Introduction

James Ker-Lindsay, the coordinator of the Greek-Turkish Forum, an initiative run by the International Peace Research Institute and the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies, published a monograph in 2007 examining the period of 1999-2000, the period when the first noteworthy shifts towards a relatively normalised relation between the two states took place at the level of diplomacy and foreign policy. Ker-Lindsay develop the concept of paradigmatic formation from Bent Flyvbjerg's elaboration of the 'paradigmatic case study' to speak here of a discursive event that while not unique in its own right can reveal rich information for the understanding of socio-political reality once it is juxtaposed and compared with the wider historico-political and discursive context. As Jacques Derrida argues, the quality of a pharmakon, a remedy, is one of the possible qualities attributed to 'friendship'. The rhetorical use of friendship in the European political tradition was dominantly an issue of the leaders, the kings and the princes.