misunderstanding the balkans

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Geopolitics, 11:465–483, 2006Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN: 1465-0045 print / 1557-3028 onlineDOI: 10.1080/14650040600767909

FGEO1465-00451557-3028Geopolitics, Vol. 11, No. 3, June 2006: pp. 1–32Geopolitics

(Mis)understanding the Balkans: Greek Geopolitical Codes of the Post-communist Era

Greek Geopolitical Codes of the Post-communist EraAsteris Huliaras and Charalambos Tsardanidis

ASTERIS HULIARASAssociate Professor, Department of Geography, Harokopion University of Athens, Greece

CHARALAMBOS TSARDANIDISDirector, Institute of International Economic Relations, Athens, Greece

For most Greeks, neighbouring countries like Yugoslavia, Bulgaria,Romania and Albania formed a terra incognita for almost half acentury since the end of the Second World War. In the early 1990scommunism collapsed in all four countries and despite the threebloody wars that followed the break-up of Yugoslavia, information,goods and people crossed Balkan boundaries in unprecedentedspeed. The paper examines three geopolitical codes about the Balkansthat successively dominated Greek views and policies in the lastfifteen years: the idea of a menacing ‘muslim arc’, the image of theBalkans as a Greek ‘natural hinterland’ and the idea of theBalkans as an undisputed part of Europe. All these geopoliticalideas were introduced by the Greek political elite and influenceddecisively both Greek foreign policy and public attitudes for abouthalf a decade each.

A man encounters an unfriendly group of warriors in the jungle.“Are you with us or with the others ?” the warriors ask.“With you” is the man’s immediate answer.“Sorry”, the warriors’ retort, “we are the others.”(Story told by Greek Ambassador Loucas Tsilas1)

Ideas influence foreign policy making. They serve as ‘road maps’ thatclarify goals, and act as ‘focal points’ when deciding among options.2 Quiteoften ideas about foreign policy are organised in coherent forms. John Gaddishas employed the term ‘geopolitical code’ to describe an organised set ofpolitical-geographical assumptions that underlie foreign policy making.3 A

Address correspondence to Asteris Huliaras, Department of Geography, HarokopionUniversity, Athens, Greece. E-mail: [email protected]

466 Asteris Huliaras and Charalambos Tsardanidis

geopolitical code includes ‘a definition of a state’s interests, an identificationof external threats to those interests, a planned response to such threats anda justification of that response’.4 Geopolitical codes evaluate places and arethe spatial expressions of geopolitical efforts to transform ‘a global spaceinto fixed perspectival scenes’.5 Geopolitical codes operate at three levels:global, regional and local.6 The local-level code refers to the evaluation ofneighbouring countries. Regional-level codes characterise states that canproject power beyond their immediate vicinity. Only few states (like the per-manent members of the UN Security Council) have worldwide geopoliticalcodes.

Geopolitical codes are linked with geopolitical visions. The latter termis more general and includes, in Dijkink’s words, ‘any idea concerning therelation between one’s own and other places, involving feelings of (in)secu-rity or (dis)advantage (and/or) invoking ideas about a mission or foreignpolicy advantage’.7 Geopolitical visions are ‘translations of national-identityconcepts in geographical terms and symbols’,8 a kind of national ‘models ofthe world’.9 They are ‘a synthesis of the views professed by various strata ofthe political elite, the academic experts, the creative intelligentsia and publicopinion as a whole’.10

Dijkink argues that there is a strong degree of consonance between the(less articulate) popular geopolitical visions and the (more sophisticated)geopolitical codes employed by practitioners of statecraft. Both govern-ments and the public, he argues, are ‘subjected to a mechanism that distortsthe information about the world as consequence of the structure of domes-tic society and national “peak-experiences” from the past’.11

Geopolitical codes and visions do not remain constant and stable butchange.12 However, geopolitical visions tend to be more resistant to changethan codes. According to Dijkink, ‘even major wars (like the First WorldWar) or “lost” wars (like Vietnam) are an insufficient cause for changinggeopolitical visions’.13 In contrast, geopolitical codes can change both radi-cally and within a rather limited period of time. Sometimes a radical changein geopolitical codes is the result of a perceived failure. For example, inItaly the failure of the fascist imperialism that focused on the Mediterranean(the idea of Mare Nostro – ‘Our Sea’) was replaced in the post-war era by ashift to the north – to cooperation with the country’s northern neighbours.Prime Minister Alcide Gaspieri codified this change in a very clear way:‘Italy’, he said, ‘must climb the Alps’.14 This change in geopolitical code waslinked to a change in geopolitical vision. Italy considered itself not a‘Mediterranean’ (like Spain, Portugal or Greece) but a ‘European’ country(like France or Germany).

Quite often the change in geopolitical codes is not linked to a failure or acrisis but simply reflects changes in elite perceptions. Sometimes foreign pol-icy codes die and are replaced by others without any obvious ‘structural’explanation. It seems that the reason behind change is not only the external

Greek Geopolitical Codes of the Post-communist Era 467

milieu, but also what policy makers believe the external milieu to be.15 For-eign policy analysis has shown the importance of leaders’ beliefs about theirenvironment and has described the cognitive processes that affect the waysnew information is processed and incorporated into existing belief systems.16

It seems that geopolitical codes tend to be more important and moreprone to radical changes when the domestic actors that are involved inforeign policy making are relatively few and when institutions (like bureau-cracies) are relatively weak. Under such conditions, foreign policy decision-making is more likely to be dominated by the personalities of the primeminister and/or the foreign minister. According to many observers, this isexactly the case of Greece during the 1990s.17 In that period, the Greek For-eign Ministry apparatus and the Greek foreign policy bureaucracy wereextremely weak in contrast to the personal diplomacy exercised by primeministers, foreign ministers and their advisors. An analyst gives a goodexample:

The imposition of the [Greek economic] embargo [on the Former YugoslavRepublic of Macedonia was] announced [in 1994] by the Prime Ministerwith no prior consultation with the ministry that supposedly is responsiblefor the foreign policy of the country. Career ambassadors have repeatedlyexpressed their frustration over being constantly steam-rolled by theambitions and quest for short-term political gains of Ministers and Primeministers.18

