged the Greek dictatorship in Athens to pursue the coup against the sometimes left-leaning president of Cyprus, Archbishop Makarios, although the Americans -- in particular Under Secretary of State Joseph Sisco in his last-ditch visit to the area -- gave clear warnings to Athens that the Turks would invade if the Greeks persisted.

Today's bilateral Aegean quarrels first emerged as serious points of contention against the background of hostility in Cyprus that peaked in 1970-75. The Turks and Greeks asserted competing continental shelf claims. The Turks began to contest the Greek government's declared air regime around Greek islands in the Aegean. The Greeks planted new military facilities on some islands off Turkey, citing Turkish aggressiveness toward Cyprus, and the Turks established a new "training army" on the Aegean coast. These units still confront each other in the eastern Aegean, with the ever-present possibility of an unintended shooting episode that could have dire consequences.

From 1974 on, these concrete Greek-Turkish disputes have festered, aggravated by incidents and misunderstandings that have regularly given rise to outbursts of superpatriotic charges and countercharges. Perilous military clashes were avoided in the Aegean only at the eleventh hour in a 1987 incident involving claims to potential oil reserves, and again at the last minute in early 1996, when a dispute erupted over the sovereignty of uninhabited rocks (Imia/Kardak) off the Turkish coast. More generally, tensions have been markedly higher since the Law of the Sea Convention went into force in 1994 and sanctioned a 12-mile territorial sea limit as the global standard. If Athens were to declare such a limit around Greek islands, Greek sovereignty would extend over most of the Aegean and cover important sea lanes now in international waters. Turkey has threatened war in such an event.

On Cyprus, too, the vicious circle of frustration-incident-recrimination has fed a poisoned atmosphere. Demonstrations at the Green Line patrolled by UNFICYP take place regularly, especially during the July/August anniversaries of the Turkish invasion, and incidents along the line have led to fatalities over the years on both sides. Moreover, the recurrent breakdowns of UN-sponsored Cyprus negotiations since 1974 have resulted in disappointment and finger-pointing both by one side against the other, and by one or the other against the UN itself -- and often against the United States as well, for its alleged unwillingness to exert pressure deemed necessary to bring about agreement. Each such cycle adds to the burden of ill will that diplomacy must overcome.

POST-COLD WAR OPPORTUNITIES: ILLUSORY AND UNREALIZED

The collapse of Soviet Communism radically altered the environment in the Greek and Turkish "front yards," and many would argue that positive aspects of the new situation must help prospects for reconciliation across the Aegean. The single most serious threat to global and regional peace has been eliminated, and subsequent regional conflicts have been contained. Vast new economic possibilities are inherent in the change from command to market economies. Perhaps most important, the prospective southeastern expansion of the European Union is bringing new resources along with a dynamic boost to democratization throughout the area.

In these circumstances, Athens and Ankara both have much greater self-interest in settling their differences. As the two strongest economies and most democratic governments in the region, Greece and Turkey are well placed to benefit from exploiting economic opportunities and shaping developments in the Caucasus, Central Asia, and the Balkans, where their own security could be threatened by runaway conflicts. Working together to their mutual advantage, they could exert a powerful influence on the countries newly emerging from Communist pasts.

Perversely, however, post-Cold War instability and ethnic strife in the arc from the Caspian to the Adriatic have served more to exacerbate differences between Greece and Turkey than to encourage defense cooperation between them. Antithetical sympathies, notably in the cases of Kurds versus Turks, Orthodox Serbs versus Muslim Bosniaks and Albanians, and Armenians versus Azerbaijanis, have fueled mutual suspicions. Although governments in both Ankara and Athens have exercised commendable caution by staying closely aligned with the West in Balkan peacekeeping activities, any new downturn in the former Yugoslavia, such as the Kosovo crisis, activates emotional concerns, mostly unwarranted, among nervous neighbors that there could be disastrous spillover.

NATO's Changing Role

Moreover, in the Aegean context, the removal of Cold War restraint has been more consequential than the removal of the Soviet threat. In years past, keeping peace within NATO to ensure strong deterrence against Communist aggression was one of the highest priorities of both NATO and the United States. Now that its anti-Communist rationale is no longer overriding, there is less certainty of NATO's readiness to intervene immediately and decisively in the event of a Greek-Turkish military clash.

NATO also has not been able to take advantage of its new flexibility to craft a more constructive security architecture with respect to Greece, Turkey, and/or Cyprus. There have been sotto voce suggestions, for example, that NATO could provide one of the critical keys to a Cyprus solution by underpinning a security system acceptable to both sides and thus permitting the disengagement of (all or most) Turkish troops from the island. On a more limited scale, NATO Secretary General Javier Solana has been active in pressing both Athens and Ankara to set up conflict-avoidance and confidence-building mechanisms. There has been notable progress on some "deconfliction" measures and on re-instituting NATO command and control arrangements displaced in 1974 as a result of the fighting in Cyprus. There is a very long way to go, however, to significantly relieve the burdens of constant military confrontation along the border and to eliminate the threat of miscalculations or inadvertent clashes.

Looking at each other across the Aegean today, both Greece and Turkey still find it imperative to spend more, not less, on national defense. The Greeks perceive Turkey as the single serious threat to their national security. For Athens, the stripping away of Cold War rhetoric only brought the Turkish "menace" more clearly into focus. A far-reaching new manifestation of serious concern on the Greek side was the initiation by Greece and (Greek) Cyprus of a "unified defense doctrine" to better coordinate force structure and planning. Greek apprehensions about Turkish intentions and/or Ankara's willingness to use military force have been given new substance and intensity by developments surrounding the Imia/Kardak and S-300 incidents discussed below.

The Turks, for their part, are not preoccupied in the same way with a threat from Greece, since they have other major defense worries and a six-to-one population advantage, as well as more powerful and experienced military forces. Nonetheless, Ankara has acute concerns about suspected Greek efforts to undermine Turkish security by supporting separatist Kurds, sabotaging Turkish relations with the EU, and possibly acting unilaterally at some time to claim a 12-mile limit in Aegean waters.

Turkey's long-smoldering suspicions burst into flames of anger with the revelations of Greek efforts to assist Abdullah Öcalan, leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), in his search for a haven from Turkish authorities. The PKK, with its long record of violent insurrectionary activities in Turkey, had been branded an international terrorist organization by the United States, and Öcalan had been unable to remain in Italy, his first refuge, notwithstanding widespread sympathy in Europe for the Kurdish cause.

Although Greece refused Öcalan's request for asylum when he was smuggled into the country by private individuals, Greek government officials arranged for his secret transport with a fake passport from Greece to Kenya. There, the Greek embassy in Nairobi harbored him for 12 days in February 1999, before apparently forcing him to leave when discord erupted over his future refuge. After leaving the embassy, the car with Öcalan, evidently with Kenyan government complicity, delivered him to a Turkish commando team, which flew him immediately to Turkey, where he was arrested. The Greeks, by all accounts, were unaware that the Turkish commandos were in Nairobi.²

For Turks, the Öcalan episode became proof positive of Greek support for separatist hopes to dismember Turkey. Turkish President Süleyman Demirel and other leaders denounced Greece and spoke of reserving the right "to take the necessary measures for legitimate self-defense."³ The Greek government's refusal to grant asylum to Öcalan has counted for next to nothing in the outburst of anti-Greek emotion that swept Turkey following Öcalan's capture. The still-evolving saga has greatly reinforced negative perceptions in Turkey of Greece as a sworn adversary working to undermine the Turkish nation. The matter touches on the heart of national security, and cannot but make the tasks of reconciliation profoundly more difficult.

Regional Economic Cooperation

The post-Cold War regional economic picture is more promising. Separately, Greek and Turkish entrepreneurs are busy exploiting the tremendous development, investment, and trade opportunities in the area's newly evolving market economies. And there has been some progress on cooperation between the two under the aegis of the Southeast European Cooperation Initiative (SECI) and Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC). One of the brighter spots is BSEC's Black Sea Development Bank, which was recently capitalized. Its headquarters is in Thessaloniki, Greece, and its president is Turkish.

But the grander hopes that the two sides would pool their abilities and work together have not been realized. The single biggest new regional bonanza, Caspian oil -- or, more properly in this context, its transport -- has provided yet another source of contention, with Greece and Turkey on opposite sides of sharp competition over pipeline and shipping schemes. More generally, although Ankara and Athens regularly send representation to multilateral meetings, neither is seriously exploring the new opportunities for Greek-Turkish economic cooperation.

The European Union

The EU has long been seen as the strongest potential catalyst for Greek-Turkish reconciliation. The end of the Cold War could have opened important new doors. Beyond the economic benefits of expansion into southeastern Europe, an EU that incorporated Turkey and Cyprus would provide a radically different political framework, with great promise for resolving disputes and subsuming ethnic differences.

Regrettably, the Europeans have been unable to articulate a persuasive and constant vision of the future. The original Association Agreement signed September 12, 1963 (the so-called Ankara Agreement), between the then EEC and Turkey foresaw full membership, however distant on the horizon, with a customs union to be set up as a cornerstone for progress. After a hiatus in relations caused by the 1980 military coup in Turkey, Prime Minister Turgut Özal put the Turkish membership application back on track in 1987, and the Customs Union was finally established by an EC-Turkey Association Council meeting on March 6, 1995. Turkey appeared to be in the line for membership along with the later aspirants from Central and Eastern Europe who registered as formal candidates following the breakup of the Soviet Union.

