Greece – Pike & Hurricane

A game of chess at the Greek-Turkish border

Merle Emrich — Sun, 19 Apr 2020 13:25:18 +0000

Shortly after the Turkish government announced that they would no longer prevent migrants from crossing the Greek border a video appeared on my social media feed: A brown field with a few specks of grass and a handful of leafless bushes, small figure moving in the background, a woman screaming, following after a man carrying a seemingly unconscious toddler under the winter sky veiled in clouds of tear gas.

In a climate of increasing xenophobia, the EU negotiated a deal with Turkey that would allocate billions of Euros to Turkey in exchange for the country preventing refugees and migrants crossing over to the EU. The influx of people was slowed down for a while but did not prevent continued attempts to enter the EU by land or sea putting pressure mostly on Mediterranean countries (Greece, Italy). In Greece, where the atmosphere is becoming increasingly hostile towards refugees, the right-wing New Democracy party replaced the left-wing Syriza government in snap elections in July 2019 following a campaign partly based on promises of heavy crackdowns on migration. Their latest move finds expression in the plan to build a floating 2.7 km long barrier in the Aegean Sea meant to ward off refugee boats heading for Lesbos.

When, in early 2020, the Greek government announced plans to build closed detention centres, locals on Chios and Lesbos stormed construction sites in opposition and clashed with riot police. The following weeks saw attacks on asylum seekers, humanitarian workers and journalists. In this climate of mounting tensions, thousands of people saw their hopes of finding humane refuge in the EU crushed as they gathered behind fences and barbed wire at the Greek–Turkish border in late February, and were met with tear gas, water cannons and flashbangs.

Europe’s “shield”

Expecting yet another wave of people fleeing the ongoing battle in Idlib, Syria, the Turkish government decided to open its border to the EU for more than 4 million refugees already located in the country. Some reports even speak of Turkish officials forcing refugees and migrants to leave the country and head towards Greece. In Europe, Turkey’s manoeuvre was largely perceived as an attempt to blackmail the EU into supporting Turkey’s military actions in northern Syria and force more concessions in relation to the 2016 migration deal. “This is a blatant attempt by Turkey to use desperate people to promote its geopolitical agenda and to divert attention from the horrible situation in Syria”, the Greek government said.

Video uploaded on ManotoNews (Persian) shows Turkish military police threatening to beat this Afghan group at gun point, telling them “why did you come here if you don’t want to cross to the Greek border”pic.twitter.com/jAQaYwlVss

— Daphne Tolis (@daphnetoli) March 7, 2020

With a look at the situation as a whole, however, it becomes impossible to find fault on part of Turkey alone. Both Turkey and the EU have made themselves culpable of having turned those who flee the horrors of war into mere pawns in their game of chess; be it to gather military and financial support and obtain more privileged relations with the EU, or to appease right-wing parties and movements and distract from the shortcomings of the Dublin Agreement. In the wake of this dehumanising game of chess, people’s lives, health and dignity have been put on the line without a moment’s consideration.

While Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, travelled to Greece to thank the country for its tough handling of the border situation and describing it as Europe’s “shield”, the Greek government, describing the influx of refugees as an “invasion”, suspended asylum applications for a month despite the right to asylum being granted under international law. And while Argyris Papastathis, deputy head of Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ press office claimed that Greek forces were not firing live ammunition, witnesses report shots being fired from the Greek side of the border, although it is unclear if they were fired by a police officer, soldiers or local vigilante.