BALKAN DISCOURSES

The term ‘Balkans’ was invented by Western geographers in late nineteenthcentury to describe a region that until then was known as the ‘OttomanEurope’. The region was perceived by Western intellectuals and foreign pol-icy makers as a particularly unstable and violent place. As the historianMark Mazower observes: ‘From the very start the Balkans was more than ageographical concept. The term, unlike its predecessors, was loaded withnegative connotations – of violence, savagery, primitivism – to an extent forwhich it is hard to find a parallel’.19 In the final analysis, like the ‘Orient’, theBalkans served as ‘a region, which enabled [major European powers] to seethemselves as modern and advanced’.20

From the term ‘Balkans’, Western intellectuals invented the term ‘Bal-kanisation’. After the First World War, ‘Balkanisation’ gained official linguis-tic recognition and acquired several negative connotations as a threat tointernational order, stability and peace. ‘Balkanisation’ is now a well-established term, generally understood, according to James Der Derian, ‘tobe the break-up of larger political units into smaller, mutually hostile stateswhich are exploited or manipulated by more powerful neighbours’.21


In the early 1990s the well-established derogatory connotations for theBalkans became stronger than ever as the western media and western pol-icy-makers took the view that the violent collapse of Yugoslavia was theproduct of ancient hatreds.22 In Mazower’s words: ‘It is hard to find peoplewith anything good to say about the region, harder still to discuss it beyondgood or evil’.23 Politicians of the region itself accepted and even reproducedthis negative image of the Balkans. In 1999, the President of Slovenia, MilanKucan, said that the Balkans ‘is like a volcano. You never know where andwhen the lava will come to the surface’.24

Influenced by Edward Said, Maria Todorova has explained how the Bal-kans was transformed in the twentieth century into one of the most powerfulpejorative designations in history.25 Using the term ‘Balkanism’ to describe thisphenomenon, Todorova claimed that the fact that the Balkans were never colo-nised by Western powers led to its becoming the repository of any manner offantastic imaginings. However, Todorova’s work focused more on western per-ceptions of the region than on the ways the locals perceive each other.26

This paper is about Greek perceptions of the Balkans. Focusing on thepost-Cold War period, it identifies three distinct (and conflicting) Greekgeopolitical codes concerning the Balkans: the ‘Muslim Arc’ (in the begin-ning of the 1990s), the ‘natural hinterland’ (in the middle of the 1990s) andthe ‘Europeanisation’ (in the end of the 1990s). All three codes were intro-duced by the Greek political elite and decisively influenced public attitudesand foreign policy making in Greece for about half a decade each.

GEOPOLITICAL CODE 1: THE ‘MUSLIM ARC’

For half a century, the Cold War division of Europe made the (rest of the)Balkans a terra incognita for most Greeks. The end of the Cold War seri-ously changed the ways Greeks perceived the world. In the early 1990s, thecollapse of communism left most Greek foreign policy makers believingthat their country’s ‘strategic importance’ was waning. To a certain extentthis was also a western perception. In the words of a British journalist –typical of western views during that period: ‘With the collapse of the SovietEmpire in Eastern and Central Europe, Greece’s usefulness as an easternbulwark of NATO has disappeared’.27 The 1991 Gulf War that coincidedwith the break-up of the Soviet Union was considered in Greece as substan-tially increasing the strategic value of Turkey. Thus, Greek policy makersfelt that the West (especially the United States) was abandoning them infavour of their country’s main adversary. Events in the Balkans added moreto Greek feelings of insecurity – creating, in the words of Professor LoukasTsoukalis, a ‘siege mentality’ in Greek foreign policy circles.28

Greek policy makers were caught unprepared for the depth of changethat occurred in the Balkans after the end of the Cold War. As Greece was a


stalwart supporter of the territorial status quo in the region, it viewed withsuspicion (if not fear) the emergence of new states in its northern neigh-bourhood. The turmoil in the Balkans also had negative economic repercus-sions for Greece because of the disruption of significant transportationroutes to central Europe. At about the same time, hundreds of thousands ofAlbanians crossed the Greek-Albanian border, in search of a better life. Forthe first time in its modern history, Greece became the final destination of amass migration movement of non-Greeks. In short, 1990–1991 was a periodof cataclysmic events in Greece’s relations with its northern neighbours. Notsince the bloody civil war following the German occupation more than halfa century ago had so many Greeks felt threatened. This perception of inse-curity was epitomised by the emergence of the ‘Muslim arc’ idea.

In 1991 a geopolitical view appeared in the Greek media and in foreignpolicy making circles about the existence of a ‘Muslim arc’ in the Balkansthat threatened the stability of the whole region and posed a serious threatto Greek national security. The story was quite simple: Muslim populationsof the Balkans formed an axis, an ‘arc’ from Turkey to Albania, that trans-gressed Bulgaria, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM),Kosovo and Bosnia. This arc was considered to pose a threat to the stabilityof the region since the Greeks thought that Turkey tried to manipulate it inorder to create conditions suitable for Muslim secessionist movements(involving also Western Thrace – a Greek territory with about 100.000 Mus-lim inhabitants). Thus, many in Greece preferred to use the term ‘Turkish’instead of ‘Muslim’ or ‘Islamic’ arc. Consequently, behind the ‘Muslim arc’concept was the fear that the Turkish ‘threat’ to Greek territorial integrity

FIGURE 1 Geopolitical Code I: The ‘Muslim Arc.’ Image created by Gregory Tsardanidis.


would spread from the eastern to the northern borders of the country. Theconstant repetition of the ‘Muslim threat’ theme in innumerable articles inGreek newspapers was extremely effective. As a journalist observes, ‘thismessage soon achieved the status of a mantra in Greek public discourse asthe media conjured up a powerful picture of bloodstained mujahedeen ofpreferably Turkish descent ready to swarm into Greece’.29 Many Greekintellectuals supported and strengthened this view. Just as an academic wellknown for his moderate views wrote:

Since 1989 Turkey has been making inroads into the Balkan Peninsulavia Islamic outposts. More than 5.5 million Muslims . . . reside in a geo-graphic wedge that extends from the Black Sea to the Adriatic, separat-ing Greece from its Slavic Christian neighbours. Turkey is trying tobecome the champion of the Balkan Muslims. . . . [This] may prove dan-gerous in a region already torn by separatist movements.30

Nevertheless, the ‘Muslim arc’ concept was more a political than intel-lectual construction. One of the most important supporters of the idea wasthe Greek foreign minister Antonis Samaras. The US-educated minister,probably influenced by the discussion of a future conflict between theWest and Islam (a constant theme in US intellectual circles after the GulfWar that was codified in 1993 by Samuel Huntington) thought that it couldbe useful if Greece presented itself in the international scene as a bastionof the West against an ‘aggressive and expansionist Islam’.31 In his ownwords: ‘We are the spearhead of non-Islamic Europe. And our role in theWest is determined by this fact’.32 In 1991, immediately after the interna-tional recognition of Bosnia, the Greek Foreign Minister declared that ‘the-ories about the Muslim arc (in the Balkans) are well-founded’.33 In themonths that followed, the Greek press was full of stories about Islam’s‘expansion’ in the Balkans.