Throughout the process, it was understood that Turkey would have to make substantial progress on its economic and human rights performance. But these are vague and general objectives, susceptible to change and misinterpretation. The Kurdish issue redefined the human rights agenda in the 1990s. The initial expectation that Turkey would also enjoy rights of free movement of its people became a particular problem with a backlash in the 1980s and 90s, especially in Germany where for many those once welcomed as "guest workers" became "undesirable aliens." And, the Cyprus problem along with Turkey's other disputes with Greece had always cast a shadow over accession discussions -- in the 1990s these issues were pushed more to the fore not only by Athens in exercising its membership privileges, but also by others in the EU increasingly frustrated by the lack of progress.

These frictions along the Turkish path to membership reached a crisis in 1997. In July the EU Commission's "Agenda 2000" report on enlargement treated Turkey differently from the other candidates and sharpened EU language on its prerequisites for membership.⁴ The authoritative EU summit, meeting as the European Council in Luxembourg December 12 and 13, confirmed in the Presidency Conclusions the adverse trends in relations with Turkey by explicitly excluding Turkey from the next round of accession negotiations, while at the same time including Cyprus along with five Central and East European nations. It also carried forward stronger criticisms of Turkish policies, such as Greek-favored phrasing that future strengthening of ties with the EU "depends on" Ankara's support for UN negotiations on Cyprus.⁵

The leaders of Turkey and Turkish Cyprus reacted immediately and furiously to the Luxembourg summit. Turkish Prime Minister Mesut Yilmaz in a press conference December 14 accused the EU of building "a new cultural Berlin Wall" to shut out Turkey and pledged to end political dialogue with the Union.⁶ The leader of the Turkish Cypriots, Rauf Denktash, announced the following day that "The intercommunal talks have died and, under these conditions, a federation is not on the agenda."⁷ Ankara's suspension of political dialogue was formalized in more moderate language by the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs in its December 14, 1997, "Statement of the Turkish Government Regarding the Conclusions of the Luxembourg Summit." As for Cyprus, shortly after the first EU-Cyprus accession meeting in March 1998, President Demirel of Turkey visited northern Cyprus and in concert with Denktash issued a Joint

Declaration on April 23, asserting that any negotiating process for Cyprus "can have a chance of success only if it is conducted between two sovereign equals," and pledging to strengthen ties further between northern Cyprus and Turkey. The media speculated about annexation as the ultimate action in the event (Greek) Cyprus accedes to the EU.

EU diplomats protest that Turkey has overreacted to Luxembourg. The EU's positions, they argue, are clearly positive: Turkey is "of course" expected to accede as soon as it meets certain well-known conditions, and the access negotiations for Cyprus are an incentive for reunification. The December 1997 decisions, says the EU, were not a slap in the face, but should be interpreted as new impetus for the constructive development of EU-Turkish relations. The Presidency Conclusions document noted above in fact called (in its paragraph 31) for "a strategy to be drawn up to prepare Turkey for accession by bringing it closer to the European Union in every field." This was followed up by the European Commission's adoption on March 4, 1998, of initial operational proposals and affirmation at the Cardiff European Council in June 1998 of intentions to move forward with this new and improved package. If Turkey does its part, the EU diplomats concluded, all will be well.

As for the Cyprus accession negotiations, EU officials point out that the timetable has been set since 1995 and was confirmed at the highest level by the European Council meeting in Dublin in December 1996, which officially scheduled negotiations to begin six months after the conclusion of the Inter-Governmental Conference, then expected to end no later than mid-1997.⁸ The background to approval of beginning talks with Cyprus, however, is some EU political horse-trading which seems to have made matters worse. In March 1995, the EU formalized the Customs Union agreement with Turkey, and separately, in a move widely seen as a quiet behind-the-scenes quid pro quo, promised Greece to proceed with setting a time certain for talks on accession of Cyprus.⁹ Although the Turks thus learned of the prospect over two years before Luxembourg, the development only served to put the two sides on a collision course. Turkish objections were ignored, and resentment built until it boiled over on the Turkish side after the the Luxembourg summit. In the end the EU-Cyprus accession negotiations came across to Turks as an unacceptable pressure tactic, an arrogation by Cypriot Greeks of decision-making authority over the Turkish Cypriot community, and a de facto merging of Greece and (Greek) Cyprus within the framework of the EU to the exclusion of Turks.

Maybe the Europeans have a case for their approach, but they have been unable to hold together and explain themselves adequately. In the wake of Luxembourg, Turks still do not understand the EU rationale for Cyprus accession negotiations, the arbitrariness of EU action to differentiate Turkey from all other applicants, or the EU's adoption of increasingly pointed language on preconditions for Turkish membership. The EU record on Turkey's application smacks to many of moving goal posts and ill-concealed Greek and German objections to Turkish membership under almost any conditions.

All is not lost between Ankara and Brussels by any means. Broad and substantial EU-Turkey cooperation continues, but the EU actions culminating in the Luxembourg summit decisions imposed heavy new burdens on the relationship. Political dialogue remains suspended by Turkey, and the Turkish/Turkish Cypriot position that bicommunal talks can be convened only on an equal state-to-state basis as long as the EU accession negotiations proceed in effect kills further peace negotiations, since recognition of the Turkish Cypriot administration as a state is unacceptable not only to (Greek) Cyprus, but also to the United States and most UN members. The outcome of all this is hard to project: few believe the Turks will give in first. And if Cyprus accession is somehow barred, the Greeks have threatened that they will veto any expansion of EU membership.

Whether some of this might be posturing in Brussels, Ankara, or northern Cyprus remains to be seen. Even if there are elements of bluff and brinkmanship, it will be increasingly difficult to rally public opinion on the Turkish side for an about-face without some significant EU concession.

From the broadest perspective, one casualty of the last few years may be the magnetic luster of the EU as a unifying concept -- an image of the future to work toward. Post-Cold War realities of EU expansion have overtaken the idealized expectation that Turkey later if not sooner would become a member of the family just like, for example, Italy or Portugal. Turkey is changing dramatically, but not on smooth or totally predictable "European" tracks. Demands that it move more quickly to become a Western European clone may be leading to a "Hobson's choice" of no membership at all for a Turkey caught in the throes of profound political and social turmoil. The absence of a realistic timetable and a shared vision for the future of Turkey and the EU confuses the debate about national interests in both Greece and Turkey. It also inhibits the development of shared goals essential to a lasting peace process.

"Plus Ça Change. . ."

In short, positive change around Greece and Turkey has not meant positive change between Greece and Turkey -- or between Greeks and Turks on Cyprus. In terms of regional security, the potentially favorable post-Cold War situation has been more than offset by the reopening of old "fault lines" and the exacerbation of long-standing Greek-Turkish rivalries. NATO has not yet found a way to change this. The enormous new economic opportunities largely go begging, and the most promising of positive new forces, EU expansion, so far has worked to heighten tensions, at least in the near term.

THE CONCRETE ISSUES: FESTERING DISPUTES

The wellsprings of the Greek-Turkish disputes are twofold: the rift between the two communities on Cyprus and competing claims in the Aegean. In many ways, the two issues are very different in nature. Cyprus lies wholly outside the Aegean. The two communities on the island have their own identities and particular interests, by no means always the same as those of their mainland brethren. This is especially true of Greek Cypriots, who have all the attributes of a nation-state and a strong economy and are not reliant on Greece. The Turkish Cypriots also take pride in their distinctive character, although their separate influence is muted by heavy political and economic dependence on Turkey as well as by the comparatively large number of immigrants from the mainland.

Cypriots may have distinct communities, but when it comes to matters of regional politics or security, ethnic solidarity joins the island peoples seamlessly with those of their respective motherlands. Language, culture, and history are still powerful glues. Both Cypriot populations draw strength from the much greater numbers of their kinsmen on the mainlands. Any outbreak of intercommunal strife on Cyprus brings trouble in Greek-Turkish relations; and any rise in tensions over the Aegean hardens attitudes in Cyprus. The resolution of Aegean disputes may be conceivable (albeit most unlikely) without reference to Cyprus, but no solution to Cyprus is possible without the endorsement of both Ankara and Athens.

For outsiders, Cyprus and the Aegean look like two sides of the same coin in at least one respect: both involve disputes that probably would have been resolved already but for their ethnic dimension. The following sections outline the nature of the problems and the principal points blocking their settlement. At the risk of oversimplification, the intention here is to describe the difficulties that they pose for policymakers and to give background for the consideration of possible next steps.

Cyprus

The basic outline of a Cyprus solution emerged from two fundamental agreements between Cypriot community leaders. In 1977 Makarios and Denktash agreed to a four-point statement of "Guidelines" for negotiations to seek "an independent, non-aligned bicommunal Federal Republic." Negotiations stalled before long, however, and were restarted under the aegis of the UN secretary-general with the issuance of the "Ten-Point Agreement of May 19, 1979," between Denktash and then Cypriot President Spyros Kyprianou. From these starting points came the concept of a "new" Cyprus as a bicommunal nation, with one international personality, a power-sharing federal government, and individuals able to live in their own ethnic communities under a "bi-zonal" division of the island's territory. Based on those accords and subsequent UN Security Council resolutions that incorporated their principles, all interested governments on and off the island accepted the goal of an independent unified, bicommunal, bi-zonal Cyprus.

Efforts to construct the edifice envisioned in 1977 and 1979 have foundered on questions of balance and priority. The Turkish side, as the future minority partner (in numbers of people), has emphasized political equality in governmental powersharing, bi-zonality, and security for its community. The Greek side, with a four-to-one population advantage, has stressed demilitarization (i.e., the departure of the Turkish armed forces), full democratic government, rights of property, and the return of territory. Additional complications arise from problems such as the fate of those missing in the military action of 1974, compensation for lost property and the question of post-1974 Turkish immigrants from the mainland now living in the Turkish northern sector.

