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Greece: the imperatives of geopolitics
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 January 2016
Extract
Lying astride the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa, Greece is geographically simultaneously European, Balkan, Near Eastern, and Mediterranean, while politically it has projected itself as a western European and even as a north Atlantic state. Its position has inevitably involved it with all the Great Powers, and all have interfered in Greek politics well within living memory. Greece‘s foreign policy during the years of the Hellenic Republic has occasionally flirted with a variety of options, though in the end it has remained constant to its relationship with the western alliance. This reluctant adherence is due in large measure to the constraints placed upon Greece by its location on the world‘s geopolitical map. Its geographical position has proven to be one of the prime determinants of Greece‘s foreign policy since the Second World War, and at no time has this been more evident than in the years of the Hellenic Republic.
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- Copyright © The Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, University of Birmingham 1998
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11. The agreement came into effect in February 1996.
12. Karamanlis retired from office in March 1995. Papandreou resigned as prime minister 15 Jan. 1996, and died on 23 June 1996.
13. The dispute has wider implications. Under the 1994 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, Greece could extend its territorial waters from 6 to 12 nautical miles. This would effectively turn most of the Aegean into a Greek sea, and Turkey had warned that if Greece exercised this option it would be viewed as an act of aggression. Imia/Kardak is important in how territorial waters might be defined.