The proponents of the ‘Muslim arc’ idea thought that Greece shoulddevelop a counter-strategy aiming at the creation of an alliance of ‘Ortho-dox forces’, or an ‘Orthodox arc’. A Greek secret service report that wasleaked to the press said that the Orthodox Christianity should form the basisfor foreign policy and Greece should seek to create an Orthodox arc in theBalkans ‘to set against the Turkish Muslim arc in the region’.34 In mid-1993Samaras as foreign minister was dismissed by Prime Minister Mitsotakis. Hethen left the ruling party, provoking the fall of government and new elec-tions, where he participated as leader of a new party (‘Political Spring’). Itwas then that the former foreign minister made public his vision to form analliance of Eastern Orthodox states (including Serbia and Russia) to defendGreek national interests against the ‘Muslim arc’. A journalist commentedthat this was ‘the first time a politician ha[d] attempted to involve the GreekOrthodox Church in the modern political process’.35


In practice however, the creation of an ‘Orthodox arc’ was rather diffi-cult since Greece had already entered into an era of bitter conflict with‘Orthodox’ FYROM over the new Republic’s name36 while in ‘Orthodox’Bulgaria the political party representing the Muslim minority became part ofthe governing coalition. Thus, in the very end, the ‘Orthodox arc’ was lim-ited in Greek discourse to the Greek-Serb ‘friendship’.37

Indeed the ‘Muslim arc’ concept was extremely simplistic and analyticallytotally unsuitable.38 Balkan Muslims belong to different ethnic groups and donot form a culturally homogeneous entity. After all, as many analysts pointout, in the Balkans, ethnic identity is far more important than religious affilia-tion. Islam in Albania is very lightly worn. Also Bosnian Muslims – at leastbefore the Srebenica massacre – were rather secular (described by journalistsas the most secular Muslims in the world). Still, the Balkan areas where Mus-lims form the majority are rather dispersed and fall short of forming an ‘arc’from the Black Sea to the Adriatic – as claimed by Greek nationalists.

Moreover, Turkish foreign policy makers behaved differently fromwhat Greek analysts and foreign policy makers had anticipated. At thebeginning of the 1990s, Turkey was very worried (probably as much asGreece) about the redrawing of international boundaries in the Balkans(after all the Turkish government was confronting a domestic secessionistinsurgency – the Kurdish rebels of the PKK). Moreover, at least in theperiod 1991–1992, Turkey did not seem to have a clear strategy toward theregion, while its political and economic presence there was rather limited.39

Nevertheless, the ‘Muslim arc’ concept survived for some years withoutclashing with reality and significantly influenced the way the crisis in formerYugoslavia and the international interventions in Bosnia (and much later inKosovo) were perceived in Greece. While one of the dominant discourses in theWest claimed that in the Bosnian war the Serbs were the real perpetrators andthe Muslims were the victims,40 Greeks understood the situation in exactly theopposite way. For the Greek press and most politicians, the real perpetrators inthe Yugoslav conflict were the Muslims helped by other Muslim countries whilethe real victims were the Orthodox Serbs. Bishop (later Archbishop) of the GreekOrthodox church Christodoulos expressed this view when he claimed:

In Bosnia the Serbs are fighting . . . with a cross in one hand and a gunin the other. They see the Muslims on the other side, trained by fanaticMujahedeen who have come from various Islamic countries to fight inthe name of Allah, to destroy churches, to rape, to massacre non-combatants and children without restraint.41

According to a commentator, Christodoulos enjoyed for many years thehighest popularity ratings in Greek public opinion42 ‘not as a defender ofthe faith or morality, but rather as an outspoken guardian of national iden-tity under imminent threat’.43


In short, during the 1990–1994 period, the Greek elite evaluated a partof the region (inhabited by Muslims) beyond the country’s northern borderas a threat to its national security and another part (the orthodox) asGreece’s ‘natural ally’. The Balkans were reduced in Greek foreign policymaking circles to ‘security commodities’.44 The ‘Muslim arc’ idea disap-peared as a Greek geopolitical code only in the second half of the 1990sbecause the Greek political and economic elite chose to abandon it inresponse to a changing regional situation (in particular the signing of theDayton Agreement). This ‘Muslim arc’ concept was replaced by anotherone, that was positive (it did not regard the Balkans as a threat), but also toa large degree deeply problematic.

GEOPOLITICAL CODE II: THE BALKANS AS A GREEK ‘HINTERLAND’

Since 1995, the ‘defensive’ geopolitical code of the ‘Muslim arc’ graduallygave way to a ‘regional superpower’ idea. Now Greek foreign policy makerssaw their country as the most powerful state in the region, the ‘naturalleader’ of the Balkans. The (other) Balkan countries were seen as an ElDorado, full of economic opportunities, cheap workforces and untappedmarkets. In sharp contrast to the previous period, the Balkan space wasconsidered not as ‘inimical’ or ‘dangerous’ but rather as ‘friendly’ and ‘use-ful’. The new discourse included historical references to the eighteenth andthe nineteenth centuries when Greek merchants traded throughout theOttoman Empire. The Balkan peninsula was described as a ‘natural hinter-land’, ready to accept Greek ‘economic penetration’. In the words of GreekMinister of Defence Gerasimos Arsenis: ‘With the end of the Cold War,Greece regains its hinterland in the Balkans and finds herself in front of thechallenge to play again her historical role’.45

The new geopolitical code was not so much inspired by the Dayton PeaceAccords (1995) that brought (a fragile) peace in Bosnia than based on the factthat within a few years, about 3,500 Greek companies (mostly joint ventureswith local partners) had set up operations across the Balkans, investing by themid-1990s probably more than $ 2.5 billion (estimates vary considerablybecause for tax reasons much of this amount has been directed through Luxem-bourg or Cyprus-based off-shore companies). Greek trade with its northernneighbours increased spectacularly within a few years. Greek exports to theBalkans (excluding Turkey) went up more than 2.3 times in the 1992–1996period, with imports increasing 1.3-fold, creating for Greece a trade surplus of$ 546.2 million in 1996, compared to $ 71.1 million in 1992.46