A brief look at the issue of territory illustrates the difficulties that are not immediately apparent from press reports. The amount of land to be ultimately retained by the Turkish "zone" is a crucial point of contention. Under proposals widely publicized in the past, Turkish-held land stands to be cut back from 36 percent to at most "29-plus" percent. But land is not just land -- the Turkish side includes virtually worthless acreage as well as the town of Morphou, which before 1974 had primarily Greek inhabitants. If Morphou is included in land to be returned to Greek control, the number of Greek property claims requiring settlement will be substantially reduced. But giving Morphou back would also threaten to evict the many Turkish Cypriots who as homeless refugees moved into Greek-owned Morphou buildings vacated in 1974. This highly emotional as well as economically important issue was one of the principal reasons why negotiations foundered at the end of 1992 despite progress at the time across a large part of the bicommunal agenda.

Beyond territory the broader focus at the crucial turning point in 1992 was the negotiating package developed by then UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali. It represented the culmination of the UN process begun in 1968 to achieve the delicate task of putting a bicommunal nation-state back together again. Evolving from the work over the years of a host of top UN officials and Western special envoys with leaders of the two communities, Boutros-Ghali's formulation was dubbed the "Set of Ideas." It comprised 100 paragraphs under eight major headings with brief proposals to address the main elements needed for recreating a unified Cyprus, including political arrangements, property division and compensation, social/economic safeguards, and security guarantees, along with a map for division of the island into the two initial ethnic "zones," foreseen under the accepted "bi-zonal" rubric.¹⁰

On this basis, the sides appeared near closure in late 1992, when the Turkish Cypriots balked. The UN Security Council, with uncharacteristic frankness, specifically criticized the one side for its negative stance. In a resolution passed November 25, the Council noted that the joint meetings had failed "in particular because certain positions adopted by the Turkish Cypriot side were fundamentally at variance with the Set of Ideas."¹¹ At this pivotal juncture, negotiations were suspended to allow for Greek Cypriot elections in March 1993, in which George Vassiliou, who as president had agreed in principle to continue negotiating on the Set of Ideas, was defeated. The new Cypriot president -- the current incumbent, Glafcos Clerides -- who was elected on a platform inter alia pledging toughness in intercommunal talks, subsequently rejected the Set of Ideas. One key factor in this decision was apparently the language of paragraph 92, which would give Turkish Cypriots an independent voice on EU accession. Later, the Turkish Cypriot side spoke favorably of the package, although not going so far as to demand its resurrection.

When it proved impossible to resuscitate broad-gauged intercommunal talks after the demise of the Set of Ideas, attention shifted to development of confidence-building mechanisms (CBMs) to put some positive achievement on the record and then to move to overall settlement negotiations. Elements of a CBM package had been on and off the table under different names since the late 1970s. The most prominent components remain the return of Varosha (a Greek residential suburb of Famagusta, taken by the Turks in 1974, but never occupied for residential use), the opening of the Nicosia airport, facilitation of tourism and commerce between the two zones, and measures to mitigate the military aspects of confrontation. Talks under UN auspices seemed to be progressing through 1994, but broke down, and CBMs have not been addressed in any sustained way since then. The UN and the United States brokered Clerides-Denktash meetings on four occasions in 1997, but with no significant results.

As of the end of 1998, thus, not only the specific Set of Ideas and CBM packages, but the very heart of the UN negotiating process itself had become moot. Two critical developments transformed the Cyprus negotiating landscape. The first was the Cyprus EU accession issue described in detail above. The second was the two-year contretemps over Greek Cypriot plans to deploy anti-aircraft missiles, which even though canceled, markedly deepened divisions on the island. The (Greek) Cypriot government revealed on January 6, 1997, that it had contracted to purchase S-300 anti-aircraft missiles from Russia.¹² It also established a small airbase at Paphos in western Cyprus earmarked for use of military aircraft from Greece. The Greek Cypriots insisted these were legitimate self-defense programs mounted in response to the threat posed by aircraft of the Turkish military forces stationed within easy range of Greek Cypriot targets. To bow to Turkish objections, they said, would unacceptably "Finlandize" Greek Cypriot defense policy.

The Turks, for their part, regarded these Greek moves as unwarranted escalation, even though any initial S-300 missile deployment would have only limited defensive capabilities. Turkish strategists expressed fears the precedent could lead to more powerful missile systems through upgrading or replacement. Ankara reacted strongly from the beginning as Denktash journeyed to Ankara for issuance with President Demirel of a "Joint Declaration" on January 20, decrying the missile purchase and promising to "take the necessary measures. .. to render ineffective policies which threaten the peace in the region." Talk in Ankara hinted strongly of a preemptive Turkish strike, and Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit (who was premier in Ankara when the 1974 invasion was launched in reaction to the Greek-led coup attempt) pointed to the strategic importance of Cyprus for Turkey's own security. The possibility of military action had to be taken seriously: the United States, which had made clear its opposition to the Greek Cypriot purchase from the beginning, also declared any Turkish military response unacceptable. The UN secretary-general and European governments took similar positions.

Tensions remained high until the end of December 1998, when the Greek Cypriot government canceled the deployment entirely, under persistent pressure from the U.S. and European governments. The cancellation decision was taken in consultation with Athens, and preparations were made for the alternative deployment of the missiles on Greek soil in eastern Crete. Greek Cypriot officials suggested that the major consideration was not Turkish pressure, but rather protecting the accession negotiations from any adverse reactions on the part of EU member governments who opposed the missiles. It also appeared, however, that Athens had become wary of going ahead in the face of possible Turkish military action, which would be logistically difficult to counter, even if the Turks chose harassment measures short of a "surgical strike." Popular opinion in (Greek) Cyprus supported deployment to the end, and the reversal was a difficult political climb-down for President Clerides, not the least because he had favored the S-300 purchase in his narrow 1998 electoral victory.

Even though the S-300 missile issue was settled, it will likely be more difficult in its wake to find a future umbrella security arrangement as part of any settlement for the island. Mutual mistrust has been intensified by the action/reactions of both sides. The notion that mainland Turkey's security may be now more at risk complicates what was a more narrowly focused issue of the safety of Turkish Cypriots in their homes on the island. And the episode reinforces the arguments of "hardliners" that toughness and threats of force are the best means to win out. In all, as of the end of 1998, the Cyprus problem had again reached year zero, which is to say, virtually the same negotiating situation that existed with the truce of 1974.

Now, almost 25 years later, some might ask: Why not acquiesce to the status quo? There has been no significant progress toward settlement and, after all, the concept of "bi-zonality" means that the two ethnic groups will be essentially separate in any case. The straightforward answer is that it would be wrong for the international community to propound a solution based on ethnic separation brought about by force of arms (from 1963 to 1974). The world may have taken such a step in the former Yugoslavia within the last decade, but doing so in Cyprus would be a far less justifiable admission of political failure and moral weakness. Despite all the difficulties, the central issue in Cyprus is not that the majority insists on bringing the minority back under a repressive heel. The objective is to reconstruct a country such that the two ethnic groups can live together. Unless and until a majority on the island itself expresses willingness to give up on this goal, the idea of imposing or even promoting division from outside should be rejected on principle.

The Aegean

In the Aegean, the core issues have to do with boundaries and the use of space under, on, and above the sea (see box, p. 22). From a layman's perspective, the special complexity of the problems arises from the fact that almost all the islands in the Aegean belong to Greece and the easternmost tier lies only a few miles off Turkish shores. This means that, hypothetically, if the islands were used as baselines to adjust boundaries in the air or on the bottom and surface of Aegean waters, almost all of the Aegean would become Greek. Turkey would be left with only a narrow strip of sea along its coast; Turkish ports and the Bosporus would be cut off from the sea lanes that now run through international waters between Greek islands. On the other hand, again hypothetically, if the respective

Greek and Turkish mainlands were used as references and the Aegean were more or less split down the middle, the easternmost Greek islands would be enclaved by Turkish-controlled air space, seas, or continental shelf -- a situation unacceptable to Greece.

Lawyers and specialists have written numerous tracts examining the difficulties of this situation.¹³ The 1982 Law of the Sea (LOS) convention is cited by the Greek side as central to the Greek position since it provides that islands can be the basis for calculation of both continental shelf rights and a standard 12-mile limit for territorial seas. But the LOS convention also refers to areas of special circumstances, presumably including the Aegean, where factors such as particular history and geography may be taken into account. This LOS exception is highly relevant for the Turkish side, although Ankara bases its case in the first instance on the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, which it interprets as intending a balance of benefits through the limitation of coastal maritime jurisdictions and making the bulk of the Aegean available for the common benefit of both countries.

Judging from academic studies, there is no exact parallel to be found in decisions rendered on sea issues elsewhere in the world through negotiations or by courts. The LOS convention anticipates many relevant questions, but judges have exercised considerable latitude, and the literature is replete with references to unusual cases. In sum, the answers are not clear-cut, and the outcome of possible mediation panel or court deliberations on Aegean issues is not predictable.

