ABSTRACT
In August and September 1999a series of major earthquakes devastated some heavily populated areas of Greece and Turkey. The two countries, united in their common predicament, exchanged humanitarian aid in a spirit of mutual concern celebrated by journalists, politicians and the general public alike. This kind of co-operation inspired a series of political negotiations between the foreign ministers of Greece and Turkey, who engaged in an effort to bridge the gap that separates the two nations. A few months after the earthquakes, political commentators and the public in Greece were talking about the genesis of a new cultural phenomenon, ‘the Greco-Turkish politics of friendship’. Some of them welcomed warm-heartedly this new, publicly conducted, friendship, treating it as an opportunity to see the older stereotypes about the Turks in a more positive light. Others appeared more hesitant about whether real and tangible results would follow the discussions of politicians. They pointed to previous tensions in Greco-Turkish history, or simply reproduced negative representations of the Turks prevalent in the Greek national imagination.