An Afghan man who was treated at a Turkish hospital for burn injuries says a Greek border guard poured boiling water on him as he attempted to cross the land border in #Evros – via @enginbas pic.twitter.com/fpKk62wlkv

— Daphne Tolis (@daphnetoli) March 10, 2020

Only the dead have seen the end of war

In the midst of it all, concerns about the coronavirus spreading in overcrowded Greek refugee camps are growing. The situation in camps such as the Moria camp on Lesbos has been described as “living hell”. The camp was designed for 3 000 people. However, it currently hosts 20 000. Three square metres of living space are at times shared by five to six people. “That’s a catastrophic situation regarding water and sanitation”, Florian Westphal (MSF) told Deutsche Welle. “The lack of water in the Moria camp is really dramatic. (…) In some parts of the camp, people have built shelters from plastic sheeting. Up to 1 300 people are using a single source of water. (…) Up to 160 people on average are having to use one toilet. Our main demand to the European Union is very clear: You must start now to evacuate these people from Moria.” Ali, a 33-year-old from Idlib, describes Moria as “just a place for waiting for death. Life in Moria is impossible – believe me – most of us here have changed psychologically. Some people have lost their minds.”

The EU began as a neoliberal project designed to maintain peace in Europe. And while, at least in its beginnings, it was predominantly an economic union, the EU has evolved into an international organisation that likes to see itself as a defender of peace and human rights. The situation in the Mediterranean, however, sheds serious doubt on this self-image: Greece, weakened from the financial crisis of 2008, is largely left alone by other EU member states in managing the arrival of those in search for protection – unphased by the misery in Greece’s refugee camps, a migration policy is deployed that voluntarily accepts the drowning of human beings in order to prevent others from arriving, the EU continues to cooperate with the Libyan coast guard knowing about Libyan detention camps and the crimes committed against migrants, deals set to backfire and be broken sooner or later are made with Turkey to dodge responsibility, and those (NGOs and civilians) taking seriously the obligation to save refugees from drowning in face of the EU’s inaction are criminalised.

While European leaders seem to have forgotten the humanitarian spirit of Europe – and perhaps the political elite has always been the wrong place to look for it – can still be found in organisations such as Mission Lifeline, movements such as Seebrücke, and initiatives such as the complaint for crimes against humanity against the EU connected to its migration policy (Germany, France and Italy in particular) in front of the ICC by lawyers Omer Shatz and Juan Branco. It remains to hope that the EU (re)discovers its commitment to humanity and human rights instead of remaining caught up in a game of chess with Turkey that pushes back and forth blame and responsibility sacrificing human beings as it goes on.

by Merle Emrich

Photo Credits

Rescue at Mediterranean // 21/05/2018, Tim Lüddemann, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Syrian Refugees, Freedom House, Public Domain Mark 1.0

2018_01_28_Grecia_Manu_26, Fotomovimiento, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

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YNTR – February 2020: Greece’s floating wall, protests in Chile, Trump’s impeachment, and more

EditorChief — Sun, 23 Feb 2020 16:41:50 +0000

Greece. The Greek government has proposed to set up a floating wall to stop refugees from reaching the island Lesbos by blocking the main sea route between Greece and Turkey. Around 20 000 refugees are currently being held in a camp on Lesbos with a holding capacity of less than 3 000 people. According to Vasileia Digidiki and Jacqueline Bhabha of The Guardian, the floating-wall project is a sign of the failure of European migration policies.

Chile. The protests in Chile, which began in October 2019, are continuing despite concessions made by the government, including the drafting of a new constitution, submission for approval of which is scheduled for late 2021 provided that the required public spending can be afforded. While the concessions might have appeased some Chileans, others continue to protest against inequalities within Chile, as well as against the human rights violations and police repression (having led to the death of several protesters) they accuse the government of.

Switzerland. While most attendants of the 2020 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, which took place in January, arrived by private jet, a group of climate activists set out on a three-day protests march from Landquart to Davos. The march was one of several protests organised around the World Economic Forum to raise awareness on climate change and put pressure on politicians and big companies to take climate action.

USA. In a vote on the US president’s impeachment, Donald Trump has been acquitted of charges of impeachable crimes laid against him as all Republican members of the Senate except Mitt Romney voted against Trump’s impeachment. With the presidential elections in November, however, the long-term impact of the impeachment process remains to be seen.