The situation in the Aegean became significantly more tense after January 1996, in the wake of a dispute over uninhabited rocks -- called Imia by the Greeks and Kardak by the Turks -- that lie just off the Turkish coast in the eastern Aegean. In the back and forth that followed the American-brokered truce, the Turkish Foreign Ministry did not press an explicit claim to the islets, but it did deny the validity of a 1932 Italo-Turkish protocol, which specified the rocks by name as belonging to Italy and hence devolving to Greece under World War II settlements. The Turkish reference to sovereignty (also put on the table when a Turkish military officer at NATO questioned Greek sovereignty over the island of Gavdos, south of Crete and well distant from Turkey) suggests that there could be claims, as yet unspecified, on territory such as rocks or islands enclaved by mutually acceptable maritime boundaries.¹⁴

The Imia/Kardak incident confirmed the Greeks' worst fears about broader Turkish assertions that uncertainties ("gray zones") exist with respect to Aegean island sovereignty and exact borders. Athens adamantly denies any such ambiguity and charges Ankara with infringing on non-negotiable sovereign Greek territory fixed by international treaties. Greeks uniformly interpret the current Turkish position as a new escalation and a demonstration of Turkey's "aggressiveness," intended to extend its territory at Greece's expense.

Greece maintains there is only one legitimate Aegean issue: delimiting the continental shelf -- which was not addressed by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, and which it is willing to negotiate with submission to the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The other Turkish claims, Greece maintains, involve non-negotiable questions of sovereignty. Turkey maintains that all the Aegean questions are interrelated and must be dealt with comprehensively to preserve the equities intended by the governing treaties, in particular the Lausanne treaty. It proposes bilateral talks before recourse to international mediation, whether to the ICJ or some other third party, is considered. Many Turks, ignoring Greece's legal point, take Greek refusal to sit down at the negotiating table as demonstration of an unreasonable, even hostile, attitude.

Both sides have held firmly to basic positions. Given that the sea boundaries have been long accepted in practice, it may be possible to isolate the Imia/Kardak issue for third-party arbitration, as the United States has tried mightily to do. There is a great deal more at stake, however, in the questions relating to the continental shelf and the territorial sea and air space limits. On these issues, there seems to be no prospect for moving the parties toward either a negotiated or a mediated solution.

Balkan Traditions and the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne

The Cyprus and Aegean issues noted above have provided the principal substance of unrelenting acrimony between Greece and Turkey for the last 25 years. Other problems, chiefly related to implementation of the Lausanne treaty, are nonetheless worth mentioning for the role they play in souring the atmosphere and for the perplexing way (from an American perspective) the governments hold to anachronistic Balkan terminology and tradition.

"Minority," as students of Balkan affairs learn on day one, is a very special term, referring more to political status than to numbers. The Treaty of Lausanne regulated the treatment of officially recognized minorities in Greece and Turkey, and remains in force to this day. There is thus a treaty-designated "Muslim minority," now numbering about 120,000 people, mostly of Turkish origin, living in the Greek province of Thrace on the northern land border with Turkey. (As noted above, only a few thousand Greeks are left in Turkey.) Greek law, however, prohibits the use of the words "Turk"/"Turkish" in titles of organizations, and cases have been prosecuted. While it is not illegal to apply "Turk"/"Turkish" to individuals, Muslims contend that it is strongly discouraged in practice. The present Greek government has taken several steps to bring laws more in line with EU norms, but there are a number of pending allegations of discrimination against Muslims in Thrace.

In Istanbul, the current Greek Orthodox Church Patriarch is a voice of reason and reconciliation widely appreciated by Greeks and Turks alike. Greeks outside Turkey regularly refer to his office as the Ecumenical Patriarch with responsibilities extending beyond Turkish borders; the Turks vociferously object, citing the Lausanne treaty, which specifies that the patriarch is to serve only the parish in Turkey. In 1971 the Turkish government arbitrarily closed the Orthodox seminary near Istanbul, thus depriving the patriarchate of its only local source of new clerics and provoking emotional demands for the reversal of this discriminatory measure.

Another Lausanne treaty point at issue is the question of the militarization of certain Greek islands. When tensions ran high over Cyprus, Greece established military units on certain islands near Turkish shores, and Turkey then installed a new army, nominally a defensive and training unit, on the coast. Turkey claims that the Lausanne treaty prohibits some of the Greek installations; Greece disagrees with these interpretations and countercharges that the Turkish Army of the Aegean has offensive equipment and capabilities.

These treaty-related issues would be manageable if they could be disaggregated from the more trenchant concerns of Cyprus and the Aegean. As things stand, however, they help to keep the pot of ethnic-based recrimination boiling. The recurring appeals to the Treaty of Lausanne (as interpreted by one side or the other) make it difficult to consider modernizing the regimes that the treaty itself shaped in 1923 under attitudes then prevailing with respect to religion, "minorities," and military presence.

PREVENTING CONFLICT: A 25-YEAR RECORD OF SUCCESS

The governments in Greece, Turkey, and Cyprus are not eager for a fight. The risks are too great and the outcomes too uncertain. Past incidents have come from miscalculation, accident, or activities of private citizens that provoked emotional outbursts. The governments have generally responded to tense situations with restraint and common sense -- up to the point where something has ignited supranationalist emotions and caused events to spin out of rational control.

Americans and Europeans have watched the near-outbreaks of military hostilities in the Aegean and the fatal incidents on Cyprus with deep dismay. Given the certainty that enormous costs would be entailed with little prospect of winning anything, many have termed another Greek-Turkish war "unthinkable." This might be true with reference to a full-scale war or extensive offensive operations, but mistrust is so pervasive that it is not at all difficult to imagine a shooting incident followed by initiation of combat operations with unforeseeable consequences.

The United States, for its part, has expended a great deal of energy to keep itself informed and ready to stop just such a sequence. So have the UN, NATO, and the European governments. To the West's credit, it has since 1974 played an indispensable role in helping to prevent further outbreaks of deadly conflict.

Cyprus is a textbook case of international peacekeeping, with time-tested mechanisms in place and working. Under the UN umbrella, there is a comprehensive approach to "operational prevention" -- that is, measures to avoid violence by monitoring to ensure early warning and early response, the use of preventive diplomacy, and a readiness to consider use of sanctions and/or military force.¹⁵ UNFICYP provides the first line of defense, a buffer as well as "eyes and ears" on the ground; the UN secretary-general's personal representative in Cyprus is a channel of communication and diplomatic action; and the UN Security Council backs up these mechanisms with its implicit power and formal reviews of the situation every six months.

UNFICYP, however, is not constituted as a police enforcement unit and has not been able to prevent fatalities arising out of isolated incidents or demonstrations. It works hard to lessen the chances of such tragedies, but it functions primarily as a buffer to keep the sides from direct contact on the dividing line and a trip wire to energize preventive action if a resumption of hostilities appears likely. From there, active Security Council involvement, as well as parallel U.S. and UK engagement, ensures a rapid, high-level diplomatic response to any serious contingency and expedited consideration of more forceful measures.

There is no similar UN mechanism in the Aegean or on the Greek-Turkish land border. Nonetheless, NATO governments -- with the United States and the United Kingdom in the lead or acting individually -- supply the requirements for early warning and timely response. In the most recent case, top-level U.S. diplomacy (President Bill Clinton and then-Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke) succeeded in averting disaster at the end of January 1996, when Greek and Turkish military units were about to collide over the sovereignty of the uninhabited Imia/Kardak islets.

While the ad hoc U.S./European approach has averted deadly conflict to date, more reliable mechanisms are surely desirable. NATO has tried to promote the kind of arrangements that helped to avoid military collisions in the Cold War days: hot lines, transparency of exercises, avoidance of incidents involving military ships or aircraft, confidence-building measures of any reasonable sort. There are bilateral agreements on self-restraint and periodic suspension of exercises in tourist areas, and NATO has made a start on conflict avoidance mechanisms. It has been slow-going for NATO, to the dismay of those who would argue for maximum transparency and safeguards in a situation where military conflict such as that which nearly occurred on Imia/ Kardak (warships jostling on high seas, temporary landing of Turkish marines) would be pointless and absurd.

Absent progress on the underlying issues, the tense peace continues, with the obvious possibility that events will conspire, as they did in 1974, to assume disastrous proportions before they can be brought back under control. Peacemaking -- or "structural prevention" addressing the underlying issues -- has yet to gain sustained momentum, despite the professed desires of the parties and the active engagement over 30 years of numerous outstanding Western statesmen.¹⁶

MOVING TO RECONCILIATION: A 25-YEAR RECORD OF FAILURE?

Few doubt that the governments of Greece, Turkey, and Cyprus would prefer reconciliation. Nationalistic tensions may serve some limited political purposes for politicians in both countries -- the more so when they are under attack for other reasons. But today's circumstances are not such that the presidents or prime ministers need a foreign enemy to stay in power. (Some might consider Mr. Denktash an exception -- if only because he alone stands to lose the trappings of a head of government.)

Yet Greek, Turkish, and Cypriot political leaders often appear to be waiting for reconciliation rather than pursuing it. Peacemaking is a slippery political slope in all three countries, since public opinion as reflected in the media is prone to rapid swings when the media or politicians appeal to nationalist sentiment. There are always opponents who pounce on any suggestion of concession as a sign of weakness or sacrificing of principle. Governments therefore tend to preempt opposition by staking out tough lines and invoking national unity. It is an atmosphere seemingly calculated to discourage détente efforts.

Initiatives from Ankara and Athens

Two prime ministers, Constantine Simitis in Athens and Mesut Yilmaz, who has been in and out of power in Ankara several times over the last few years, represent a more cosmopolitan and moderate leadership relative to the not-so-distant past. In Greece, the populist Andreas Papandreou is gone, and the Simitis government has charted an unambiguous pro-European course. Greece's maverick image is being reshaped; its economy is approaching EU guidelines, with an austerity program bringing down inflation and public spending; and constructive relations are the new rule with respect to Balkan neighbors.

