SECTION: JOURNALISM LDMD I ELEMENTS OF FRAMING, STEREOTYPING AND ETHNIC CATEGORISATION IN THE GREEK MEDIA DISCOURSE DURING THE 1976 GREEK-TURKISH CRISIS Oana-Camelia STROESCU, Researcher, PhD, “Romanian Diplomatic Institute” Abstract: The present paper details the elements contributing to the development of ethnic categorisation in the Greek daily political newspapers during the Greek-Turkish crisis of the summer of 1976. After the Cyprus operations of 1974, Greece and Turkey have lived short periods of détente and expressions of mutual sympathy, followed by tension and diplomatic and/or military posturing. The two NATO allies came often on a brink of an armed conflict due to a variety of issues linked to different interpretation of international law regarding national sovereignty in certain areas of the Aegean Sea. These states should act as lighthouses of stability in the volatile region of Eastern Mediterranean and exclude any possibility of renewed hostilities in the future, including the armed confrontation. The study analyses the position of the Greek national political dailies on the Aegean energy crisis and shows the Greek media behaviour towards the Turkish people during the 1976 crisis. What kind of nationalism is reconstructed in the Greek press discourse? Is it a kind of patriotism or do news discourse reproduce sentiments of national superiority by using framing, ethnic categorisation, stereotypes and negative images? Do they contribute to the peace process between the two countries or do they exaggerate the conflict? Our purpose is to argue that the Greek daily political press produces and promotes ethnic categorisation through textual messages for the duration of the crisis. The front page articles of the major national Greek dailies contain textual messages that stereotype Turks by their concentration, frequency or omission. The methodology applied for this study is the qualitative analysis of the content of certain Greek national newspapers’ front pages during the Aegean crisis of 1976. This paper contains original as well as previously published ideas, fragments and/or language constructions of the author. Keywords: stereotype, Aegean crisis, press discourse, public opinion, ethnic categorisation There is an old stereotype about the Turks, illustrating them as bogeyman: ‘Eat your food, child, or else the Turk will come and take you away’. Sayings like this one can be found in the Balkan region and date back from the Ottoman Empire. But why Greeks have this negative image of their eastern neighbours? The present study has its source of inspiration in a wider research we are currently undergoing, related to the Greek-Turkish relations in the second half of the 20th century and the stereotypes promoted by the Greek media. In this paper we aim at remonstrating that the Greek press reinforces ethnic categorisation and stereotypes during this bilateral crisis, thus cultivating a negative image of the neighbour. The Alterity we refer to is the Turkish people as it is described by the Greek daily newspapers after the Cyprus crisis of 1974. One may observe the revival of the categorisation of the Turks in the Greek newspapers in times of bilateral tensions during the second half of the 20th century. The language has a strong impact on the collective perception of Alterity by creating simplified, negative images of the ‘other’. This perception is induced to public and perpetuates negative feelings towards the neighbours. The methodology applied for this study is the content analysis of the front page articles of major Greek political newspapers for a period of three months: one ahead of the crisis, during the crisis and one month after it. 129 SECTION: JOURNALISM LDMD I Greece and Turkey are two neighbouring states with wide coastlines at the Aegean Sea. The bilateral dispute is related to oil exploration and exploitation rights and thus to the sovereignty over certain areas in the Aegean. After World War II, the diplomatic relations between the two states passed through a crisis almost every ten years, because of the interethnic conflict in Cyprus and the disagreement regarding the sovereign right over some areas in the Aegean Sea. After 1974, this dispute took the shape of an energy dispute and referred to the disagreement over the interpretation and application of international law. On the one hand, Turkey’s position was that the Greek islands in the Eastern Aegean were not entitled to a continental shelf region and the delimitation line of the continental shelf should pass, from North to South, through the middle of the Aegean. The Turkish Government believed that the Aegean should be shared in equal parts between the two states, in order to have equal economic and defence opportunities in the area. On the other hand, Greece’s position was in favour of the delimitation of the continental shelf using the median line between the Greek islands in Eastern Aegean and the western shores of Turkey. In the summer of 1976, the tension took the shape of a crisis when the Turkish research vessel ‘Sismik I’ was sent out in the Aegean Sea to conduct