Great Britain/ EU. On 31 January 2020, Great Britain left the European Union (EU). The European Parliament voted with a majority for the Brexit contract. While the Brexit party was celebrating the decision, the majority of delegates in Brussels were less enthusiastic about the development and some wore scarves with the writing “United in Diversity” on them. As a good-bye, they stood up together and, holding each others hands, sang the European anthem. During the one year transition period following the Brexit there will be a lot of work and (re-)negotiations to be done.

Australia. The Australian bushfires of the past months have fuelled the debate on climate change. Climate activists organised big demonstrations in major cities in Australia, but also worldwide, to protest against the coal mining industry, emission politics and for more climate action. The Australian prime minister Scott Morrison, who was on holidays in Hawaii shortly after the fires started, was widely criticised for his reaction to and handling of the situation, as were other Australian politicians. Morrison admitted that climate change could have a part in the events, but also said this is not the time to discuss it since there was an emergency to deal with. The public (domestically and internationally) expressed a lot of support, respect and empathy for the firefighters as well as critique of the government, because the firefighters do not receive enough resources.

Photo Credits

pi-IMG_5623, zhrefch, CC0 1.0

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FYI, the name’s Macedonia

Louis Louw — Sat, 22 Feb 2020 15:40:58 +0000

While recently scrolling across Google Maps to untangle the web of Balkan nations, my attention was caught by a newly etched-out national entity. Or at least so I thought. In truth, after some further investigation into the matter, what I had glimpsed was less a newly forged nation and more the latest installment in a longstanding dispute over the nomenclature of Macedonia, upon which both the “former” former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM and now North Macedonia) and Greece lay historical, territorial and identity claims.

Fast-tracking things a bit, this topsy-turvy dispute, which ostensibly spans all the way back to the conquests and spoils of Alexander the Great, took a new turn at the fall and partitioning of Socialist Yugoslavia. Ever since, both sides across the border have been involved in some feisty name-calling, with both sides refusing to back down on their claim over the cultural and territorial heritage of Macedonia. Underscoring this hard egg-or-the-chicken-first stance, a Greek veto all but barred the FYROM from ascension to the EU and by extension opportunities for development, growth, and prosperity.

Let them eat marble statues!

Fuelled by what it perceived as unfair treatment, the FYROM government ramped up its rhetoric by decreeing the fateful Skopje 2014 project, which was supposed to tie the FYROM closer to the glory of its, imaginary, epic past. However, this much derided project, which sought to remake the capital in the light of Greek antiquity, has left some to brand Skopje as the world’s “capital of Kitsch”. Adding insult to injury, the flood of neoclassical statues perched in lofty heights around the capital blew the project’s budget wide open in a country that continuously ranks as one of the poorest in the region.

Ironically, it was only by abandoning this bizarre showcasing of cultural appropriation and political escalation that a mutually beneficial breakthrough was achieved in 2018. Indeed, by re-establishing meaningful diplomatic ties, a formal agreement was reached, which consequently recognized North Macedonia as a nation distinct from the northern Greek province of Macedonia. In this instance, choosing the path of deescalation through dialogue truly paved the way for a better future for both parties. Bearing this in mind, can Skopje 2014 then be seen solely through the lens of the financial debacle that it undoubtedly was? Moreover, should the Macedonian government be considered the Atlas-esque bearer of all the brunt and backlash for its failure?

The M is for misunderstanding

One of the main reasons cited by Greek politicians for the controversy sparked by Skopje’s 2014 great leap backwards, was that the FYROM would potentially not only lay claim to what is seen as essentially Greek identity, but more importantly, that territorial aspirations on Greek soil would arise in tandem. This line of argumentation is reminiscent of the common trope of self-determination, which sees cultural imposition go hand-in-hand with territorial convergence.

However, what this line of argumentation fails to understand — and what I would suggest that the policy-makers behind the botched Skopje 2014 project failed to understand as well — is that the term Macedonia itself had semantically shifted away from the brittle aesthetics of antiquity to an entirely unique Slavic interpretation of the term long before the dissolution of Socialist Yugoslavia. After all, Slavic populations had been lively in Northern Macedonia for well over a century while carrying the denomination of Macedonia. Therefore, if culture is what one makes of living practices understood in the more mundane configuration of everyday life and experience, how is it to be presumed that Macedonian identity as a concept was frozen in time and space before, during and immediately after the unravelling of Socialist Yugoslavia?