The domestic picture is not so clear in Turkey, where the military still exercises definitive political influence. Progress on human rights -- an issue of key importance to Americans and Europeans -- is slow. But Turkey's movement toward more democratic government remains substantially on track, surviving the experiment with its first Islamist prime minister, and efforts continue to improve political institutions for the next elections. The country's economic development, moreover, is very impressive: real growth remains near 8 percent per year, notwithstanding excessive inflation, and Washington counts Turkey as one of the world's ten "big emerging markets."¹⁷

By Western calculations, this political and economic progress should translate into strong incentives for resolving old differences and forging new cross-Aegean partnerships. A number of areas virtually cry out for action. For two neighboring economies, bilateral trade of around $300 million a year is minuscule; transportation and energy infrastructure is not coordinated on a bilateral, much less regional basis; and environmental cooperation is in its infancy, despite rising Aegean pollution. At a more basic level, there is relatively little tourist trade between the two countries; the media of each have almost no representation in the other; and cultural and educational exchanges are minimal.

The two prime ministers made openings that could have presaged a warming of relations. In March 1996 Prime Minister Yilmaz put a more flexible approach on the table with his Aegean "peace initiative," which for the first time incorporated Turkish willingness to consider third-party mediation for Aegean disputes.¹⁸ Under what conditions or at what price, however, remains to be determined. Turkey is said to have backed out at the last minute when American diplomats on the margins of the UN General Assembly in September 1997 thought they had brokered a trade-off involving Greek release of EU funds for Turkey and Turkish acceptance of third-party mediation on Imia/Kardak.

On the Greek side, Prime Minister Simitis spoke in favor of better relations with Turkey and articulated a "step-by-step" formulation less confrontational than his predecessor's. In mid-1997, Foreign Minister Theodoros Pangalos's forthright expression of Greek support for Turkey's future EU membership seemed to confirm a sea change in Athens, but harsh rhetoric soon spoiled improvements in the atmosphere. In Turkish eyes, any substantive shift in Greek policy was belied at the December 1997 Luxembourg EU summit, when Greece openly supported a hard line against Turkey.

Two recent concrete bilateral initiatives, promoted by Western diplomats, briefly flowered in 1997 only to wilt in the heat of Aegean cross fire. The Dutch EU presidency in the first half of 1997 persuaded the two countries to establish a "wise men's group," hoping to promote at least a minimal dialogue. Athens and Ankara each appointed two representatives, but reports submitted to the EU by the two sides in 1997 produced no basis for progress. The Greek side insisted on a severely circumscribed agenda with exchanges in writing only, and, after the Luxembourg summit, the Turkish side in any case refused to work through the EU on political issues.

At the NATO summit in Madrid in July 1997, Greek Prime Minister Simitis and Turkish President Demirel issued a communiqué confirming six points agreed on by their foreign ministers to advance peaceful relations.¹⁹ The points included such language as respect "for each other's legitimate vital interests and concerns in the Aegean," "commitment to refrain from unilateral acts. .. to avoid conflicts," and "commitment to settle disputes by peaceful means. .. without use of force or threat of force." The development was hailed at the time as a potentially significant substantive advance and a logical first step in a confidence-building process. There was no visible follow-up, however, and, by October, both Greece and Turkey were again trading rhetorical blows while accusing each other of reneging on promises made in Madrid.

To sum up, the two prime ministers can justifiably claim to have made an effort with new initiatives. Neither succeeded in any significant way. Why? At the risk of being unfair, the answer seems to be primarily the stultifying effect of domestic pressures. The prime ministers have not been strong enough to flout nationalists, within or outside their own parties. Public proposals therefore have necessarily been mini-steps, shaped to look statesmanlike at home by garnering support from Western governments while giving away nothing. They may not be a dialogue of the deaf, but they do approach a zero-sum debating game, with neither side able to risk allowing the other to score a point.

Deja Vu in Cyprus

The community leaders in Cyprus, it seems, have been around "forever." They were both playing important roles when the intercommunal struggles broke out shortly after independence in 1960. Both participated in desultory UN-sponsored meetings in 1997, but their policies had already become increasingly confrontational over the EU and S-300 missile issues described above. In February 1998, Clerides was reelected in presidential balloting on the Greek side.

Denktash remains in power on his side of the Green Line, and throughout 1998 clearly drew extra support from Ankara's harder line under the resurgent influence of Bülent Ecevit. A caustic critic of the United States and Europe for recognizing the Greek Cypriot government, Denktash has long argued that negotiations can be fair only if the Turkish Cypriot administration is treated as a legal equal to the Greek-led government of Cyprus, irrespective of the population imbalance. After many years of threatening, he was able as noted above to seize upon the EU decision on accession talks with Cyprus to make this an explicit condition for further talks.

Some have suggested in the past that Clerides and Denktash, with their long records of involvement, are the two leaders who best understand each other and hence offer the best chance of achieving closure in negotiations. There was no sign to validate this logic in 1998.

Private Sector

There is no peace movement or extensive network of people-to-people activities in Greece, Turkey, and Cyprus like those that marked the late years of the Cold War or, more recently, the Arab-Israeli and Northern Ireland conflicts. There are, however, contacts in multilateral organizations, a limited number of bilateral programs, and a few outstanding personalities who have consistently spoken out in favor of improved relations: former Greek Foreign Minister Michael Papaconstantinou, Turkish industrialists Sarik Tara and Rahmi Koç, and former Greek Cypriot Foreign Minister Alecos Michaelides, for example. Yet, overall, these largely personal efforts have made little headway.

The most prominent bridge-building attempts have been led by businessmen on both sides, harking back to the 1988 bilateral agreement that followed prime ministerial meetings at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Several meetings have broadened contact and promoted positive press coverage of the possibilities and benefits of expanded economic cooperation.

In early 1997, under the sponsorship of the private Greek-Turkish Business Council, there was a breakthrough of sorts: the first four-party meeting of businessmen -- Greeks, Greek Cypriots, Turks, and Turkish Cypriots -- took place at the end of May in Istanbul. Subsequently, Ambassador Holbrooke and former Norwegian Foreign Minister Jan Egeland also brought together a similar private sector group, which met on three occasions (in Brussels in November 1997, Oslo in June 1998, and Istanbul in December 1998). Participants in these meetings advocated numerous cooperative projects in the cultural, communications, trade, and environmental fields.²⁰ In the end, however, despite many positive and useful exchanges, the various sessions produced no real follow-up action. The Greek industrial establishment has remained unwilling to move ahead without clear support from the government in Athens. Initially, the Turks as a group were considerably more open to expansion of private-sector activities, but in late 1997 they drew back when the bilateral climate worsened, and in early 1999 declared an end to cooperation with Greek counterparts, alleging that the Öcalan case demonstrated Greek support for international terrorism.²¹ Other initiatives have also had at best limited impact: local "peace" cooperation between the mayors of Kusadesi on the Turkish mainland and the near-offshore Greek island of Samos, symbolic concerts of popular musical artists such as Mikis Theodorakis and Zulfu Livanelli, a rock concert on the Green Line in Cyprus, a bilateral women's meeting, modest academic exchanges, and several bilateral conferences decrying the jingoistic behavior of media in both countries.

In Cyprus the U.S. embassy has aggressively supported private exchanges and has a unique Office of Bi-communal Affairs. Under its auspices, Fulbright scholars, among others, have fostered peace studies and a range of programs with people from both sides of the Green Line. Numbers involved in such bicommunal activities have not reached critical mass, however, and in at least one recent case, the authorities on the Turkish Cypriot side refused to allow individuals to participate in a peace-oriented meeting.

Neither Ankara nor Athens shows much sign of giving the requisite "green light" and active encouragement. Turkish policy nominally favors private exchanges, but in practice the government has taken little initiative. Forceful directives aside, the Turkish bureaucracy can be a formidable obstacle to even such simple matters as getting basic commercial information in Athens. Despite occasional mild encouragement for exchanges, Greek policy in effect discourages broadened contacts in hopes of keeping up pressures on the Turkish side -- a philosophy of not allowing "business as usual" until the other side conforms to certain norms.

Thus, private efforts have been largely ignored in the capitals where pressure for political correctness sustains more confrontational approaches. The failure of the business communities' attempts to forge viable action programs in 1996-98 was perhaps the most significant demonstration to date that the private sector cannot long stay even a short distance out in front of governments.

POLITICAL WILL: TRUANT IN ATHENS, ANKARA, AND NICOSIA

Unrelated events or circumstances often dissuade the governments from making bold moves or even modest new departures. The leadership is regularly constrained by weaknesses or divisions in ruling parties, the strained atmosphere following incidents and misunderstandings, or campaign realities for upcoming elections. But even when the air has cleared of such factors in one or another capital, there has been little or no political drive to change.

There is, it seems, never a right moment when both governments are favorably positioned to make the necessary compromises. To the contrary, underlying political factors enumerated below seem ever-present and continue to provide disincentives against reconciliation:

• The status quo -- despite the nationalistic need to decry it -- is generally acceptable in all three countries. There are almost no mixed Greek-Turkish communities left, and hence there are few tinderboxes of day-to-day confrontation and discrimination. Greeks are reasonably secure from a Turkish military threat and vice versa; people only rarely get killed in isolated incidents. The existing standard of living is more than adequate for the majority of Greeks and Turks.

• Each side believes its current approach to be viable. Greeks are encouraged by the international support they get, especially from the EU, when they emphasize such priorities as recourse to the ICJ on Aegean issues and demilitarization in Cyprus. Turks find their proposals for bilateral dialogue eminently reasonable, and their firmness justified -- both in Cyprus, to protect the Turkish minority, and in the Aegean, to forestall any Greek fait accompli (such as declaration of a 12-mile sea limit) that could, once effected, be impossible to undo in the face of U.S./European pressures to "work out" a solution.