The interesting thing is that this economic activity until 1996 occurredwithout the support of the Greek government (to a large extent because of


the confrontational policies adopted in the early 1990s). As a Greek aca-demic aptly put it: ‘The [Greek] private economy almost completely ignoredofficial policy and proceeded to penetrate the Balkan region, establishing apowerful economic stronghold in practically all the Balkan countries’.47

The new geopolitical code was above all closely linked to ConstantinosSimitis’ rise to power. The Greek Socialist Party (PASOK) had returned topower in 1993, led by Andreas Papandreou. In 1996 Papandreou resigneddue to ill health and was replaced by Simitis. Simitis and a small group ofmodernisers were successful in engineering a spectacular change in Greekforeign policy discourse to pro-western positions. This ‘westernisation’ or‘modernisation’ (in Simitis’ preferred term) of Greek foreign policy includeda complete abandonment of nationalistic rhetoric of the Samaras years and a(gradual) rapprochement with Turkey.48 In short, the Greek socialists underConstantinos Simitis tried hard, and were to a large extent successful, inreversing Greece’s confrontational policies of the early 1990s and in pre-senting Greece abroad as a ‘Western nation’ that attempted to bring stabilityand economic development to a troubled region.

Therefore, Greece moved towards developing its relations with Balkancountries not only at the bilateral but also at the multilateral level, taking

FIGURE 2 Geopolitical Code II: The ‘Natural Hinterland’. Source: Cartoon published in theGreek weekly To Vima tis Kyriakis (7 September 1997) (http://tovima.dolnet.gr/data/D1997/D0907/1and10b.gif.)


initiatives to promote regional stability through the establishment of regionalcooperation schemes. These efforts focused on building a new climate oftrust and gave birth to a bolder proposal, on Greece’s initiative, for the con-vening of a summit of all Balkan leaders for the first time in recorded history.Finally, the summit took place in Crete in November 1997.49

The ‘natural hinterland’ idea gradually gained prevalence in Greekelite circles and the media. While in the first period (1991–1995), most ref-erences to the Balkans were found in the political pages of Greek news-papers, now it was the financial pages that took the leading role. In May1999, the centre-left pro-government daily Ta Nea argued that ‘the Balkanswere the ground on which the phenomenon of globalisation first mani-fested itself for the Greek economy’.50 That same day, I Kathimerini, aleading newspaper of conservative centre-right orientation, concluded that‘the idea of a Balkan hinterland has been one of the foundations uponwhich the Greek development vision was built’.51 Speaking in the GreekParliament, former Foreign Minister Theodoros Pangalos criticised someGreek intellectuals who argued that the term ‘hinterland’ was a Nazi con-struction, claiming that there was nothing wrong with it in the case ofGreece’s ‘economic penetration’ of the Balkans.52

The ‘natural hinterland’ idea and the relevant discourses regardingGreece as ‘regional superpower’ or a ‘Balkan hegemon’ are deeply prob-lematic. First they are, geographically speaking, overstatements. The majorzone of economic activity run by Greek operations did not include all theBalkans. Greek companies were present in the country’s three neighbour-ing states (Albania, Bulgaria and FYROM) and Serbia. However, in otherBalkan states the ‘Greek presence’ was either insignificant (Bosnia andCroatia) or rather weak (Romania).53

Second, although a large part of Greek investment was carried outby Greece’s leading banks and food processing companies, most of theGreek investors were small trading companies, retailers and clothingmanufacturers ‘seeking to rebuild lost competitiveness by shifting pro-duction to low-wage countries such as Bulgaria and Albania’.54 As aneconomist argued, Greek investment projects were ‘labour intensive,small scale operations, [ . . . ] industries with [outdated] technologies,pay[ing] low overheads, compet[ing] on price rather than product differ-entiation, [lacking] an established brand name’.55 Moreover, and moreimportantly, most of Greek investment in the post-1996 period was notprivate – it came from Greek para-statal companies like the state-ownedtelecommunications company and the state petroleum company, whichhave quite often been accused of political clientelism and irrational eco-nomic behaviour.

Third, the ‘natural hinterland’ idea ignored the fact that the economicopening to the Balkans entailed several negative aspects for the Greekeconomy.56 Above all, the Greek investments in the Balkans often increased


unemployment in Greece (especially in the clothing and textile industries)as companies closed their production units in Greece and transplanted themto countries like Bulgaria or Albania.

However, despite these inconsistencies, Greek policy makers, govern-ment officials, journalists, academics and the business elite used economicdata in a very eclectic way to ‘prove’ the ‘large-scale’ and ‘extremely signifi-cant’ Greek economic penetration of the Balkan markets. For example, thenumber of investments was the preferred way to demonstrate the ‘Greekpresence’,57 while (more interesting) statistics on the value and structure ofinvestments were largely ignored.

Moreover, there was clear confusion between Greece’s foreign policyand the role of private actors. Most commentators and politicians in Greecetook it for granted that private and public interests coincided, that the inter-ests of Greek businesses and those of the Greek state were identical.58 Onlyin 2003 did the Greek media start to realise that the Greek economic penetra-tion of the Balkans was not to the benefit of all Greeks. When a multinationalclothing company (Palco) closed its installations in Greece and announcedthat it will open a production unit in Bulgaria, a public outcry ensued inGreece. It was not the first time that something like this had happened. Hun-dreds of Greek companies had done the same countless times since the early1990s. But it was the first time the Greeks realised what was going on. Finally,the ‘natural hinterland’ idea was also based on an old-fashioned view thatcorporations, when they become transnational or when they relocate to othercountries, keep their ‘national identity’. Strangely, in the post-1995 period, allbusinesses with headquarters in Greece were considered as ‘agents’ of Greeknational interests, business people were compared to diplomats, investmentswere thought of as Greek foreign policy instruments.

