He studied political science and International Relations at Panteion, and at the University of London and at the University of Kent. His main publications cover intervention in secessionist conflicts, secession and self-determination, ethnicity and nationalism, the CSCE, perceptions in foreign policy and specific conflicts mainly from a conflict resolution perspective, such as Kosovo, Southern Sudan, the Kurdish question, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Cyprus problem and the Greek-Turkish conflict. His more recent research is on humanitarian intervention in the long nineteenth century, just war theory, human rights and the problem of cultural relativism and Islam, and on the Macedonian Question.
Writings
He has written eight books in English and fifteen in Greek, including:
The Self-Determination of Minorities in International Politics.
The Arab-Israeli Conflict: The Problèmatique of Peaceful Resolution .
Security and Co-operation in Europe: The Human Dimension, 1972-1992.
Helsinki-II and its Aftermath: The Making of the CSCE into an International Organization.
Greece and the “Threat from the East” , also published in Turkey as Yunanistan ve “Dogu’dan Gelen Tehlike” Turkiye: *Turk-Yunan Iliskilerinde Cikmazlar ve Cozum Yollari.
International Society and the Theories of International Relations: A Critical Survey .
The Cyprus Question: Conflict and Resolution .
The Cyprus Problem, 1947-2004: From Union to Partition? .
Irreconcilable Νeighbors: Greece-Turkey. The Aegean Dispute .
The Greek-Turkish Conflict in the Aegean: Imagined Enemies.
National Issues and Ethnocentrism: A Critique of Greek Foreign Policy .
The Macedonian Question 1878-1918: From National Claims to Conflicting National Identities .
editor with Gizem Alioglu Cakmak, Greece and Turkey in Conflict and Cooperation: From Europeanization to De-Europenalization.
Just War and Humanitarian Intervention: a History in the International Ethics of War.
Scientific contributions
His main scientific contributions to date are with regard to intervention in secessionist conflicts, the reasons for separatism, secession and self-determination, human rights norm-setting in the CSCE process, the Cyprus problem, and the Greek-Turkish conflict in the Aegean.
Political activity
As counselor on human rights and minorities in the Greek foreign ministry he was instrumental in the amelioration of the Greek policy towards the Muslim/Turkish minority in Thrace and in the abandonment of the negative Greek policy on minority rights in international forums. He has written hundreds of articles in Greek dailies and magazines on minority issues, the resolution of the Cyprus problem, the amelioration of Greek-Turkish relations and the comprehensive settlement of the pending Aegean dispute, the settlement of the vexing “Macedonian Question” between Athens and Skopje, and on Greek and Greek-Cypriot nationalism. On these issues he has also participated within various NGOs in Greece and Cyprus. In 1997 he was awarded the Abdi Ipekçi Peace and Friendship Prize for his newspaper articles on the resolution of the Greek-Turkish conflict. His repeated criticism of nationalism in Greece and in the Republic of Cyprus has earned him the opprobrium of key nationalist figures in both countries, and he has been repeatedly attacked in the conservative Greek and Greek Cypriot press and by ultra-nationalist political parties and organizations in Greece and Cyprus from mid-1990s until today.