• In the bilateral arena, neither Ankara nor Athens has confidence that the approach proposed by the other would result in fair and equitable results. Turkey is leery of the ICJ as a European institution likely to favor Greece and argues for dialogue to set parameters before recourse to the ICJ or other party is considered. Greece fears that the mere fact of entry into a broad dialogue, as proposed by Turkey, would be seen to concede essential points of principle.

• A pervasive mistrust has been built up by the cycles of incident and recrimination since the 1950s. Suspicions feed on presumptions of evil intentions, and "political correctness" discourages the discussion of alternatives to current policies. There is only a handful of "doves," almost no significant mainstream opposition voices, and nothing resembling a peace movement. Turkish Cyprus is an exception -- leaders of opposition political parties there regularly take issue with Denktash and clearly favor a more flexible approach.

The United States, the UN, and the EU have all declared their intentions to redouble peacemaking efforts. All have assigned top diplomats to the job; and in reserve, the Russians also have a special envoy for Cyprus. Spearheaded by the Security Council, this is not a lightweight team, but it has significant limitations: few concrete resources and disparate institutional interests that can impede coordination. It also faces a glacierlike accumulation of locked-in positions and resentments from the last 25 years of false starts and dashed hopes.

The UN continues to provide the comprehensive framework for Cyprus negotiations. The standing peacemaking complement to UNFICYP peacekeeping is the "good offices" activity of the UN secretary-general, now Kofi Annan. The day-to-day work is carried out by his deputy special representative resident in Cyprus (now Dame Ann Hercus of New Zealand). The "good offices" mechanism has been the primary venue for bicommunal talks and the development of specific plans for reuniting the island. In theory, the secretary-general has all the muscle of the Security Council behind him, but in practice he is limited to the more pacific exercise of neutral mediation and moral suasion. When he has tried to get tough with one or the other side, the Security Council generally has refused to enter the fray.

In light of the current Turkish Cypriot boycott of bicommunal talks, the secretary-general's special representative can only shuttle back and forth until the two sides themselves decide to meet, or the Security Council provides some means to pressure them back to the table. Neither of these actions is likely unless and until a U.S. or EU initiative breaks the impasse over EU accession talks. In the meantime, the special representative's contacts on Cyprus maintain the substance of the process and help develop the specifics essential to any eventual settlement.

For the moment, the Europeans seem more part of the problem than the solution. Given that Greece is a veto-wielding member, the EU cannot in any case aspire to be a neutral participant, but everyone, including Greece, nominally agrees that Turkey can or should eventually join the EU if and when it qualifies. And everyone, including Turkey, agrees that Turkey has a long way to go to meet membership conditions. The misunderstandings involve how to proceed, and how Turkey is to be treated in the process.

The French and British have talked of getting EU-Turkish relations back on track. Diplomatic word-smithing and cosmetic repackaging of the Turkish candidacy could conceivably constitute a first step, but the rhetoric that followed Luxembourg leaves Prime Minister Yilmaz (or any successor) in a difficult position at home to reverse course without something more substantial to show for it.

Envoys from the EU and member governments will be frustrated until the relationship with Turkey is repaired. Germany is widely seen as the key: the Luxembourg decisions were perhaps more a victory of the anti-immigrant, anti-Turk backlash in Bonn than a result of Greek diplomacy. But now, having been officially sealed, the positions taken at Luxembourg will not easily be overturned. Whether it will be possible to backtrack at all depends in the first instance on a shift of German diplomacy in Turkey's favor.

THE UNITED STATES AND THE BURDEN OF LEADERSHIP

The United States is best placed to be the region's honest broker. As demonstrated in the Imia/Kardak incident, Washington can mediate agreements that the two sides could not achieve directly between themselves. Moreover, it is only the Americans who have a credible capability to intervene militarily in the region. The United States, of course, has its own reasons to be engaged. The strategic importance of Greece and Turkey is unquestioned, given their historical ties with the United States, critical geographic location, NATO membership, and the extensive military facilities potentially available to U.S. forces in a crisis.

Notwithstanding its superpower status and good relations with the two countries, however, the United States always has had to strike a delicate balance in the Aegean. Pushing too hard, especially with Turkey, puts other vital U.S. interests at risk. Greeks, attributing much of their troubles with Turkey over the last three or four decades to American meddling, remain suspicious of U.S. intentions. In Washington itself, the influential Greek-American lobby periodically persuades Congress to push the administration in Hellenic directions. Turks resent the burdens imposed on bilateral relations in the past by Congress, and Ankara lacks confidence in any administration's ability to prevail over Congress in a confrontation over Greek-Turkish relations.

In these circumstances, American diplomacy has not been able to exert a great deal of leverage or pressure on either side, except in a crisis. Washington has relied primarily on appeals to the self-interest of the parties -- adding up the enormous benefits that both would accrue from making the concessions necessary to resolve their disputes and working together to craft a more peaceful and prosperous southeastern Europe. The logic is self-evident to Americans, but by itself not persuasive enough for either Greeks or Turks to change their ways.

As for substance, U.S. policy has long pursued three peacekeeping/peacemaking tracks. A first priority -- aimed at keeping people from getting killed -- has been to maintain effective "operational prevention" and monitoring mechanisms, trying to improve them with additional confidence-building measures on the models of hot lines, military transparency, and conflict-avoidance agreements. The second policy objective, of equal priority, is to sustain a peace process, in effect keeping the UN secretary-general's "good offices" mission alive, even if only barely alive, to take the edge off confrontation. This has been a particularly urgent task of late, given the collision course in Cyprus over the S-300 missiles and the EU-Cyprus accession talks. The third, less vigorous, U.S. track has been support for longer-term "structural prevention" to build understanding, promote public debate, and create incentives through trade and other forms of mutually beneficial cooperation.

Neither Greeks nor Turks have rejected these basic ideas in principle. Nor have they embraced them with any enthusiasm; in fact, both tend to impose conditions that impede implementation. In recent years, the lack of substantive progress has hardened attitudes in the capitals of the area, and Washington has found it increasingly necessary to add incentives to get the parties to the negotiating table. Unwilling or politically unable to add from their own bag of resources, the Americans have looked principally to the EU for additional pressures on Greece -- and, more important, for sweeteners to sway Turkey, in the form of cash grants or progress toward EU membership. The Europeans of course have their own ideas, and in Luxembourg they set out on a rather different course, to Washington's dismay.

Overall, the American strategy has succeeded in preventing serious outbreaks of violence, but has essentially failed to advance the longer-term prospects for peace. Unwilling to risk backlash or failure from more daring moves, Washington has a way of deluding itself that the application of diplomatic brilliance or a clever new formula will be enough to energize a Greek-Turkish peace process, much as one levers a rock over a small hump and sends it rolling down a hill. A political bonbon such as an important official visit may be enough to precipitate a round of talks, but more substance is needed to sustain them.

In the last three or four years, Washington's declaration of leadership on the Cyprus issue has produced more rhetoric than result. In 1996, U.S. pressure to mark then-Ambassador to the UN Madeleine Albright's visit to Cyprus with a breakthrough spawned a fuzzy "moratorium" on military flights over Cyprus. The hasty and vague pronouncement was never fully accepted or understood in the same way by all parties. This moratorium muddle may have been a major factor in the downfall of progressive Cypriot Foreign Minister Michaelides, who went out on a limb to support the moratorium to accommodate the Americans for the Albright visit, only to then find himself seriously at odds behind the scenes with Athens. Confusion over the details of the agreement later contributed to serious misunderstandings when Turkish planes buzzed a military cargo plane carrying the Greek defense minister.

Ambassador Holbrooke's high-profile drive to rescue bicommunal peace negotiations broke down in May 1998, when his efforts were rejected in Cyprus. He put the blame on Turkish Cypriot leader Denktash for imposing conditions that made the revival of negotiations impossible -- namely, his insistence noted above that any further intercommunal negotiations involving Turkish Cyprus must be on a state-to-state basis. Following on Holbrooke's own earlier criticism of the EU for taking the decision on talks, his later finger-pointing at Denktash left aside the crucial problem (for Ankara as much as for Denktash) of how the Turks should be expected to react, given their profound objections to the EU decision. The end result in any case is a diplomatic blind alley.

Holbrooke's failure in Cyprus followed on the seeming evaporation of the Madrid Communiqué, months of unsuccessful Western efforts to defuse the confrontation over Imia/Kardak, the mistrust and frustration generated by the S-300 missile purchase, and the EU/Turkey split. Going into 1999, the string of disappointments left Washington once again at the bottom of the hill, compelled like Sisyphus to push the stone back up one more time.

CONCLUSIONS

There is little reason to expect improvement in the situation any time soon. Three elemental scenarios merit consideration:

• Worst Cases. A serious military incident gets initially out of control in the Aegean (or less likely on Cyprus). The sides may go on a war footing, but large-scale or lasting combat is unlikely. The outcry against the use of force requires some sanctions to be imposed on Turkey and/or Greece, and further blocks any progress between Turkey and the EU. The resultant outbursts of nationalistic feelings deepens the division of Cyprus almost irrevocably, and it takes months or years to defuse the tensions.

• Middle Cases. EU accession talks continue, with Turkey and Turkish Cyprus taking additional steps toward political and economic integration. Tensions rise ominously. Sooner or later the Americans and the Europeans become gravely concerned and exert enough pressure to require retrenchment and some form of negotiations. But, by then, the sides will have drawn further apart with correspondingly lower chances for progress toward reunification of Cyprus. Incidents in the Aegean similar to Imia/Kardak, although kept under control, would aggravate this scenario, as could further negative developments in the Öcalan case.