However, perceptions produced a new reality. It gradually became clearthat Greece had major economic interests in the Balkans and that a new polit-ical approach to reflect them had become necessary. Therefore, Greek foreignpolicy priorities and the interests of Greek business have begun to converge asnever before.59 As the Greek Deputy Minister for National Economy pointedout, ‘Each one of the Greek companies developing its activities abroad consti-tutes a bridge of cooperation and contributes to the further development of therelations of friendship and cooperation with the neighbouring countries. Weneed the relevant support of the companies to accomplish this goal’.60

To a great extent Greek businessmen (and some businesswomen)accepted and reproduced the discourse presenting Greece as a ‘regionalsuperpower’ and did not hide their ‘national pride’ for their achievements.Of course the new government policy suited them well. But it was also akind of internal political legitimisation for the Greek business community:for the first time in over 25 years of anti-free market and anti-business rhet-oric, the Greek public and media started to regard Greek businesspeople as‘national heroes’.


GEOPOLITICAL CODE III: THE “EUROPEANISATION” OF GREEK FOREIGN POLICY

By the end of 1990s, and especially after the Kosovo war, a new geopoliti-cal code appeared: now the discourse of ‘Europeanisation’ became domi-nant in Greek foreign policy making.

We saw in the beginning of this paper how academics have analysedthe coupling of Balkans with undesirable qualities that rendered the identityof their inhabitants as not particularly covetable. The European Union triedto alter this perception of the countries in the region by introducing in 1998a new geographical division between ‘Western’ and ‘Eastern’ Balkans.61 TheEuropean Commission saw ‘Western Balkans’ (that no longer included Slov-enia that became a full EU member in 2004) as being closer to the pastclichés of political instability and unrest while ‘Eastern Balkans’ (Romania-Bulgaria) were considered to be closer to ‘European standards’, prepared toconclude the next round of negotiations for full membership.

The Greek government was more radical. Since 1997 Athens hadstarted to promote the idea of re-naming the Balkans as ‘South-EasternEurope’. Though it was not Greece that invented the term (that existedsince the nineteenth century), the Greek Foreign Ministry made a very con-sistent effort to change the region’s name in its endeavour to indicate that theBalkans should be considered an integral part of Europe. The integration of

FIGURE 3 Western Balkans according to the European Commission. Source: EuropeanCommission.


the Balkans into the EU was now considered by Athens to be a number onepriority, a factor capable of contributing decisively to the consolidation ofstability, democracy and market economy in the region.

Therefore, Greek foreign policy makers claimed that only the EUframework could provide the means for cementing peaceful relations in theregion, mainly through an integration process that could bring about thesame reconciliation as in the case of relations between France andGermany. For Greece, the option of leaving even part of the Balkans per-manently outside the European institutional structures was considereddestabilising, and could lead to a new round of violent conflict. Greece’snational interests in the Balkans were seen as better served via multilateralefforts in the EU framework, rather than via unilateral or bilateral ones. Notonly was the nationalistic and opportunistic policy of the early 1990s aban-doned,62 but also the bilateral or the regional framework were consideredas secondary to the multilateral. Thus ‘multilateral’ came almost exclusivelyto mean ‘integration into the European Union’.

The progressive ‘Europeanisation’ of Greek Balkan policy wasdescribed as a transforming development. Two analysts have argued like-wise: ‘Virtually all of Greece’s external policy challenges, including some ofthe most traditional and neuralgic, have now been placed in a multilateralframe’.63 But it was more than that: ‘Europeanisation’ for the Greek govern-ment did not only refer to the Balkans, but also to Greece itself.

However, despite the rhetoric, Greek foreign policy towards the Balkansis still far from being truly ‘Europeanised’. Relations with the Balkan countriescontinue to reflect to a large extent the ongoing struggle between conserva-tives/traditionalists and modernisers/transformers in Greek foreign policymaking circles.64 On the one hand, the modernisers are proposing a policy ofintegrating the Balkan states into the European Union and on the other hand,the traditionalists argue that inside the ethnocentric and hostile environmentof the region, Greece must first seek to defend its immediate security interestsfrom the rivalries and antagonisms between and among its northern neigh-bours.65 While the modernisers perceive the Balkans as a region whichshould be integrated into the EU, the traditionalists see the region as adomain where Greece could emerge as a regional hegemonic power.

In the final analysis, the Europeanisation process represents only oneside of the wider debate between modernisers and traditionalists amongGreek foreign policy makers that is ultimately a debate over Greece’s iden-tity. As it is just one element in the debate, Europeanisation of Greek Balkanpolicy cannot possibly represent a new state of affairs, but only part of alarger picture.66

The continuing dysfunction of domestic institutions and other actorsfurther reinforces the view that Greek foreign policy has not yet become‘Europeanised’. One of the most important ‘dysfunctions’ is the stance ofGreek public opinion on foreign policy issues.


NATO’s air strikes against Serbia in the spring of 1999 provoked an out-cry in Greece. Despite the socialist government’s consent within the NATOframework for the attack on Milosevic’s forces, the Greek media and theGreek public saw the military intervention ‘as an act of aggression not onlyagainst Serbia, but also against the geopolitical order in the Balkans’.67

Greek public opinion sided – almost unanimously – with Serbia. The rea-sons behind this stance vary from long-standing Greek anti-Americanism toa cultural and religious affinity to Serbs.68 But, in sharp contrast to the past,only the Greek public and the media adopted it. The governing elitethought otherwise. On the other hand, the Kosovo crisis was one of thoserare moments that the Greek public showed a strong interest in foreign pol-icy issues.69 The Greek public and media’s interest in NATO’s interventionin Kosovo was strong but short-lived.

CONCLUSION

Geographical arguments were always on the periphery of Greek nationalism.The Greek state always used historical, rather than geographical, arguments tojustify its existence and territorial claims.70 Partly this was a reflection of theAncient Greek heritage. But also, because of confusion between Greeknational and religious identities in the nineteenth century, the Greek elitechose, from the early stages of independence, historical and cultural argu-ments in order to maximise the new state’s territorial claims. In this way Greececould justify territorial aspirations that covered a large part of the Balkanpeninsula. Thus, for at least the first decades of the twentieth century, ‘theGreek perception of space was extremely vague’.71 In practice the importanceof historical arguments for Greek national identity survived for decades. Evenwhen the country applied to join the European Communities in 1974, the argu-ments employed were historical and not geographical: according to the rele-vant official discourse, Greece was European not because of its geographicallocation but because she ‘was the birthplace of European civilisation’.

