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Top-Down Reconciliation and the Role of Time the Case of the Greek Civil War

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Top-Down Reconciliation and the Role of Time the Case of the Greek Civil War Top-down reconciliation and the role of time The case of the Greek Civil War Authors: Dimitrios Stratakos Tutor: Manuela Nilsson Peace and Development Work Examiner: Heiko Fritz Subject: Peace and Development Level and semester: Master'sThesis Spring 2013 MASTER’S PROGRAMME IN PEACE AND DEVELOPMENT WORK Course Code: 4FU41E Top-down reconciliation and the role of time The case of the Greek Civil war Author: Dimitrios Stratakos Tutor: Manuela Nilsson 14/6/2013 School of Social Sciences ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This report is the result of a five weeks field work on behalf of the Master’s programme in Peace and Development work of Linnaeus University, Sweden. I would like to acknowledge my gratitude to Mr. Charilaos Sismanis and Mrs. Katherine Stefatos for their assistance and advice. I also want to thank Evi and Vasilis Mitseas, as well as Tzanakaki and Giftea families for their kind support, both practical and psychological during my fieldwork; an additional thank you to Evangelos Pournaras, Antonis Bourgias and my colleague Michael Edwards for their enlightening advice. I want to thank my family and friends that have always been supportive during the whole process. I would also like to express my gratitude to all the people that accepted to take part in this research. I am grateful that I had the chance to listen to so many stories and experiences about an issue that every Greek should be aware of. Finally, I want to acknowledge my gratitude to Professor Manuela Nilsson. Her patience and guidance during the whole process were of great importance to me. It would have been impossible to conduct this study without her. ABSTRACT Despite the vast research by both international and Greek academics underlining the reconciliatory policies and reforms that the Greek political leadership implemented between the years 1974 and 1989, little is stated on a grassroots level by the ex-combatants of the Greek Civil war about these policies with regards to their reconciliatory effects, as well as the need for their implementation twenty years after the end of the conflict (1949). The overall objective of this research is to evaluate if the series of the policies implemented by the Greek government had actually a reconciliatory effect on the active participants of the Civil war, as well as an impact on the Greek society as a whole. The late introduction of these policies will be also taken into consideration. This research is based upon analytical and conceptual considerations drawn by the current literature related to the concept of reconciliation. Particularly, it is focusing on two specific topics; the one of top-down reconciliation approaches, such as policies and reforms implemented by governments and the other of reconciliation time. The findings of the research will be compared to the considerations drawn by the literature in relation to the aforementioned topics. This study is qualitative, based on semi-structured interviews complemented with secondary sources, in which an abductive logic of inference is followed. Greece is taken as a case in order to highlight the results contributing to the context of a larger debate, that of top- down late coming reconciliation measures. The analysis of this study gives a deeper insight regarding the importance of top-down approaches as such and the actual time of their implementation. Taking into consideration the Greek case and based on the perception of a sample of twenty-two individuals the results show that the top-down initiatives implemented in Greece, due to their misuse by the political leadership, did not enhance reconciliation significantly. In addition, regarding the time of reconciliation, the interviewees supported that reconciliation efforts in Greece should not have come with a twenty-five years delay. Instead, they should have commenced as soon as possible after the end of the Civil war. These fieldwork results will contribute to future research on similar topics. Key words: reconciliation, Greek civil war, top-down policies Table of contents 1. INTRODUCTION AND RESEARCH PROBLEM .......................................................................................... 1 1.1. The Aim of the study ..................................................................................................................... 3 1.2. Research Questions ...................................................................................................................... 3 1.3. Relevance of the study .................................................................................................................. 3 1.4. Conceptual and Analytical considerations .................................................................................... 4 1.5. Introducing the Methodology ....................................................................................................... 4 1.6. Disposition .................................................................................................................................... 4 2. METHODOLOGY .................................................................................................................................... 5 2.1. Research Method .......................................................................................................................... 5 2.2. Sampling Procedure ...................................................................................................................... 5 2.3. (De)limitations and Limitations ..................................................................................................... 7 2.4. Ethical considerations ................................................................................................................... 8 3. CONCEPTUAL AND ANALYTICAL CONSIDERATIONS .............................................................................. 9 3.1. What is Reconciliation................................................................................................................... 9 3.1.1. Top-Down approach ........................................................................................................... 11 3.1.2. Time in Reconciliation ......................................................................................................... 13 4. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND ................................................................................................................. 15 4.1. The Greek Civil war ..................................................................................................................... 15 4.2. The first round ............................................................................................................................ 16 4.3. The second round ....................................................................................................................... 18 4.4. The third round ........................................................................................................................... 19 4.5. Post-Civil war era and U.S. intervention ..................................................................................... 21 4.6. The Military Junta (1967-1974) ................................................................................................... 23 4.7. The post-dictatorial era ............................................................................................................... 24 5. TOP-DOWN INITIATIVES ...................................................................................................................... 26 5.1. The political changeover (“Metapolitefsi”) ................................................................................. 26 5.2. Andreas Papandreou and the politics of “Change” .................................................................... 28 5.3. The interim coalition government (1989) ................................................................................... 29 6. FINDINGS ............................................................................................................................................. 31 6.1. General information on the interviewees .................................................................................. 31 6.2. The Civil war in retrospect .......................................................................................................... 33 6.3. Evaluation of the Top-down policies .......................................................................................... 34 6.4. The Reconciliation Process.......................................................................................................... 39 6.5. Reconciliation and the Intervening time ..................................................................................... 42 6.6. Need for Reconciliation Today .................................................................................................... 44 7. ANALYSIS ............................................................................................................................................. 46 7.1. The Greek top-down approach ................................................................................................... 46 7.1.1. An overview ........................................................................................................................ 46 7.1.2. Analyzing the top-down policies ......................................................................................... 46 7.1.3. Top-down Vs bottom-up ....................................................................................................
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