This was not just a phrase but ‘clear political symbolism’ which referred not only to the present Greek-Turkish crisis, but to all future bilateral issues, as Papandreou cited later that year.63 Papandreou directed the blame towards the US for the survival of the seven-year Junta and for not intervening in Cyprus during the summer of 1974. PASOK considerably influenced public opinion, arguing that Washington provided the ‘aggressive’ Turkey with military and political support. PASOK and the two Greek communist parties (legalised by Karamanlis in 1975) were in agreement about the American intervention in Greek politics since the late 1940s and the tragedy of Cyprus. As a result, the anti-American faction of Members of Parliament (who would be assigned future administrative posts in the 1980s), political cadets, trade unionists and public opinion ideologues increased. However the communist parties did not gain more support and gradually during the 1980s, they were isolated to 10-14% of the votes.
By the late 1970s, the competition between PASOK and Nea Dimokratia became more intense and increasingly polarised. The foreign policy advocated by the conservatives argued that Greek interests would be better served by joining the European Economic Community (EEC). However this vision had limited influence on Greek public opinion in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The predominantly anti-imperialist, nationalistic, anti-American, anti-Turkish, anti-EEC PASOK declared the need for ‘national independence and sovereignty’ and the need for ‘change’ in domestic affairs gained social momentum. The domestic confrontation between PASOK and ND in the 1980s was also fuelled by the personalities of their respective leaders. Papandreou and the conservative leader Constantine Mitsotakis had harboured strong animosity since 1965, when Mitsotakis, while serving as a cabinet member, voted against and overthrew the administration of Andrea’s father, Georgios Papandreou, in Parliament.
Meanwhile, a majority of Greek public opinion, the Press, trade unions and politicians (even rightists) were influenced by anti-American attitudes in response to the Cyprus crisis and US support for Turkey after the US Congress arms embargo on Ankara had ended in 1978. In 1979, centre and leftist politicians and the Press hailed the fall of the Shah’s rule in Iran and the emergence of a new anti-American power. However commentators of Greek public opinion and influential politicians failed to understand that the fall of the Shah had forced Washington to depend more on Turkey for maintaining forces, diplomatic leverage and intelligence gathering assets against the USSR in that region. As a result, a large portion of pro-PASOK public opinion, remembering the Junta regime and the invasion of Cyprus, remained nationalistic and anti-American, unable or unwilling to assess the complexities of international relations and the regional, political and military balance of power.64 Eventually, PASOK included two main forces – a publically anti-US, pro-Third World attitude towards a balance of power, foreign policy and national liberation movements and an influential, but discreet, Western European mind.65 Therefore, during the 1980s, when Papandreou followed isolationist policies towards NATO and publically accused the US of supporting Turkey, a large part of public opinion supported him and failed to question the usefulness of this policy. Greece was the only EEC and NATO member to follow an anti-American stance and to cast her veto at the international conferences in pursuit of a seemingly nationalistic and neutral foreign policy.
Most significantly the analysis undertaken by Greek politicians and Army officers was influenced by an unusual type of ‘long-term reverse mirror imaging’. By ‘long-term’, I mean a perception which is ingrained and difficult to alter and the term ‘reverse mirror imaging’ refers to strong democratic feelings and aspirations in Greece after the demise of the Junta. This had an impact on the way Greek officials and politicians saw a world in which, democracies sought peace and the resolution of disputes through legal and diplomatic means, while non-democratic states were aggressive and quick to resort to force. Henceforth, Greek officers and politicians interpreted Turkish foreign and defence policy within this framework. Both argued that the predominant influence of the military in domestic affairs and the inherent lack of democracy proved that Turkey had the potential to be an aggressor.
