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 arguments with the UnderSecretary about the latter’s attempts to create impressions for domestic consumption without the talks having been concluded or diplomats informed.71
The Institutional Development of Greek Intelligence, 1953-1995
In post war Greece, intelligence was always militarised within the foreign affairs and security community. Greek politicians primarily assigned military officers to the intelligence field, while graduates from the armed forces academies and higher officers were preferred to civilian personnel within NIS. After the fall of the Junta in 1974, KYP remained under the authority of the Prime Minister; later it was transferred to the authority of the Home Office and then to the Minister for Public Order. NIS did not have a strong institutional link or a culture of co-operation with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the MoD. Moreover, crisis management decision-making was not fully developed. From 1982, the famous KYSEA (Kyvernitiko Symvoulio Exoterikon kai Amynas - Foreign Affairs and Government Council) was manned by the Prime Minister as the council president and by the secretaries for Defence, Foreign Affairs, Home Affairs, Public Order and Finance. The director of NIS did not have a seat or an official advisory role in KYSEA. However the most serious problem confronted by KYSEA was the lack of support from a developed secretariat and the intelligence bureaucracy. The concept of creating and maintaining a ‘National Security Council’ was not accepted and the Prime Minister was only given a Legal Affairs Office and military and diplomatic advisors. Allegedly during the 1980s Papandreou used KYSEA primarily as a way to legitimise his own decisions.
In May 1953 KYP (Kentriki Ypiresia Pliroforion- Central Intelligence Service) was established by Law 2421/1953. Article 1 declared the foundation of KYP ‘for the national security of the armed forces, public security and order’. Article 2 established the authority of the Prime Minister over the new service; ‘KYP would be put under the direct orders of the president of the Government’. Article 3 outlined the priority assignments; KYP would have to ‘co-ordinate’ all state security agencies in collecting intelligence and under the direction of the Prime Minister KYP would have to develop methods to collect intelligence ‘by its own means’ and to provide assessments and estimates of national security issues. In parallel, KYP would have to ‘enlighten public opinion on national security’ which in effect meant that KYP was also an official propaganda agency of the state.Article 4 established that the Prime Minister was the only one who could appoint the director of KYP. The KYP director ‘could be a capable civilian’. However until 1987, the head of KYP was a military officer, usually an Army brigadier or a lieutenant-general and a NIS placement usually signified the end of a military career. The same article established an inter-ministerial council whereby the KYP director would be assigned to the Presidency. Nonetheless,