• Best Case. The EU partially mends fences with Turkey and mollifies Turks on the accession issue, the Imia/Kardak and Öcalan issues are defused by governmental statements, and/or some military confidence-building measures are instituted on Cyprus and in the Aegean. This kind of progress could allow the UN talks to resume and would facilitate tension reduction contacts between Ankara and Athens, a situation akin to that prevailing in the early 1990s.

Washington: More of the Same is Not Enough

It is a given that any administration in Washington has to pursue an activist policy, with goals to advance peacemaking in Cyprus and the Aegean. Of the options Washington can consider, the two extremes -- do nothing or try to coerce a solution -- are unrealistic. Diplomats worn down by years of frustration might well vote to let the stalemate continue until the parties become more "reasonable," but domestic political pressures will not permit such a stance. At the other end of the spectrum, talk of a "Dayton solution" suggests something akin to forcing agreement -- neither Greeks nor Turks will subject themselves to this model for Cyprus or the Aegean.

Between the extremes, three basic policy lines are painfully obvious and follow along much the same lines that Washington has pursued for over two decades:

• First, the "operational prevention" and monitoring mechanisms must not only be maintained, but greater efforts must be made to supplement them with conflict-avoidance and confidence-building measures. Steps such as hot lines, military exercise transparency, and specified area and/or time moratoriums on military activities are all constructive, eminently reasonable, and implementable with no derogation of sovereignty.

• Second, it is crucial to reinstate UN negotiations or get some process under way to ease the tension over the EU-Cyprus accession talks. At a minimum, a cooling off period is sorely needed to take stock.

• Third, long-term "structural prevention" or peacebuilding must be more effectively addressed. Some substantial, high-profile engagement of leaders and civic institutions is sorely needed to start bringing down the wall of mistrust between the two sides.

What More Should the United States Do Now?

Why should Washington do anything more? The compelling argument is simply that it is in the U.S. national interest to promote Greek-Turkish reconciliation, and the American approach is not moving the parties past conflict prevention. And why now? There is no reason to think there will be a better time.

Can a more forceful U.S. initiative directly overcome the factors in Greece, Turkey, and Cyprus that inhibit reconciliation? The short answer has to be "no." America does not have the will or the resources to alter the situation on the ground materially. More to the point, Greece, Turkey, and Cyprus are all highly developed societies and will not take action on seminal national security matters until they themselves find it in their own national interest to do so. There has to be some credible leadership from within -- a Sadat, a Peres or Rabin, a Hume or Trimble.

What should Washington do? The United States may not be willing or able to compel change, but the American voice at least commands attention. When Washington has taken forthright positions, for example, in opposing the S-300 missiles and openly favoring Turkish membership in the EU, it has strongly influenced the policy discussion in Greece, Turkey, and Cyprus. More of this kind of "shock treatment" is needed.

The objective is not to "shock" by just being outrageous, but rather to force the parties to recognize that they will not win decisive U.S. support for certain of their positions, and that they cannot make progress without conciliation and compromise. Governments, media, and citizens must be jarred out of their fixation on maximum goals, prodded to appreciate the legitimate concerns of the other side, and encouraged to consider alternative solutions. These are cardinal requirements for any true progress toward reconciliation or lasting conflict resolution.

POSSIBLE COMPONENTS OF A COMPREHENSIVE PEACE PLAN

One vehicle for provoking "new thinking" would be the formulation of a comprehensive American peace plan to lay out what the United States would or would not support. The point would not be to come up with new formulas, but to use the principles that the United States championed all along in the Greek-Turkish case and through its own Cold War with the Soviet Union: effective conflict avoidance measures, government negotiations on key issues insulated from partisan political pressures, private-sector exchanges across the board, and fresh approaches to at underlying issues (such as a future regime for the Aegean) to pave the way for mutually beneficial compromise.

A Strengthened Foundation of Principles

1. Greece and Turkey should reduce current tension (operational prevention) forthwith by the adoption of crisis-avoidance and confidence-building measures in both Cyprus and the Aegean, with the involvement of NATO.

2. There must be renewed commitments to avoid threats and provocative actions, to seek peaceful solutions to disagreements, and to use the negotiating table.

3. Top priority must be given to "structural prevention" -- that is, to resources and programs for people-to-people diplomacy encompassing a wide range of exchanges in the private and public sectors.

1. The two communities should restart talks on the substantive basis of the UN-elaborated Set of Ideas from 1992. This framework had all the elements appropriate to a bicommunal, bi-zonal solution, and it makes no sense to start all over again. It is time to move to a more forceful U.S. mediator or U.S.-led "contact group" for convening the talks. As was the case under UN aegis, the two community leaders would be on the same plane. The objective should be an agreement on key constitutional, territorial, and resettlement issues. Failing that, the talks should identify for public critique the specific nature of the disagreements.

2. Both communities should immediately commit substantial resources to exchange programs and devise ways to facilitate travel and business across the Green Line. Some aspects of the case of China/Taiwan may be instructive, where extensive commerce and contact have been undertaken without unacceptable legal compromise of the principle of "One China." Current restrictions in Cyprus maintain barriers, impede reconciliation, and in practice promote the idea of permanent partition.

3. The UN's Confidence Building Measures proposals (opening Nicosia airport, returning Varosha to Greek control, etc.) should be adopted, and NATO and the UN Security Council's five permanent members should examine guarantees for implementation and assurances that there need be no concession of sovereignty principles.

4. It should be agreed that, pending the outcome of restarted talks, there will no upgrading of military forces on either side, and that the question of EU accession decisions will be reexamined on the basis of the language -- which both sides have accepted provisionally -- in para. 92 of the UN Set of Ideas -- namely, that accession matters would be "discussed and agreed to" and "submitted for the approval of the two communities in separate referendums."

1. The United States should clearly state its view that the parties have simply been remiss in not instituting hot lines, not signing broader incident-avoidance agreements, not establishing transparency of military exercises, and not fully implementing existing agreements on limiting exercise schedules.

2. Greece and Turkey should vigorously sponsor extensive exchanges on education, culture, the environment, business, tourism and the like. The U.S. experience in the Cold War proved the value of exchanges to break down stereotypes and create a diverse pool of citizen opinion leaders with firsthand exposure to the "other side." The key to galvanizing effective exchanges is serious commitment by the governments in Ankara and Athens.

3. Ankara and Athens -- with the United States standing ready to help -- should make new efforts to find an acceptable formula for instituting bilateral talks on key issues.

1. A working group drawn from NATO members should be convened to propound ideas for a post-settlement security regime in Cyprus that takes advantage of NATO's new flexibility. The quintessential task should be to develop new ideas for guaranteeing the personal security of Turkish Cypriots without maintaining an unacceptable Turkish military presence.

2. A working group drawn from NATO members should be convened to work out a broad new security architecture for Greece, Turkey, and Cyprus along with their adjacent waters.

3. A symposium of private experts should be commissioned to elaborate possibilities for future regimes to govern Aegean airspace, surface and underwater areas, and the continental shelf. The result should be a set of options that as a whole favors neither Greece nor Turkey.

4. Consideration should be given to a mini Helsinki Review Conference for Southeastern Europe -- possibly extending to neighbors of Greece and Turkey to examine the status of the application in the countries concerned of the three components of the Helsinki Accords: the security, economic, and human rights "baskets."

Serious negotiations of the sort proposed above for Cyprus and for bilateral Greek-Turkish relations cannot be successfully carried out in public. When it comes to sitting down at the table, that will have to be done primarily behind closed doors until the critical issues are settled.

To get to the negotiating table, however, it seems evident that the parties first have to be jolted off the pedestals on which they have stood for so long with such absolute moral certainty -- and such detrimental consequences. The EU's effort to jolt the parties toward a Cyprus solution with accession negotiations so far has failed because it backed the Turkish side into a corner from which in realistic political terms no Turkish government can exit. In contrast, the essential point of the proposal above is that the United States cannot accept the argumentation of just one side. The proposal makes clear what both sides have to do to enjoy continued American support. The jolt will be there if, and only if, Washington can persuade all concerned that it means what it says.

The Aegean: Principal Points at Issue

Continental Shelf. The specific issue is how to divide up rights to those portions of the sea bottom, including any gas or oil deposits, that extend beyond the territorial-seas limit, which is currently six miles around the Greek islands. Attempts to lease drilling rights and/or to prospect in disputed areas have led on two occasions to serious preparation for military action by both sides. In the more recent incident in 1987, Turkey, fearing Greece was about to act on a drilling concession, dispatched a seismic exploration ship with a military escort. A clash was avoided at the last minute, in large part because of U.S. and UK diplomatic interventions.

Territorial Seas. As noted above, Greece claims that, under the Law of the Seas (LOS) convention, it has the right to extend its territorial seas in the Aegean from six to twelve miles, and Turkey has threatened war if Greece should do so. Greece has not indicated intentions to proceed any time soon, but it reserves its rights on the matter. Turkey also contends there are "gray areas" in the Aegean where the surface boundary or island sovereignty is not precisely fixed. Greece hotly refutes this premise.

Regimes in the Air above the Aegean. Greece claims ten miles for its national air space around the islands, to which both the United States and Turkey object on grounds that this should be six miles -- to correspond to the six-mile sea limit. Despite vociferous Greek objections and scrambling of Greek fighter defense aircraft, Turkey periodically flies military planes into the disputed air space, ostensibly to establish its legal objection (as the United States has done in the past). Greece and Turkey also disagree about the implementation of the international air control regime (FIR), administered by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), in that Turkey accepts the boundary set by international authorities for Greek air controllers but asserts that it does not have to give notice to Greece of planned flights by governmental military aircraft. Beyond legal questions, these air-space disputes give rise to the worrisome possibility of an inadvertent clash between armed military planes operating over the Aegean.