There are several key factors which affected Greek public perceptions of threat assessment in the late 1970s and 1980s. Karamanlis pursued a deterrent and not a revanchist foreign policy and achieved Greek EEC membership before Papandreou became Prime Minister.66 In the 1970s and 1980s, PASOK was an anti-imperialist, anti-American, anti-Turkish party. Papandreou opted instead for a pragmatic but populist stance in foreign policy. Despite declarations by PASOK in the 1970s against Greece joining the EEC, Papandreou inherited the pro-EEC policies of the conservatives and consequently, within the PASOK’s higher echelons, a small faction of pro-Europeans had formed and these members did not share the nationalist and populist arguments of Papandreou against Turkey. One key pro-Europe PASOK member was Costas Simitis, co-founder of PASOK and the Prime Minister from 1996 to 2004. In the 1980s, Papandreou’s public confrontation with conservative leader Mitsotakis caused conflict and division in Greek society and partisan politics affected every foreign policy issue. However no party argued in public that Turkey did not pose a direct threat to Greece or posed a lesser threat than the one presented by the media.
Papandreou established his authoritarian style of leadership within PASOK. And this often led to clashes with prominent leftist anti-Junta resistance leaders. He succeeded in controlling the ideologues of the political centre(derived from his father’s party ‘Enosi Kentrou’ – Centre Union of the 1960s) and to expel leftists from PASOK (i.e. Trotskysts, Maoists, Marxists, Leninists, Anarchists and members of anti-Junta PAK group who sought an ‘armed revolution’ in Greece).67 However the public image of PASOK remained ‘leftist, progressive and patriotic’. In the 1980s Papandreou followed a similar inner-party practice and any Secretary who sought to increase his influence and gain support within and outside PASOK was dismissed from the party. Professor Dimitrios Charalampis, the Chair of Political Science, Department of Mass Media, Athens University, has argued that Papandreou was ‘the founder, the leader, the strategic mind, the personality that took all the essential decisions’.He was not ‘first among equals’. In contrast to Karamanlis who was the prominent leader and founder of Nea Dimokratia, Papandreou, until his resignation for medical reasons in 1996, ‘was PASOK’. Papandreou retained the legitimate power to overrule decisions, to isolate cadres, to manipulate inner-party processes and to place the blame on individuals who had been assigned to carry out given tasks rather than PASOK policy makers. Moreover, the decision to avoid calling party conferences avoided the publication of disagreements within the party. PASOK was a ‘leader’s party’.68
By the late 1970s, Papandreou believed that he would be elected as the next Prime Minister in the coming October 1981 elections. As a result, PASOK pursued contacts with foreign embassies in Athens and Papandreou opted for a secret meeting in May 1981 between high ranking PASOK official Asimakis Fotilas and State Department, Pentagon and CIA officials in Washington. Fotilas (the future UnderSecretary of Foreign Affairs) was assigned to go in secret to Washington and to ease fears of potential anti-American policies regarding the US bases, NATO and Greek-Turkish-American relations.69 Papandreou nurtured PASOK youth and middle and high ranking trade unionists in an anti-American attitude, yet he remained a realist leader who understood world politics and the status of Greece within NATO and Europe. Consequently, Papandreou had to ‘sell’ the continuation of US bases in Greece and the Greek-Turkish-American contacts scheduled to resume after the October 1981 elections to an anti-American party and public opinion. Surprisingly, the Prime Minister believed that Turkey could be employed by the United States against socialist Greece by staging a crisis; gradually throughout the 1980s and 1990s a perception formed within Greek public opinion and some parts of Greek academia that Turkey aimed to become the loyal US ‘gendarme’ in the region, sidelining Greek influence in the Balkans.
Once elected to the premiership, Papandreou followed moderate policies towards Washington while using highly nationalistic and populist rhetoric to reassure the public and his party lieutenants that he continued to remain intransigent. In effect, Papandreou ‘signalled left and turned right’.70 The tactic of political dazzling without political and diplomatic substance was also used by Giannis Kapses, UnderSecretary for Foreign Affairs and Chief Political Negotiator in the US-Greek talks on US bases in the early 1980s. An Ambassador and close confidant of Kapses, revealed that he had several