Get off your high horse, Alexander!

Therefore, I am putting the following proposition on the table; I believe that one can fairly assume that, had the Greek claims on Macedonia not arisen in the way they did — territorial integrity of the state at risk! — with the particular meaning they carried — cultural appropriation of classical antiquity as a threat!, then perhaps Skopje 2014 could have been entirely avoidable altogether.

This goes without saying that I am not tip-toeing towards a justification for its bamboozling execution. Rather, what I am suggesting is that by accentuating territory linked to antique culture from a uniquely Greek perspective, the breeding ground for the self-confounded chimera of embittered Greek and Macedonian relations was set to roost birds of exotic feather such as the Skopje 2014 project or the Greek “cultural” riots over ‘identity capitulation’. In this light, Skopje 2014 can almost be seen as the logical consequence of two nations engaging in foreign policy on equally egregious terms.

Instead of negotiating a compromise with consideration to the needs and wishes of everyday citizens on both sides of the divide, the Macedonian and Greek governments failed to live up to their responsibility to foster the well-being of their citizens. What’s more, they made things worse by clashing over dead concepts of identity that have little bearing on the everyday workings, experiences, and problems of the common (wo)man. To conclude, when Guy Delauney inadvertently states that Macedonia “might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb” with its fumbling extravagance, one may indeed ask how else to get Alexander off his high horse?

by Louis Louw

Photo Credits

Alexander the Great, Mite Kuzevski, CC BY-NY 2.0:

DSC_0069.jpg, mrhong42, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0:

Image, Rosino, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0:

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There still is Hope in Greece

Céline Sonnenberg — Tue, 31 Mar 2015 22:19:18 +0000

I have a special bond with Greece. I was only six months old, when I first set foot onto Crete, the beautiful Greek island my aunt decided to live on. I have since then been back almost every summer and every time I do not visit Greece I dearly miss the beautiful white houses with blue roofs and the amazing countryside of rough mountains and white beaches.

Obviously due to having very fond memories and family in Greece, the financial crisis that shook the country so deeply was especially interesting to me. Being German I was honestly shocked by the deeply negative and often racist reporting on the events in Greece. Stereotypes of lazy Southern Europeans were reproduced, the situation of normal people was often completely ignored and most mainstream media painted a black and white picture of the crisis, marking Germany as the honourable donor and Greece as the unappreciative child, that just could not behave.
Talking with both my aunt and friends we have in Greece, I had a different picture of the crisis, with a population deeply affected by the harsh economy measures. Now after the election of the new government I had the chance to talk to my aunt again and share an inside view of the situation in Greece.

How long have you been living in Greece?

I moved to Crete in 1991.

How has the daily life changed due to the financial crisis?

Especially the extremely low wages have changed our lives drastically. In the private sector wages went from formerly 750 Euros to around 540. My husband, who works fulltime on an airport, earns around 740 Euros, including extra pay for working Sundays and nightshifts. He often works overtime, most people here can only dream of having a 40-hour week, especially during the touristic season (May to September). Working conditions are extremely hard and often wages are not even payed, but no one dares to speak up, since unemployment is so high and you are in constant fear of loosing your job. It really is sink or swim, there are so many other people waiting to take any job they can get. Especially for young people there are no jobs, no perspective.

How are the economy measures visible in the daily life?

Basically all welfare measures have been cut off. There are no unemployment benefits, seasonal workers which is almost everyone on the Greek islands, get about 360 Euros for three months and that’s it. Even health funds have been almost cut of completely and medicine has gotten extremely expensive due to that. Some prices have doubled, we used to pay 30 Euros for my husband´s medicine, now we pay between 50 and 70 Euros every month, 10 percent of his wage during the summer.