oil research in the disputed continental shelf – considered by the authorities in Athens to be Greek. Consequently, Turkey and Greece appealed to the United Nation Security Council and to the International Court of Justice at The Hague and both international bodies had urged the neighbouring states not to make use of violence in solving the Aegean Sea issues and to continue with bilateral negotiations in order to achieve a solution in the best interest of both countries. The perspectives of Greece and Turkey always differ on the distribution of the blame for the tensions in the Aegean. Leaders’ references to a “just and lasting solution” rarely accommodate any understanding of what constitutes a fair outcome according to the other side. After a brief historical background on the Greek-Turkish relations, we need to make some remarks on identity, stereotypes, framing and ethnic categorisation. The social groups that shape the identity are characterized by membership criteria and boundaries; in short, they include some people and exclude others. Although it is not necessary for these boundaries to imply tension between groups, in practice relations between groups are far more likely to be “antagonistic than complementary” (Stephan, Ybarra & Rios Morrison, 2009, p. 43). And even when a threat from an outgroup leads to nonhostile behavioural reactions (e.g. compromise, negotiation and deterrence), the emotional responses to threat are likely to be negative. Threats occur in the ongoing relations between groups and their antecedents and consequences are interactive and recursive. That is, a group’s behaviour affects the perceptions and reactions of the other group. A stereotype can be defined as a person’s “knowledge, beliefs and expectancies about a social group” (Hamilton & Trolier, 1986, p. 133). It is known that, once formed, stereotypes or in other words certain beliefs, are applied to all members of the group, regardless the variation they may show in many respects. So stereotyping involves the overgeneralization of attributes to group members (Hamilton, Sherman, Crump & Spencer-Rodgers, 2009, p. 179). Framing often refers to the social construction of a social phenomenon by mass media, political leaders or other actors. It can be described as a process of selective influence over the individual's perception of the meanings attributed to words or phrases. In the context of mass media communication, a frame defines the packaging of an element of rhetoric in such a way as to encourage specific interpretations and to discourage others. Framing techniques can be 130 SECTION: JOURNALISM LDMD I successfully used to reduce the ambiguity of topics by contextualizing the information in a way the recipient /receiver can connect to what he already knows. Michael Bilig argued that the distinction between ‘patriotism’ (rather positively valued) and ‘nationalism’ (presumably equated with extremism) can overlap the implied distinction of ‘us versus them’. He argued that nationalism is the discourse of the ‘others’ (Bilig, 1995, p.16). Therefore, nationalistic discourse engenders emotional responses in both the speaker and the audience. The aim of this research is to show the elements that describe the discourse of the Greek press during the crises. We acknowledge that some printed media texts are constructed to represent the other side negatively and indirectly maintain the Greek-Turkish tension by creating and promoting stereotypes about the Turks. The Greek daily political newspapers that we have selected for analysis are of national distribution: ‘Makedonia’, a non-tabloid paper published in Thesaloniki, ‘Kathimerini’, another non-tabloid newspaper, published in Athens and three tabloid newspapers, all published in Athens: ‘Eleftherotypia’, ‘Ta Nea’ and ‘Eleftheros Typos’. We have reviewed the front-pages of all published issues from July to September 1976, with an emphasis on certain analysis units as it follows: title of the text/article, object, attitude towards the object, subject, theme, place of events, length of the text, genre, author, occasion of reporting and visual presentation. As a rule, the titles are informative, real, non-metaphoric; the only exception is made by ‘Eleftheros Typos’, which often publishes sensational titles. Generally, the articles are short to medium, they tackle themes related to the Turkish vessel itinerary and the bilateral crisis and they are referring to states, state representatives, organizations and public institutions of both countries, with a negative attitude towards the object (being a state, a public / private institution or a representative of a public institution). ‘Makedonia’ and ‘Kathimerini’ are more likely to have a neutral attitude towards the events. Stereotyping, ethnic categorisation and framing refer to the negative image of the other, either hostility or offensiveness. These publications display in their front page stories the Greek interests and criticise the other side. Turkey is perceived as a country that takes advantage of the Greek Government’s goodwill and considers the Aegean Sea a space of claims.