In the late 1980s, Greece’s disappointing economic record, failure toattract investment and its inability (or unwillingness) to adjust to EC regula-tions led many (including former Commission President Jacques Delors) toquestion the original decision for accepting her to the European Club. Andindeed Greece’s economy was falling behind its competitors. In the early1990s the country’s per capita income had fallen below that of Portugal’s.Greece was at the time the poorest member-state of the European Union. Itsinsistence on the copyright of the name of Macedonia contributed to thefurther darkening of the country’s image in the outside world. In the wordsof a sympathetic observer, Greece had ‘managed to become, deservedly ornot, the black sheep of Europe’.72 In 1994, the British Economist claimedthat ‘despite 13 years in the European Union and handouts worth $ 6 billion


a year, Greece still seems to belong more to the volatile Balkans than toWestern Europe’.73 For the Greek elite and the Greek public, Western per-ceptions of Greece seemed unjustified and unfair. In 1993, the publicationof Samuel Huntington’s famous article on the conflict of civilisations pro-voked an outrage in Greece, not because of the flimsiness of its theoreticalframework, but because it classified Greece in the ‘Slavic Orthodox world’and not in the group of Western nations.74

Interestingly, the three Greek geopolitical codes of the post-Cold WarBalkans examined in this paper are in nature more geographical than histor-ical. That’s a significant change. It is not necessarily a positive change (asspatial views of the world are no less accurate than historical views). Never-theless, it is a process of identity change.

The ‘Muslim arc’ was in reality a defensive geopolitical code, reflectingthe confusion and inability of Greek foreign policy to adapt itself to the newemerging regional milieu. The Greek political elite constructed a new geo-political code, aiming at reversing the perceived decline of Greece’s geopo-litical importance. The ‘Muslim arc’ concept created a reality suitable forGreek self-perceptions. According to it, Greece was again becoming thegeographical frontier of the Christian West against a Muslim menace.

The second geopolitical code described the Balkans as a Greek ‘naturalhinterland’. The poorest European country, the ‘European underdog’,thought itself a regional hegemon. Greece considered herself not as a smallBalkan country in Europe but as a European power in the Balkans.75 Thus,the ‘Balkans’ served as a region that enabled the Greek elite, the Greekbusinesspeople and the Greek public to see their country (and themselves)as a modern and advanced European nation (people).

The third geopolitical code was based on the idea of ‘Europeanisation’:Greece, though part of the region, considered herself as different from (theother) Balkan states. Greece saw herself as a European country in a Balkancontext, a country which was in a position to ‘Europeanise’ her northernneighbours. As a young Greek academic in full confidence pointed out,Greece ‘could on occasion represent the regional point of view more effec-tively and accurately in various international fora [because it] possesses amore sophisticated and intimate knowledge of Balkan history’.76 In the finalanalysis, the ‘Europeanisation’ discourse adopted by Greek foreign policymakers in the past is an effort to offer a solution to the perpetual questionof Greek identity (geopolitical vision): if the Balkan countries become mem-bers of the European Union, then the eternal Greek identity question(whether the country is Balkan or European) will become less polarised,less antithetical.

In a sense, in all three geopolitical codes, Greece, without totally reject-ing its Balkan identity, feels different and in a sense more ‘European’ thanits northern neighbours. As in the Greek Ambassador’s story (at the begin-ning of this paper), for the Greek elite, the Balkans are a strange, elusive


Other: when Greece approaches the (rest of the) Balkans, the Balkansbecome something different.

It seems surprising that a single geopolitical vision (the feeling thatGreece is ‘different’ from the rest of the Balkans) can produce such a diver-sity of radically different geopolitical codes in such a short period of time.But on the other hand, Greece is not an exception. As Dijkink observes,‘each new [United States] administration tends to devise a new geopoliticalcode designating different countries as hostile or friendly’.77 The Greek caseseems to confirm the view that ‘geopolitical imaginations’ or ‘imagined geo-politics’ yield a variety of totally different options to foreign policy makers.

NOTES

1. Quoted in K. Nicolaidis, ‘Introduction’, in G. T. Allison and K. Nicolaidis (eds.), The Greek Par-adox (Boston: The MIT Press 1997) p. 7.

2. J. Goldstein and R. O. Keohane, ‘Ideas and Foreign Policy: An Analytical Framework’, inJ. Goldstein and R. O. Keohane (eds.), Ideas and Foreign Policy. Beliefs,Institutions and Political Change(Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1993) pp. 3–30.

3. J. L. Gaddis, Strategies of Containment (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1982).4. P. Taylor and C. R. Flint, Political Geography: World System, Nation-State and Locality (New

York: Prentice Hall 2000) pp. 90–91.5. T. Luke and G. Ó Tuathail, ‘Global Flowmations, Local Fundamentalisms and Fast Geopolitics:

“America” in an Accelerating World Order’, in A. Herod, G. Ó Tuathail and S. Roberts (eds.), An UnrulyWorld ? Globalization, Governance and Geography (London: Routledge 1998) pp. 72–94.

6. Taylor and Flint (note 4) p. 91.7. G. J. Dijkink, National Identity and Geopolitical Visions: Maps of Pride and Pain (London:

Routledge 1996) p. 11.8. Ibid. p. 14.9. Ibid. p. 7.

10. V. Kolossov, ‘“High” and “Low” Geopolitics: Images of Foreign Countries in the Eyes ofRussian Citizens’, Geopolitics 8/1 (2003) p. 125.

11. G. Dijkink, ‘Geopolitical Codes and Popular Representations’, Geojournal 46 (1998) p. 294.12. Dijkink claims that change in geopolitical codes ‘should be one of the central themes of

research in geopolitical representations’ (Ibid. p. 293). And indeed there is a growing literature on geo-political images. See for example K. Dodds and D. Atkinson, Geopolitical Traditions: A Century of Geo-political Change (London: Routledge 2000).

13. Dijkink (note 7) p. 141.14. G. Parker, Geopolitics: Past, Present and Future (London: Pinter 1998) p. 66.15. H. Sprout and M. Sprout, ‘Environmental Factors in the Study of International Politics’, Journal

of Conflict Resolution 1(4) (1957) pp. 309–328.16. See among others, A. George, ‘The “Operational Code”: A Neglected Approach to the Study of

Political Leaders and Decision Making’, International Studies Quarterly 13(2) (1969) pp. 190–222; A.George, S. Walker, M. Schafer and M. Young, ‘Presidential Operational Codes and Foreign Policy Conflictsin the Post-Cold War World’, Journal of Conflict Resolution 43(4) (1998) pp. 610–625; R.-K. Herrmann, ‘TheEmpirical Challenge of the Cognitive Revolution: A Strategy for Drawing Inferences about Perceptions’,International Studies Quarterly 32(2) (1988) pp. 175–204; O.-R. Holsti, ‘Foreign Policy Formation ViewedCognitively’, in R.-M. Axelrod, Structure of Decision (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1976); RobertJervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1976).

