Twenty days have passed since the deadly February 6 earthquake in Turkey and the unimaginable devastation it caused with at least 50,000 dead in Turkey and Syria – 44,000 of them in Turkey. A tragic event that brought Greek rescuers to Turkey and that made the Greek Minister of Foreign Affairs Nikos Dendias embrace Mevlut Cavusoglu after years of tension in bilateral relations.

“If there is anything positive about this earthquake, it is that many countries have sent aid to Turkey, among them countries with which Turkey had problematic relations, such as Greece, Israel, Armenia,” observes Aret Demirci, program manager at the annex of the German Friedrich Naumann Foundation of the Liberals in Sofia, who has been deeply involved in Greek-Turkish relations for years.

Demirtzi recently coordinated in Berlin a journalistic program of the same institution, which was valuable for the broader Greek-Turkish dialogue, in which journalists, academics and experts from Greece and Turkey participated. At a difficult moment, a few days after the great earthquake, the exchange of views between Greeks and Turks becomes even more important. But what does he think about the so-called “earthquake diplomacy” and the future of Greek-Turkish relations?

“I believe that this is a new beginning of good relations between Ankara and Athens, but on the other hand, these are deep-rooted problems. So there is no guarantee that the earthquake can change things.” For him, the “momentum” could contribute positively towards a “sustainable improvement” of bilateral relations thanks to the spontaneous reaction of ordinary citizens at a social level in both countries.

Too early for long-term estimates

“I wish we had better and more sustainable relations in the long term, without similar tragedies,” Erkan Saka, a journalist, blogger and media professor at Istanbul’s Bilgi University, told DW in the same vein, and continues: “Let’s hope we build on top of all that. We need to change the way we see bilateral relations, to give them a positive dimension for the future. Tragedies just remind us that we’re all human.”

For her part, Eilem Yanardaoglou, associate professor of New Media at Kadir Has University in Istanbul and researcher in the Turkish Program at ELIAMEP in Athens, focuses on the emotional and immediate reaction of the Greeks.

“I follow various groups on facebook and whatsapp. I was seeing what people were writing on social media, the gathering of humanitarian aid for the earthquake-stricken areas,” notes the university student, who specializes in social media operations, adding: “The way people wanted to help each other was amazing, but at the level of macropolitics we may not see immediate corresponding results. We will probably have to wait to see the effect of all these moves going forward.”

However, the Turkala professor underlines the tendency of many people in Greece to want to show with their posts on social media that essentially the two peoples have nothing to separate, “that we are friends, neighbors, that we help each other. So they brought back to the fore this sense of solidarity that had been lost.”

95% of Turkish media is controlled by the government

However, the comments of the Turkish experts are also of interest regarding the way in which the Turkish media recorded the Greek assistance these days. “I think that in terms of the media, the two countries are very different from each other. In Turkey, 95% of the media is controlled by the government, whatever Ankara decides about Greek-Turkish relations is reflected in the media.

On the other hand, in Greece, although the situation is different, I notice an obsession with Turkey” says Aret Demirci, emphasizing that “the Greeks should understand that Turkey is much more than just Ankara and the Turkish government. The common people do not necessarily identify with her.”

As for Erkan Saka, despite the heavy shadows cast over the overall media landscape in Turkey, he believes there are still glimmers of hope. And as he characteristically says: “A new form of media is starting to appear in Turkey, the small independent media, which could become the basis for the new ‘mainstream media’ in Turkey in the future”. For him, what also changed with the earthquake is that many Turkish media stopped acting as “press representatives of the Turkish government” and showed another, positive image of Greece.

Source: DW