Greek – Turkish Encounters in the City: Who meets who in Kadıköy?
Greek – Turkish Encounters in the City: Who meets who in Kadıköy?

Author(s): Kerem Öktem
Subject(s): Politics / Political Sciences, International relations/trade
Published by: Transnational Press London
Keywords: Greek; Turkish; Kadıköy; historical; political; cultural; economic;
Summary/Abstract: Greek – Turkish relations, like all concepts in life, do not really exist. They are discourses and constructions formed by individuals and institutions and shaped in the realm of their social relations. Examined critically the Greek – Turkish relations discourse reveals a set of foundational assumptions: There are two groups, or more specifically two nations, i.e., Turks and Greeks. These two nations establish the two sides of a complex set of historical, political, cultural and economic relations that have been mostly, but not exclusively contentious. Some also recognise that on the actor side, there is more diversity than this simple dichotomy would suggest: Greece has experienced long-term Albanian immigration and, more recently, immigration from the Middle East and South Asia. In Turkey, Kurds are the largest non-Turkish community, and, since the mid-2010s Syrian war refugees and immigrants have become a sizeable group by far outnumbering most other minority groups. This destabilization of the dominant founding ethnic groups of Greece and Turkey is reshaping both the relevance and the categories of Greek – Turkish relations as well as the importance of the spaces of encounter which this entry examines. For now, however, the primacy of the nation state continues to structure the field.

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