Once upon a time, there were two men traveling together on horses and they arrived in a han (inn) at night. They put their stuff on a table and one of them said that “Look, the next day when we get up , I don’t want to mix my horse so I want to cut its tail just a little bit to make a difference.” So they went to cut the tail, but a very naughty man heard them when they were talking and as they left he came and cut the tail of the other horse as well. The next day, when they came down and they looked at their horses and both of them had their tails cut. So they started fighting:
“WHICH ONE IS YOURS? WHICH ONE IS MINE?” Then, they decided to ride on with the horses they got and they kept on. The next night they arrived in another han. Again, the man said “Okey, I will cut the tail of my horse again to see the difference.” And again another naughty man heard this conversation and cut the tail of the other horse as they were sleeping. Next morning, they woke up, they came down and both of the horses had their tails cut. So they started fighting again. Finally, one of them was fed up with fighting: “Look, this is enough. WE ARE CUTTING THE TAILS OF OUR HORSES AND FIGHTING EVERYDAY. YOU RIDE THE WHITE HORSE; I WILL RIDE THE BLACK ONE FROM NOW ON.” I think in Turkish-Greek relations, we have been cutting the tails of our horses all the time. Finally, three years ago some wise men, Mr. Papandreou and Mr. Cem decided to stop cutting the tails. They managed to stop it, but still they could not go too far in that respect.
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In the last three years, we had quite important improvements in our relations. First of all, of course the political will in both countries has been quite strong to build up new bridges between both countries, to open up channels of communication, to start the trade relationship, and to start a kind of atmosphere, which will give us a mutual understanding of each other. In the last three years, quite a lot of things have been done in that respect such as this gathering itself. Businessmen have formed a Turkish-Greek business organisation; they are getting together and enhancing the business relationship between two countries. Three years ago, the trade balance was only four hundred million dollars, but now it is about a billion dollars. Rebuilding Communication
Therefore, there is something going on, however as they say, some look at the glass and see that half of the glass is full and others see it half empty. Right now, I don’t want to refer to the full part of the glass, I want to focus on the empty part of the glass. Because after three years, I feel that we need to talk about the empty part of the glass in order to find a way to fill up the rest of the glass. There was a survey conducted by the European Union in 1999 in Turkey and Greece. The results of the survey indicate that 88 % of the Greek public opinion does not like the Turks. In 2001, the European Union conducted another survey in Greece. The question was whether the Greeks want the Turks in the European Union or not. 70 % of the Greeks said “No, we do not want the Turks in the EU”. In 2001, the University of Thessaloniki conducted a research on the composition of elementary and high school students about the Turks. The results were worrying: 88 % of the elementary students see the Turks as quite a stupid nation who loves war. 30 % was saying that the Greeks were under the sovereignty of the Turks for four hundred years and saying that Greeks got their freedom in 1821, which is the independence of Greece from the Ottoman Empire. As they believe that Turks still want to invade the Greek islands in the Aegean, just a few of them were saying that the majority of Turks do not hate Greeks. The results of the research amongst the high school students were even more serious: 64 % was defining Turks with words like barbarians, butchers, uncivilized, brutal, etc. Only 3.9 % said we should forget the past and build up a future based on friendship. These results show that although there have been improvements in the political dialogue to a certain extent; the new generations are still feeling very hostile towards Turkey and the Turks. I believe that, there are three main reasons for this hostility feeling in Greece, on major reason being the school books used in the educational system. Unfortunately, the good will of Mr. Smithis and Mr. Papandreou could not help much to change the nationalistic bureaucracy of the Greek Ministry of Education. There was a decision to eliminate the hostile language in the Greek and Turkish schoolbooks. A committee was formed as well but unfortunately could not have any result. I am talking about the Greek schoolbooks right now because as I am coming from Greece and I have been working on them. It is also possible to talk about the Turkish schoolbooks as well, which I also have studied before but did not see as much hostility. In all the Greek schoolbooks the Western Anatolia and the Black Sea Region is being taught as the Greek land. In the books, Turks are always defined as murderers, barbarians and so on. These have to be completely eliminated, wiped out from the schoolbooks, so that we can look to the future in a bright way as Germans have done, as French have Association des Etats Généraux des Etudiants de L’Europe