ABSTRACT
The problems in Greek-Turkish relations are generally perceived as a series of political and military controversies directly or indirectly connected to economic interests and to security concerns. True as this observation may be, there is still a more complex framework in which the bilateral relationships can be envisaged and which can also provide an explanation for the persistence of these unresolved disputes: due to historical reasons each party conceives the ‘other’ as a prospective threat or as a challenge to its identity and interprets each of his actions accordingly, creating a vicious circle where the national perceptions and the negative images concerning the ‘other’ dictate the vigilant attitude of ‘ours’ and which in turn also aggravates the attitude to the ‘other’. As John W. Burton has written ‘Conflict, like all relationships, is a perceived relationship.’1