17. P. C. Ioakimides, ‘The Model of Foreign Policy-Making in Greece: Personalities Vs Institu-tions’, in S. Stavridis, Th. Couloumbis, Th. Veremis and N. Waites (eds.), The Foreign Policies of theEuropean Union’s Mediterranean States and Applicant Countries in the 1990s (London: Macmillan1999) pp. 140–170.


18. D. Keridis, ‘Greek Foreign Policy After “Macedonia”’, Emphasis, A Journal of Hellenic Issues 1(1995) p. 3, http://www.hri.org/emphasis/is1–3.html (accessed 6/12/05)

19. M. Mazower, The Balkans (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson 2000) p. 4.20. G. Ó Tuathail, ‘Understanding Critical Geopolitics: Geopolitics and Risk Society’, in C. S. Gray

and G. Sloan (eds.), Geopolitics, Geography and Strategy (London: Frank Cass 2001) p. 115.21. J. Der Derian, ‘S/N: International Theory, Balkanisation and the New World Order’, Millen-

nium: Journal of International Studies 20(3) (1991) p. 488.22. An example is the book of the American journalist Robert Kaplan, Balkan Ghosts (New York:

Vintage 1994). It was reported that the book influenced President Clinton’s policy in the Balkans.23. Mazower (note 19) p. 5.24. S. Wagstyl and S. Fidler, ‘Under the Volcano’, Financial Times (28 June 1999).25. M. Todorova, Imagining the Balkans (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1997).26. For very interesting but more cultural than political research see D. Tziovas (ed.), Greece and

the Balkans: Identities, Perceptions and Cultural Encounters since the Enlightenment (Ashgate: Aldershot2003).

27. A. Nicolson, ‘A Fall from Cultural Grace’, The Spectator (12 November 1993).28. This mentality in the early 1990s reached a dangerous peak when a group of politicians across

the political spectrum apparently decided to invest heavily in nationalist shares. See L. Tsoukalis, ‘TheFuture of Greece in the European Union’, in T. Couloumbis, T. Kariotis and F. Bellou (eds.), Greece inthe Twentieth Century (London: Frank Cass 2003) p. 328.

29. T. Michas, Unholy Alliance. Greece and Milocevic’s Serbia (Austin: Texas A&M University Press2000) p. 32.

30. T. Veremis, ‘Greece: The Dilemmas of Change’, in F. S. Larrabee (ed.), The Volatile PowderKeg: Balkan Security after the Cold War (New York: Rowman & Littlefield 1994) p. 132.

31. P. Vasilopoulos, ‘Samaras’ Conjecture and Islam’, O Oikonomikos 14 (6 September 1990) (inGreek).

32. I Kathimerini (2 September 1990) (in Greek).33. Quoted in ‘O Fovos tou Islam’, Eleftherotypia (21 January 1996) (in Greek), (accessed 7/2/05)

http://www.Iospress.gr/ios1996/iis19960121a.htm34. For a comment see ‘Balkan Powder Keg’, Editorial, The Toronto Star (6 September 1993).35. G. Kassimeris, ‘Can He Make Spring a Party for All Seasons?’, The European (16–19 September

1993). For the role of the Orthodox Church in Greek politics see V. Georgiadou, ‘Greek Orthodoxy andthe Politics of Nationalism’, International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society 9/2 (1995) pp. 295–315;T. Lipowatz, ‘Orthodox Christianity and Nationalism: Two aspects of the Modern Greek Political Culture’,Greek Political Science Review 2 (1993) pp. 31–47 (in Greek); Th. Stavrou, ‘The Orthodox Church andPolitical Culture in Modern Greece’, in D. Constas and T. Stavrou (eds.), Greece Prepares for the Twenty-First Century (Washington DC: The Woodrow Wilson Center/The Johns Hopkins University Press 1995)pp. 35–56.

36. N. Zahariadis, ‘Nationalism and Small State Foreign Policy: The Greek Response to the Mace-donian Issue’, Political Science Quarterly 109/4 (1994) pp. 647–668; D. M. Perry, ‘Crisis in the Making?Macedonia and Its Neighbours’, Südosteuropa 43/1–2 (1994) pp. 31–58.

37. Michas (note 29).38. D. Constas and Ch. Papasotiriou, ‘Greek Policy Responses to the Post-Cold War Balkan Envi-

ronment’, in V. Coufoudakis, H. J. Psomiades and A. Gerolymatos (eds.), Greece and the New Balkans(New York: Pella 1999) p. 231.

39. S. Kut, ‘Turkey in the Post-Communist Balkans: Between Activism and Self-Restraint’, TurkishReview of Balkan Studies 3 (1996/7) pp. 43–45.

40. G. Ó Tuathail, ‘Theorizing Practical Geopolitical Reasoning: The Case of the United States’Response to the War in Bosnia’, Political Geography 21/5 (2002) p. 619.

41. S. Christodoulos ‘The Axis of Orthodoxy Command of the Era . . . Is Moving’, To Vima tis Kyr-iakis (9 February 1992) (in Greek).

42. MRB, Six-month Report, Athens: MRB (June 2005) Tables X, ‘Images of Greek Public Figures:Archbishop Christodoulos’, p. 78.

43. G. Mavrogordatos, ‘Orthodoxy and Nationalism in the Greek Church’ in J. T. S. Madeley andZ. Enyedi (eds.), Church and State in Contemporary Europe (London: Frank Cass 2003) p. 130.

44. G. Ó Tuathail and J. Agnew, ‘Geopolitics and Discourse: Practical Geopolitical Reasoning inAmerican Foreign Policy’, Political Geography 11/2 (1992) pp. 190–204.


45. Speech in Patras, Greece, (10 May 1996), (accessed 6/17/05) http://www.garsenis.gr/content/03/03c/04/10_5_1996n.htm

46. ‘Greek companies find a regional strength in Balkan businesses’, I Kathimerini (English edi-tion) (14 September 1998).

47. P. C. Ioakimides, ‘Greece, the European Union and the Balkans in Post-Cold War Era’, inCoufoudakis, Psomiades and Gerolymatos (note 38) p. 181.

