Alexis Heraclides

Alexis Heraclides (b. 1952 in Alexandria) is a Greek academic, currently professor of International Relations and conflict resolution at the Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences (Athens). Previously he served as counselor on human rights and minorities in the Greek foreign ministry (1983-1995) and in that capacity participated in a number of norm-setting intergovernmental conferences on human rights and minorities, notably in the context of the CSCE (Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe). He was also appointed alternate expert of the UN Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities (UN Commission of Human Rights) (1990-1992).

He studied political science and International Relations at Panteion, and at the University of London (M.Sc. at University College, under John W. Burton) and at the University of Kent (Ph.D. under A.J.R. Groom). 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.

He has written six books in English and ten in Greek, including:

• The Self-Determination of Minorities in International Politics (London: Frank Cass, 1991).
• The Arab-Israeli Conflict: The Problèmatique of Peaceful Resolution (Athens: Papazissis, 1991) [in Greek].
• Security and Co-operation in Europe: The Human Dimension, 1972-1992 (London: Frank Cass, 1993).
• Helsinki-II and its Aftermath: The Making of the CSCE into an International Organization (London: Pinter, 1993).
• Greece and the “Threat from the East” (Athens: Polis, 2001) [in Greek], also published in Turkey as Yunanistan ve “Dogu’dan Gelen Tehlike” Turkiye: *Turk-Yunan Iliskilerinde Cikmazlar ve Cozum Yollari (Istanbul: Iletişim, 2002).
• The Cyprus Question: Conflict and Resolution (Athens: I. Sideris, 2002) [in Greek].
• The Greek-Turkish Conflict in the Aegean: Imagined Enemies (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, July 2010).
• with Ada Dialla, Humanitarian Intervention in the Long Nineteenth Century: Setting the Precedent (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015).

• Panteion University, library catalogue. LSE library catalogue. Princeton University library catalogue.

His main scientific contributions to date are with regard to intervention in secessionist conflicts, the reasons for separatism, the principle of self-determination, human rights norm-setting in the CSCE process, the Cyprus problem, and the Greek-Turkish conflict in the Aegean.

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 many articles in Greek dailies and magazines on minority issues, the resolution of the Cyprus problem (via a loose consociational bicommunal federation), the amelioration of Greek-Turkish relations and on the comprehensive settlement of the pending Aegean dispute, the settlement of the vexing “Macedonian question” between Athens and Skopje (the name of “Macedonia”), and on Greek and Greek-Cypriot nationalism. On these issues he has also participated within various NGOs in Greece and Cyprus (The Front for Reason against Nationalism, Centre of Minority Groups, Cyprus Academic Dialogue and others). 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 Cypriot press and by ultra-nationalist political parties (inter alia in the Greek Parliament) and organizations in Greece and Cyprus from mid-1990s until today.