What are your hopes for the new government?

We hope to get back to the old standard and living conditions. Our hope is that Alexis Tsipras as a young, credible politician and his combatants who has nothing to do with the old government can finally introduce a new start. He has promised to target tax evaders and to give us back a life in dignity.

Greece once again did not manage to fulfil tax goals. Is the population not willing to pay taxes?

I think the main problem is in retail. With such low wages people just cannot shop for pleasure, many shops closed and thus no tax money from sales. Additionally to that with so many people unemployed not enough people pay their tax on wages or pay into health and retirement insurance. Everyone who works pays their taxes immediately, but they are just so few. Also I am beyond disappointed from major enterprises. There is no solidarity from the rich families. Tax fraud and corruption exists everywhere, being a freelancer both here and in Germany I am very aware of that, but not in this scale.

Demonstrations and protests mainly show dissatisfaction with the European Union and often Germany, why is this anger only seldom openly directed towards problems within Greece?

I am proud of the Greeks, who have accepted their fate without huge violent riots. There was huge election participation, which shows that the Greek population wants to change something and to take a stand point.
Sadly biased media coverage and obviously the stupidity of some people both in Germany and Greece ends up just shifting the blame back and forth. It’s a fact that we are in a worldwide financial crisis and that we need to rethink the model we set up for Europe. There should be the same duties, but also rights for everyone living in the European Union, or we do not need this Union at all.

What do you think are realistic steps out of the crisis, that are also bearable for the Greek public?

We need to invest in our social system; there is no way around that to get out of this crisis. We need higher wages and better welfare to get the consumption up

again. We also need to raise taxes on the few who earn a lot and finally use our own resources such as oil and gas and sell them.

Is leaving the Eurozone a realistic alternative for Greece?

For me it is not an alternative, but sadly it is not impossible. The population just needs to be aware of the harsh consequences. I personally think the Norther European countries should share their knowledge on the taxation sector with the Southern European Countries. We do not need finger-wagging or lectures, but mutual respect and cooperation to finally change our crooked system.

By Céline Sonnenberg

Image credit:

Picture 1 & 2: Céline Sonnenberg

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Greek Tragedy – The Next Act

Andreas Kechagias — Sat, 31 Jan 2015 21:55:35 +0000

2015 is shaping up to be one of those years for Greece. As it continues to plummet from one crisis to the next, the country finds itself, once again, in the international spotlight as the snap election on January 25 rekindles concerns over its relationship with the rest of Europe. SYRIZA (Coalition of the Radical Left), a party that before the debt crisis earned no more than 5% of the vote, has just swept the election with 36.3%, placing its leader, Alexis Tsipras, in the position of Prime Minister. But while most of the international commentary focuses on the 41-year-old’s fiery rhetoric and the possible shifts in policy planned by his new government, the real danger lies not in what he might do, but in what he might not be able to.

The just-formed coalition government, an unlikely marriage of convenience with the nationalist Independent Greeks, a party with which SYRIZA agrees on precious little other than their common opposition to austerity policies, runs a high risk of fracturing under the pressure of the decisions it will have to make in the coming months, making new elections necessary very soon. While this is nothing new for Greece, where, for the past two decades, early elections have been the norm rather than the exception, Tsipras’ attempt to govern will be marked by unique challenges, linked to the history of the Greek political left, and SYRIZA’s implausibly meteoric rise.

Since the re-establishment of democracy in 1974, Greek politics have been dominated by two parties: New Democracy (ND), situated on the center-right, and the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) on the center-left. These two parties have alternated in power for three decades, forming majority governments, as they each consistently gained close to or over 40% of the vote, with no need to cooperate, either with each other or with any of the other political parties. The decision to vote for one of the smaller parties was therefore decoupled from any chance that the party would have a say in policy, and became a gesture of protest, or an attempt to ensure that a particular social agenda, either conservative or progressive, had a voice in parliament.