48. For a critical view of the first years see A. Kazamias, ‘The Quest for Modernization in GreekForeign Policy and Its Limitations’, Mediterranean Politics 2/2 (1997) pp. 71–94.

49. Ch. Tsardanidis, ‘Un acteur-clé dans la région de la Grèce’, Le Courrier des Pays de l’Est 1008(2000) p. 55.

50. 22 May 1999 (quoted in D. Hormovitis, V. Sirinidou and D. Anagnostou, ‘Stereotypes ofDomestic Minorities and Neighbouring Peoples in the Greek Press’ (April–December 1999) p. 18,(accessed 5/21/05) http://www.Vlachofiles.net/gr-press99.htm

51. Ibid.52. Greek Parliament Minutes, ‘Discussion for the Greek Plan for the Reconstruction of the Bal-

kans’ (13 March 2002).53. A.-S. Wallden, ‘Greece and the Balkans: Economic Relations’, in Ach. Mitsos and El. Mossialos

(eds.), Contemporary Greece and Europe (Ashgate: Aldershot 2000) p. 439.54. K. Hope, ‘EU Outpost Looks Closer to Home’, Financial Times, Survey: ‘Greece and South-east

Europe’ (1 June 1998).55. L. Labrianidis, ‘Are Greek Companies that Invest in the Balkans in the 1990s Transnational

Companies?’ in Mitsos and Mossialos (note 53) p. 479.56. L. Labrianidis, ‘The Opening of the Balkan Markets and Consequent Economic Problems in

Greece’, Modern Greek Studies Yearbook 12 (1996) pp. 211–235; L. Labrianidis, ‘The Reconstruction ofthe Balkans and the Role of Greece: A Critical Approach’, in G. Petrakos (ed.), The Development of theBalkans, (Volos: University of Thessaly Press 2001) pp. 371–396 (in Greek).

57. K. Ifantis, ‘Perception and Rapprochement. Debating a Greek strategy towards Turkey’, inM. Aydin and K. Ifantis (eds.), Turkish- Greek Relations: The Security Dilemma in the Agean (London:Routledge 2004) p. 249.

58. The inceased interpenetration of state and society and the shifts, and political fusion, in public-private boundaries have resulted, as Orazio Lanza and Kostas Lavdas remark, in a new politicisation oforganised interests. This interpenetration takes place not only in the domestic arena but refers also to thepriorities of Greek investments abroad and more particularly in the Balkan countries. See O. Lanza andK. Lavdas, ‘The Disentanglement of Interest Politics: Business Associability, the Parties and Policy in Italyand Greece’, European Journal of Political Research 37/2 (2000) p. 227.

59. Ch. Tsardanidis, ‘Economic Dipomacy as a Means of Foreign Policy: Greece and South-EasternEurope’, Agora without Frontiers 6(3) (2001) p. 322 (in Greek).

60. Speech by Deputy Minister of National Economy Yannis Zafeiropoulos, 8th Annual Forum ofThesaloniki (unpublished paper 2 April 2001) p. 10.

61. W. van Meurs and A. Yannis, The European Union and the Balkans. From StabilisationProcess to Southeastern Enlargement (Munich: Center for Applied Policy Research, University ofMunich September 2002) p. 8, (accessed 3/18/05) http://www.cap.uni-muenchen.de/download/2002/2002_EU_Balkans.pdf

62. D. Kavakas, ‘Greece’, in I. Manners and R. Whitman, (eds.), The Foreign Policies of EuropeanUnion Member States (Manchester: Manchester University Press 2000) p. 148.

63. I. Lasser, F. S. Larrabee, M. Zanini and K. Vlachos, Greece’s New Geopolitics (Santa Monica:Rand Corporation 2001) p. 36, (accessed 3/8/05) http://www.rand.org/cgi-bin/Abstracts/e-mko-rder.pl?$15,,,MR-1393-KF,,,Greece’s+New+Geopolitics,,,1

64. Theodore Couloumbis suggests a distinction between the ‘multiteralist’ orientation which tendsto be Eurocentric and the ‘uniliteralist’ which tends toward enthnocentricity. The former emphasises eco-nomic and political variables in addition to military ones. The latter recommends reliance on power-mil-itary alone. See Th. Couloumbis, ‘Greek Foreign Policy since 1974: Theory and Praxis’, Hellenic Studies5(2) (1997) pp. 49–63.

65. Kazamias (note 48) p. 89.66. Ch. Tsardanidis and S. Stavridis, The Europeanisation of Greek Foreign Policy. Paper presented

to the University of Crete’s Conference on Thirty Years of Democracy – The System of the Third GreekRepublic, 1974–2004, Rethimno (20–22 May 2004) p. 24 (in Greek), and Ch. Tsardanidis and S. Stravridis,


“The Europeanisation of Greek Foreign Policy: A Critical Appraisal, Journal of European Integration,27(2), (2005) pp. 231–232.

67. M. Kondopoulou, ‘The Greek Media and the Kosovo Crisis’, Conflict and CommunicationOnline 1 (2002), (accessed 3/10/05) http://www.cco.regener-online.de

68. See K. Brown and D. Theodossopoulos, ‘Rearranging Solidarity: Conspiracy and World Orderin Greek and Macedonian Commentaries on Kosovo’, Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans 5/4(December 2003) pp. 315–335.

69. Y. Loulis, The Crisis of Politics in Greece (Athens: I. Sideris 1995) (in Greek).70. G. Prevelakis, ‘The Return of the Macedonian Question’, in F. W. Carter and H. T. Norris

(eds.), The Changing Shape of the Balkans (London: UCL Press 1996) p. 143.71. Ibid. p. 144.72. Quoted in Ioakimides (note 47) p. 178.73. ‘Elsewhere in the Balkans’, The Economist (17 September 1994).74. See, among others, Th. Veremis and Th. Couloumbis, ‘In Search of New Barbarians: Samuel

P. Huntington and the Clash of Civilizations’, Mediterranean Quarterly 5(1) (1994) pp. 36–44.75. G. Prevelakis, ‘The Hellenisation of the Balkans or the balkanization of Greece ?’ in S. Gerassimou

(ed.), Balkans Coming Back (Athens: Agra Editions 2003) p. 158 (in Greek).76. A. Tziampiris, ‘Greece and the Balkans in the Twentieth Century’ in Couloumbis, Kariotis and

Bellou (note 28) p. 147.77. Dijkink (note 7) p. 12.

misunderstanding the balkans

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