Beyond the handshake: persistent confrontation in Turkish-Greek diplomatic discourse after the 2016 coup

Abstract

When rival states move toward rapprochement, does the routine discourse of their foreign-policy bureaucracies actually change? This article examines that broader puzzle through a quantitative text analysis of Turkish-Greek relations based on Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs statements from 2007 to 2024. While the post-2016 period saw a sharp escalation in tensions, culminating in the 2020 Eastern Mediterranean crisis, the post-earthquake diplomatic thaw of 2023 was widely seen as a rapprochement. This study investigates whether this high-level political reconciliation translated into a tangible shift in routine diplomatic discourse. Using Latent Semantic Scaling (LSS) to quantify confrontational rhetoric and interrupted time-series analysis to assess the impact of key events, this study identifies a discursive inertia. The findings demonstrate that, despite top-level agreements, the underlying confrontational tone of official communications did not significantly abate, persisting at levels consistent with previous periods of tension. This research contributes to the study of international relations by providing empirical evidence for the resilience of institutionalized conflict narratives against political détente and by offering a new methodological framework for analyzing the gap between leadership rhetoric and bureaucratic-level discourse.