Notes and References

1. For the text of the treaty and its companion agreement, The Convention Respecting the Regime of the Straits and other Instruments Signed at Lausanne, see The Treaties of Peace 1919*-1923, Vol. II, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, New York, 1924.

2. What exactly happened in Kenya, notably the interplay between the Turkish, American and Kenyan governments, remains unclear. As for the Greek handling of the case, a leaked report of the Greek ambassador's statements to government investigators has the ring of truth. See Dina Kyriakidou, "New report rekindles Ocalan controversy in Greece," Reuters, Athens, March 7, 1999. The Greek language text of the leaked report was carried in the TA NEA newspaper edition of March 6.

3. See Stephen Kinzer, "Turkey and Greece Trade Words over Kurd," New York Times, Feb. 23, 1999.

4. Agenda 2000, Communication of the European Commission, DOC 97/6, Strasbourg, July 15, 1997.

5. Luxembourg European Council, 12 and 13 December 1997, Presidency Conclusions, Luxembourg, December 13, 1997, European Council DOC/97/24.

6. Lee Hockstader and Kelly Couturier "Ankara Ready to Sever European Ties," Washington Post, Dec. 15, 1997, p. A22.

7. See the Turkish government web site www.mfa.gov.tr and "Intercommunal Talks Have Died," The Irish Times, Dec. 16, 1997 (from www.ireland.com/).

8. For the official EU perspective on the developments leading to accession negotiations with Cyprus and the evolution in this direction with Turkey, see European Commission, DG1A, Regular Report from the Commission on Progress Toward Accession, Nov. 1998.

9. On the EU's approach to Cyprus accession, see also Philip Gordon, "Cyprus--Storms in the Med Blow Towards Europe," The World Today, Feb. 1998.

10. Annex to the Report of the Secretary General to the Security Council, S/24472, New York, Aug. 21, 1992.

11. UN Security Council Resolution 789 (1992), S/RES/789 (1992), New York, Nov. 25, 1992.

12. The missile contract was actually signed January 4, 1997, but not made known until two days later when, in response to news leaks, Cypriot Foreign Minister Alecos Michaelides confirmed the purchase on Cypriot television. The U.S. Department of State spokesman, Nicholas Burns, issued a statement at the department's daily briefing on January 6, expressing U.S. "regret" at this development.

13. Andrew Wilson, The Aegean Dispute, Adelphi Paper 15 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1979*-80), remains one of the best and most comprehensive surveys, although now dated in some aspects. The Web sites of the two ministries of foreign affairs--www.mfa.gr and www.mfa.gov.tr--contain considerable official material setting forth the positions of the two sides and have been drawn on extensively for this paper.

14. Both governments have issued lengthy defenses of their positions on Kardak/Imia and related issues, maintained on the respective foreign ministry Web sites, www.mfa.gr and www.mfa.gov.tr

15. The term "operational prevention" and the nature of this phase of peacekeeping activity is treated in Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, Preventing Deadly Conflict: Final Report (Washington, DC: Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, 1997), chapter 3.

16. For a discussion of structural prevention, see Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, Preventing Deadly Conflict, chapter 4.

17. The U.S. Department of Commerce has designated Turkey as one of ten countries on which it maintains extensive information for U.S. businessmen. See the Web site dedicated to this purpose: www.ita.doc.gov/bems

18. Statement by Prime Minister Yilmaz on the Aegean Questions, Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ankara, Mar. 24, 1996. See www.mfa.gov.tr/grupf/peace2.htm

19. The points are contained in the statement issued at the foreign minister level: Meeting of Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright with Greek Foreign Minister Pangalos and Turkish Foreign Minister Cem, U.S. Department of State, Office of the Spokesman, Press Statement, July 8, 1997. See http://secretary.state.gov/www/briefings/statements/970708b.html

20. The text of a statement and an informative Holbrooke/Egeland news conference following the December 1998 meeting was issued by the U.S. Information Service at the American Embassy in Nicosia, Cyprus. The text is available at www.americanembassy.org.cy/eur108.htm

21. See "Turkish group cuts Greek trade ties in Ocalan row," Reuters, Istanbul, Feb. 24, 1999.

MEMBERS OF THE CARNEGIE COMMISSION ON PREVENTING DEADLY CONFLICT

Cyrus R. Vance, Cochair
Partner
Simpson Thacher & Bartlett

Gro Harlem Brundtland
Director-General
World Health Organization
Former Prime Minister of Norway

Virendra Dayal
Former Under-Secretary-General and Chef de Cabinet to the Secretary-General
United Nations

Gareth Evans
Deputy Leader of the Opposition and Shadow Treasurer
Australia

Alexander L. George
Graham H. Stuart Professor Emeritus
of International Relations
Stanford University

Flora MacDonald
Former Foreign Minister of Canada

Donald F. McHenry
Distinguished Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy
School of Foreign Service
Georgetown University

Olara A. Otunnu
President
International Peace Academy

David Owen
House of Lords

Shridath Ramphal
Cochairman
Commission on Global Governance

Roald Z. Sagdeev
Distinguished Professor
Department of Physics
University of Maryland

John D. Steinbruner
Senior Fellow
Foreign Policy Studies Program
The Brookings Institution

Brian Urquhart
Former Under-Secretary-General for Special Political Affairs
United Nations

John C. Whitehead
Chairman
AEA Investors Inc.

Sahabzada Yaqub-Khan
Former Foreign Minister of Pakistan
Chairman, Board of Trustees
Aga Khan International University-Karachi

Special Advisors to the Commission
Arne Olav Brundtland
Director
Studies of Foreign and Security Policy
Norwegian Institute of International Affairs

Herbert S. Okun
Visiting Lecturer on International Law
Yale Law School
Former U.S. Representative to the German Democratic Republic and to the UN

Jane E. Holl, Executive Director

MEMBERS OF THE ADVISORY COUNCIL

Morton Abramowitz
Former President
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Ali Abdullah Alatas
Minister for Foreign Affairs
Republic of Indonesia

Graham T. Allison
Director
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
Harvard University

Robert Badinter
Senator of Hauts de Seine, Senat

Carol Bellamy
Executive Director
UNICEF

Harold Brown
Counselor
Center for Strategic and International Studies

McGeorge Bundy*
Scholar-in-Residence
Carnegie Corporation of New York

Jimmy Carter
Chairman
The Carter Center

Lori Damrosch
Professor of Law
Columbia University School of Law

Francis M. Deng
Senior Fellow
Foreign Policy Studies Program
The Brookings Institution

Sidney D. Drell
Professor and Deputy Director
Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
Stanford University

Lawrence S. Eagleburger
Senior Foreign Policy Advisor
Baker Donelson Bearman and Caldwell

Leslie H. Gelb
President
Council on Foreign Relations

David Gompert
Vice President
National Security Research
RAND

Andrew J. Goodpaster
Senior Fellow
The Eisenhower World Affairs Institute

Mikhail S. Gorbachev
The Gorbachev Foundation

James P. Grant
Executive Director
UNICEF

Lee H. Hamilton
United States House of Representatives

Theodore M. Hesburgh
President Emeritus
University of Notre Dame

Donald L. Horowitz
James B. Duke Professor of Law and Political Science
Duke University School of Law

Michael Howard
President
International Institute for Strategic Studies

* Deceased September 1996.

Deceased February 1995.

Karl Kaiser
Director
Research Institute of the German Society
for Foreign Affairs

Nancy Landon Kassebaum Baker
United States Senate (Ret.)

Sol M. Linowitz
Honorary Chairman
The Academy for Educational Development

Richard G. Lugar
United States Senate

Michael Mandelbaum
Christian A. Herter Professor of American Foreign Policy
The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies
The Johns Hopkins University

Robert S. McNamara
Former U.S. Secretary of Defense

William H. McNeill
Professor Emeritus of History
University of Chicago

Sam Nunn
Partner
King & Spalding

Olusegun Obasanjo
Former Head of State of Nigeria
President
Africa Leadership Forum

Sadako Ogata
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

Javier Pérez de Cuéllar
Former Secretary-General
United Nations

Condoleezza Rice
Provost
Stanford University

Elliot L. Richardson
Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy

Harold H. Saunders
Director of International Affairs
Kettering Foundation

George P. Shultz
Distinguished Fellow
Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace
Stanford University

Richard Solomon
President
United States Institute of Peace

James Gustave Speth
Administrator
United Nations Development Programme

Desmond Tutu
Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town

Admiral James D. Watkins, USN (Ret.)
Secretary of Energy, 1989-1993

Elie Wiesel
Nobel Laureate
Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities
Boston University

I. William Zartman
Jacob Blaustein Professor of International Organizations and Conflict Resolution
Director of African Studies and Conflict Management Programs
The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies
The Johns Hopkins University

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

M. James Wilkinson was U.S. special Cyprus coordinator from 1985 to 1989, serving concurrently as deputy assistant secretary of state for European affairs with responsibilities for U.S. policy toward Greece and Turkey. In 1989-90 he was U.S. deputy representative to the United Nations Security Council with the rank of ambassador. Since leaving the career foreign service at the end of 1993, he has been consulting and writing, including participation from 1996 to 1998 in the Carnegie Forum on the United States, Greece, and Turkey, a Commission-sponsored project to energize the private sector for Greek-Turkish reconciliation.