The Ostpolitik in the Context of the Country’s Multidimensional Foreign Policy in the 1970s

Greece’s comprehensive opening to the Communist world began in 1975, after the restoration of parliamentarism and the Cyprus tragedy in the Summer of 1974. The improvement of Turkish-Soviet relations since the mid-1960s and the dramatic deterioration of the Greek-Turkish relations, while Greece was not a member of the NATO military structure, were the main drivers of the new foreign policy course. Greece’s withdrawal from the NATO integrated military command as a reaction against “Alliance inertia” during the Turkish invasion in Cyprus in July and August 1974, was a seminal move, albeit not a well thought out one. The dissatisfaction with allies, especially the naive perception that NATO had failed to guarantee Greek security against Turkish aggression, ending up in Greece’s withdrawal from NATO, increased anti-Americanism and affected Greek society’s perceptions of global politics. The well resonated demand for more independence from the United States and a multidimensional foreign policy dovetailed with Prime Minister Konstantinos Karamanlis’s new security concept. In the context of the new multidimensional foreign policy, an active Ostpolitik was regarded as a complement to the then main foreign policy objective of the country, the accession to the European Community. Apart from it, the escalation of Greek-Turkish tensions rendered it imperative for Greece to ensure the neutrality of the Communist Balkan countries in the event of a war. As Greece was in great need of diplomatic support in its confrontation with Turkey on Cyprus and the Aegean, Karamanlis envisaged the possibility of a Balkan cooperation as a counteract to the Turkish assertive policy. Against this background and by looking carefully at the meetings, agreements and diplomatic moves Greece undertook in this period towards the various Communist countries, it becomes clear that almost all of them took place immediately after analogous Turkish moves. Athens endeavoured to ensure that Turkey did not gain more advantages in its relations with the Soviet Bloc than Greece, that, in turn, would frustrate Athens’s strategy to counterbalance Turkish aggression through new Alliances.