Chronology of greek-turkish relations after 1999

by Turkey Today: a chronology of turkish-greek relations since 1999, based on academic and other writings

1997 Luxembourg Summit: a crisis caused in relations when E.C. decided not to include Turkey among the list of candidate countries. Due to the Ankara Treaty, the EU cannot rule out Turkey‟s membership application based on eligibility, yet the Luxembourg Summit was suggesting a clear rejection.

10-11 December 1999 Helsinki Summit: With the mutual disaster aid response following on the earthquakes in August (Istanbul) and September (Athens) 1999, Greece lifted its veto on Turkey‟s candidacy for EU membership at the EU‟s Helsinki Summit in December 1999. Turkey was granted the status of “candidate state destined to join the Union on the basis of the same criteria as applied to the other candidate states”.

February, 2001: economic crisis in Turkey

2002: Greece and Turkey signed an agreement on readmission, according to which Turkey committed to accepting illegal migrants deported from Greece provided they had Turkish citizenship or had come to Greece through Turkey.

13 December 2002, Copenhagen Summit:  decided that Cyprus should become a member, together with nine other candidate countries.

March 2003: the Cyprus peace talks collapsed after an inconclusive meeting in the Hague between Greek and Turkish Cypriots. On 10 March, Democratic Party (DP) leader Serdar Denktaş simply refused any referendum on the plan while the newly elected president of Southern Cyprus Tassos Papadopoulos was distinctly less enthusiastic about the Annan Plan than previous president Glafkos Clerides but adopted a more moderate attitude in accepting the referendum. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced the end of efforts to reunite Greek and Turkish Cypriots before the island signed an accession treaty to the European Union.

24 April 2004: referendum on the Annan Plan, Greek Cypriots rejected the plan by a majority of 76%, while the Turkish Cypriots voted in favor by 65%.

2001-2004: various political reform packages adopted by Turkish government in order to fulfill the 1993 Copenhagen criteria that resulted in deepening Turkey‟s Europeanization process. The 1993 Copenhagen Summit stated that the stability of democratic institutions and respect for human rights are essential pre-conditions for candidacy status as well as for opening accession negotiations.

November 2007: the Turkey-Greece Natural Gas Pipeline started in 2005 was completed. A 296-kilometer (184 mile) long natural gas pipeline that connects the Turkish and Greek gas grids, begins in Karacabey in Turkey and runs to Komotini in Greece. The Interconnector Turkey–Greece–Italy (ITGI) is a natural gas transportation project proposed in the framework of the Southern Gas Corridor.

2007: trade volume and tourism capacity between Turkey and Greece had diminished and their relations with the EU weakened the completion of the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline.

2008: economic crisis in Greece.

2010 beginning of the Arab Spring.

2010 Operation Poseidon launching: land and sea-based border control mission coordinated by the EU agency FRONTEX.

2011 Syrian civil-war: Syrian refugees flows, “open door” policy by turkish governement towards Syrian refugees. The Turkish government began setting up refugee camps at the border with Syria, initially refusing to accept international assistance for Syrians.

2011 national elections in Turkey: ruling party AKP mentioned Greece as a neighbor sharing the energy route of Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), showing that with the global economic crisis started in 2008, Greece‟s role as an energy partner became more important than an economic partner. The the party program and electoral campaign of AKP comparee EU countries and Greece's economic indicators with Turkey‟s which had much better indicators.

2013 Turkish government's stepping back for Kurdish opening : Turkey begun consumed by its internal Kurdish problem and the war in Syria, its strategic energies became absorbed by its south-eastern flank rather than the Aegean Sea

Summer 2015: more than a million migrants crossed EU borders, almost 900,000 coming through Turkey, contributing to the escalation of tensions between Athens and Ankara.

April 2016: Ankara ratified an agreement on readmission with Pakistan, which made possible to send even Pakistanis from refugee camps in Greece back to Pakistan provided that they came to Greek islands from Turkey. The responsibility for implementing the agreement between the European Union and Turkey rested with the governments of Greece and Turkey. Of course, in the name of the EU the European Commission committed to providing financial, advisory and expert assistance, but it was officials from the two Aegean countries who had to make the effort to solve the refugee problem. The European Commission declared financial assistance for the Greek government in the amount of EUR 700 million and for the Turkish government EUR 3 billion by the end of 2018 to be spent on infrastructure maintenance and support for refugees.

15 July 2016 coup attempt in Turkey: Greece granted asylum to 8 commandos who had fled to Greece on the same night. The coup attempt exposed the weakened solidarity within the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) and harmed Turkey's assumed military superiority over Greece. TSK's power was crucial in creating deterrence for the Greek side which has superiority with its accession to EU. On the other hand, the number of refugees arriving on Greek islands increased after the 2016 coup attempt, as Turkish police officers were withdrawn from the Turkish cost, the official reason being the need to reinforce those who fought the coup supporters.

December 2017 : Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's state visit to Greece where he made a request that Greece agree to re-negotiate the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, which is perceived by the Greeks as a policy that demands Athens return territories given to the Greeks by the Treaty signed after WWI. Greek Minister of Defence, Panos Kammenos responded that “if Erdogan wants to abolish the Treaty of Lausanne then we'll return to the [earlier] Treaty of Sevres”. One of the many issues that President Erdoğan raised during his visit to Athens was the extradition of these 8 soldiers. Furhermore he accused Greece of mistreating the Turkish Muslim minority in Western Thrace and blamed the Greek side for the failure of peace talks in Cyprus.

January 2018: the Greek courts ruled out the extradition of eight soldiers to Turkey that had been demanded by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan for their involvement in the failed coup organized against him by the Gülenist fraction in July 2016. Since then Turkey accuses Greece of harbouring coupists and Greece denies it saying its judiciary is independent and if the Supreme Court had declared that an extradition should take place, the soldiers would suffer a curtailment of their human rights.

February 2018: the peace talks between the Cyprus ethnic Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders, which were believed with high hopes to be leading to the establishment of a unified government since 2017, came to a halt. Turkish and Greek patrol boats collided near the Imia/Kardak islets.

March 2018:  two Greek soldiers crossed into Turkish territory. In response to the above greek refusal Turkey detained for several months the greek soldiers. A local court in Edirne ruled for their arrest and refused the two soldiers' subsequent pleas for release, citing suspicions of illegal entry and attempted military espionage. Bilateral tensions escalated until August 2018 when the soldiers were repatriated to Greece.

March 14, 2018: EU unlocked a further 3 billion euros for refugees in Turkey, the second tranche of the 2016 deal to curb the flow of migrants coming to Europe. Under the deal, all new irregular migrants crossing from Turkey into Greek islands must be returned to Turkey. These include both refugees fleeing conflict and persecution as well as economic migrants. In addition to providing billions in funds in return, the EU agreed other concessions to Turkey such as to accelerate plans to bring in visa-free travel for its nationals and boost negotiations for its membership of the bloc.

24 June 2018: national and presidential elections in Turkey, President Erdoğan and the AKP party mentioned Greece only as a neighbor sharing the energy route of the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP).

July 2018: the latest talks aimed at reunifying Cyprus, which had been labeled as the “last chance” to reunite divided Cyprus, have ended without a deal

2018: deep economic stagnation for Turkey, while Greece announced its exit from eight years of international bailout programs on August 20, 2018

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Bibliography

Burcu Taşkın, TWENTY YEARS AFTER THE RAPPROCHEMENT: AN OVERVIEW OF GREEK-TURKISH RELATIONS (1999-2019) article