Archive note: This text comes from the old archive of Nomika Epilekta and is carefully preserved for historical and informational reading.

Because of the Ottoman conquest of the Greek lands, the period of Turkish rule, the continuous conflicts between Muslims and Christians, the revolution of 1821, the Balkan wars, the Cretan question, the Asia Minor campaign, the events of 1940 against the Greek Orthodox of Turkey during the German, Italian and Bulgarian occupation of Greece, the persecutions of 1955 and 1964, the invasion of Cyprus and the other confrontations, the traditional rivalry between the two peoples is preserved. This rivalry has deep roots in both peoples, despite the cultural and racial affinity that is evident, mainly between the Greeks of mainland Greece and the Turkish inhabitants of western and northern Asia Minor.

After the great crisis in Cyprus and amid flare-ups in relations between Greece and Turkey, parallel efforts at normalization took place, with statements, events, reciprocal visits, conferences, meetings and other actions, which always had suspicion as their permanent companion.

Recently, mutual visits were made by the prime ministers of Greece and Turkey, accompanied by warm statements about friendship, cooperation and peace.

There was agreement even on the content of school history books, with the intention of softening and, if possible, deleting references of hatred by one people toward the other.

Greek policy for years, despite tensions, has been favorably disposed toward Turkey, whose accession to the European Union it supports, perhaps more than the Turks themselves.

Turkey, having by comparison a more serious state, tradition, vast territory, a large population and effective state mechanisms, seems, even with tortoise steps, to be moving away from the national-socialist system installed by the founder of the so-called Turkish republic.

A weak wind of freedom is blowing within Turkish territory and, despite extremes, nationalist and religious fanaticisms, attacks and murders, Turkish society is becoming civilized and modernized. It is being upgraded mainly economically, and economic progress is followed by the weakening of fanaticism and intolerance. Turkish migrants contribute to this process by carrying the European spirit of tolerance and forbearance into the Turkish amalgam of peoples and ethnicities, estimated at several dozens, with the Kurdish minority of millions as the dominant one.

With the founding of the so-called Turkish republic and the adoption of many Western models, the Turks did not exploit the cultural wealth they inherited, after and through their conquests, but tried, imitating in many ways the foolish devotees of Pan-Germanism, to impose Pan-Turkism or Pan-Turanism, systematically exterminating whatever other peoples they could, guided and exemplified by the great and unforgivable genocide of the Armenians, which had begun earlier.

In Greece things did not develop better. When Greeks were not fighting their neighbors, they were systematically exterminating one another, most recently in the terrible mutual destruction of the period 1940-1949, ending with the military dictatorship and the preservation of rivalries and fanaticisms until today.

The Greeks feel Turkey as a permanent threat, and more specifically its militaristic structure and its visible attacks at every opportunity, with awareness of its expansionist tactics.

This, in broad lines, is the situation in Turkey and Greece, both of which have many weaknesses because of which irreparable damage, national disasters and misery may be caused to the majority of ordinary citizens struggling to survive with dignity.

After the economic and social crisis in Greece, Greek entrepreneurs and ordinary workers left the country mainly from 2009 onward and continue massively to seek opportunities for employment and economic activity in Europe, Australia and neighboring countries, including Bulgaria, Skopje and Turkey.

Conditions in our country, because of disorganization, indifference and individualism, are worsening. The state is being disorganized, the unions are running wild, politicians remain unrepentant opportunists, institutions are not respected and taxation excludes every economic breath and action.

Thus many of our compatriots were forced to turn also toward Turkey, taking advantage of the liberalization of the regime and the support provided by the Turkish state, which is on a path of steep development because it ensures precisely those things that the local luminaries of statism, entitlements and patronage relations between citizens-voters and petty politicians exclude.

Many businesses of Greek interest operate in Turkish territory and countless Greek entrepreneurs and workers have settled in Turkey, working intensely for the economic progress of the neighboring country. This is also due to the ability to communicate with the neighbors even in the national languages, Greek and Turkish, which, despite the difference in their structure, have many common words and are known to many, mainly to descendants of Muslims expelled from Crete, Greek Christians from Asia Minor, and descendants everywhere of the Phanariots, Pontians and others of Asian origin, such as those from Pisidia and Lydia.

Many already speak of the cordiality of Turkish entrepreneurs and representatives of the Turkish state, of the facilities provided and of the favorable conditions prevailing in Turkey for business and economic success.

Turkish entrepreneurs travel throughout Greek territory with interesting proposals for investment in Turkey, while the Greek state sleeps blissfully, tormenting citizens and punishing those who may have managed, exceptionally, to progress by developing successful business activity. As for foreign investments, they are hunted down by savage bureaucracy and the political, third-world obsessions that prevail, while at the same time the activity of state-fed entrepreneurs remains unrestrained and provocative, as they ruminate on what they devoured from the state trough for decades.

The Turkish state, trying to develop especially the regions of Anatolia with Kurdish populations, provides enticing economic incentives of hundreds of thousands of euros to mixed enterprises, Turkish with foreign investors, knowing that the benefit to the economy will be multiple.

On the basis of this ongoing economic cooperation between Greeks and Turks, despite its one-sidedness, perhaps we should now begin to speak of an economic alliance between Turkey and Greece. After all, the two peoples have more things that unite them, and the things that divide them belong to other centuries.

The French, Germans and Scandinavians, together with our new partners from the former Soviet bloc, speak another language. The language we came to know very well during and after the end of the Second World War. Understanding with them is more difficult than understanding with those traditionally considered our enemies. Of course, this will be shown by practice and by time.

Still, the signs are positive. The East seems more familiar than the West. Perhaps the neighbors from the East are the true opportunity for us to escape the economic crisis and decline. If we proceed with care and prudence, keeping in mind the Eastern slyness, which in any case does not differ much from modern Greek slyness...

Instead of fear and reservation, economic cooperation with Turkish entrepreneurs, framed by the neighboring state, may be the way out. Perhaps the only visible and accessible one.

E. Papadakis