The promise of NATO in the construction of cooperative Turkish–Greek relations

Abstract

This study seeks to explore the reasons why joint membership in NATO could not help Turkey and Greece resolve their long-standing territorial disputes in a problem solving win–win framework, based on the transformation of their realpolitik security cultures into nonrealpolitik security cultures. In undertaking this task, this article employs a partly theoretical and partly empirical perspective. The theoretical part assesses the expectations of various international relations theoretical accounts of the impact of international institutions/organizations on behaviors of states. There exist two main theoretical currents that aim at analyzing such a relationship. While rationalistic-institutionalist approaches confine the impact of international institutions/organizations only to behaviors of states, sociological-institutionalist approaches argue that institutional linkages not only shape and constrain states’ behavioral strategies but also reconstruct their identities and interests. The empirical part of the essay analyses the Turkish–Greek interaction process within the framework of the Alliance from 1952 onwards, with particular attention paid to post-Cold War era developments. This article argues that the theoretical expectations of the above-mentioned approaches, particularly those of sociological-institutionalism and the neo-liberal version of rationalist-institutionalism, have been proved wrong. Turkey and Greece have neither succeeded in adjusting their behaviors to each other’s needs and expectations, nor have they developed collective identities and interests that might in the final analysis have enabled them to form a security community in their region and solve their disputes once and for all.