ABSTRACT
The seemingly contradictory elements that appear in my informants' agendas and perspectives strongly relate to where they perceive-not Turkey's but-Greece's position to be in the international political order. Turkey becomes, inveterately, a suitable mirror into which the Self can look and see itself: its assumed weaknesses and strengths, its own ambivalence, its own feelings of centrality and marginality (see also Argyrou, this volume). Turkey as a proximate nation has the unique ability to stand simultaneously for what is intimate, alien, admired, feared, respected or despised, depending on the context and the circumstances. It is a symbol of proximity and distance, of what one admires and hates about the Self rather than the Other. In the discourses of my informants the image of the Turk is largely a projection of what is to be Greek, only at times a projection that is inverted and distorted to signify what the Greek should abjure, what the Greek was and is not, and simultaneously what Greeks as an imaginary, collective entity aspire and strive to be.
