ABSTRACT
This volume is concerned with the views held by some Greeks about the Turks, mostly the generalized, treated as undifferentiated, Turks. It addresses the preoccupation of some people (who imagine themselves as similar to each other) with some other people (imagined as homogeneously dissimilar and incompatible in ethnic terms). This is an example of ethnic categorization set in opposition, and the case of ‘Turks in the minds of Greeks’ is one of the most enduring variations. Like many other conflict-ridden pairs of ethnic identification—Israelis and Palestinians, Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland, Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Serbs—the categories themselves, like their supporting nationalisms and ethno-histories, rely upon taken-for-granted, unexamined in everyday conversation, perceptions of cultural incompatibility. The contributors to this volume examine these taken-for-granted perceptions, and several other, less antagonistic ones, which contradict them. They draw attention to the complexity of cultural worldviews about Others as these manifest themselves, both in particular arguments and social dynamics, and when Greeks think about Turks.