Having been outlawed during the rule of the military junta, parties on the far left of the political spectrum have always held an air of revolutionary romanticism in Greece, combined with an underdog, anti-establishment attitude. At the same time, they experienced constant infighting, as the narrow share of the votes left available by ND and PASOK forced coalitions between wildly differing ideologies. In order to pass the 3% threshold that allows entry into parliament, civil libertarians, social progressives, greens and hardline communists have, in more than one occasion, found themselves inside the same political unit. SYRIZA is but the latest iteration of such a disjointed coalition.

After the fall of the Soviet Union caused the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) to eject all but the most diehard communist elements from its ranks in the early 1990s, coalitions with essentially the same limited political base formed, fractured and reformed a number of times. All of these efforts revolved around the largest and most powerful of these small groups, Synaspismos (Coalition of the Left), which served as their core. In 2004, Synaspismos signed an agreement with the Renewing Communist Ecological Left (AKOA), the Internationalist Worker’s Left (DEA) and other smaller leftist and communist groups, forming SYRIZA. The group managed to gain entry into parliament the same year with 3.3% of the vote, and moved to earn 5% in 2007 and 4.6% in 2009.

And then came the crisis, causing the Greek economy to contract by 25% between 2009 and today, handily beating the record set by the Great Depression of the 1930s and throwing the country’s political system into utter disarray. The succession of multi-party coalitions created under the pressure of the crisis were predictably chaotic in their attempts to guide the country out of its predicament, leading to a fundamental reordering of the political landscape during the 2012 national elections.

PASOK, which had won the 2009 election based on a program promising further increases in government spending, received the brunt of the public’s outrage, dropping from 44% to 12%. Disillusioned voters moved in one of two directions. Some chose to protest by voting for a slew of smaller parties that had never entered into parliament, resulting in the otherwise inexplicable rise of an Athenian street gang named Golden Dawn to national prominence. Most of them voted for SYRIZA, which was propelled from 4.6% to 26.9% and was only narrowly defeated by ND.

Tsipras, suddenly finding himself the leader of the main opposition party, was faced with the monumental task of transforming SYRIZA’s contrarian agenda into a substantive governing proposal, consistent with his new, much broader and more mainstream political base, while also trying to maintain cohesion within his coalition. Hyperbolic proclamations about unilateral debt write-offs and the possibility that Greece could be better off outside the European Union begun to be phased out, replaced by somewhat more plausible, if equally blusterous, lines about a tougher stance in debt negotiations, or the spearheading of a pan-European policy shift in coordination with sister organisations around Europe.

Which brings us to today, with victorious Tsipras set to be sworn in as Prime Minister of a tenuous anti-austerity coalition government, created together with the right-wing Independent Greeks. Both parties having acted as junior coalition partners since the start of the crisis, right-wing LAOS and left-wing DIMAR, have paid a heavy political price for their involvement, losing more than half of their electoral strength in subsequent elections. This will undoubtedly weight on the mind of Independent Greeks, exacerbating tensions as two parties with diametrically opposed ideologies try to govern together.

More importantly, while in 2013 he moved to consolidate his power by successfully transforming SYRIZA from a coalition to a unitary party, Tsipras remains constantly challenged and undermined from within his own ranks. The Left Platform, a hardline bloc that controls more than thirty percent of the party’s central governing body, and its leader, Panagiotis Lafazanis, have been vocally opposed to any attempt to court the political center, seeing it as a betrayal to the party’s founding ideals, or otherwise put, “becoming PASOK”.

It is unclear what the future holds for Greece. With its economy barely showing signs of recovery, political deadlock could jeopardise what little progress has been achieved in the past six years. What is more, the possible implications move beyond its own borders, as the European Union as a whole remains in the throes of a recession, and is faced with tough political questions regarding its very nature. Alexis Tsipras could be the monkey wrench in the gears that causes the entire apparatus to collapse. Or he could possibly mark the beginning of a shift towards a different approach to the problems plaguing Europe. Time will tell. But there’s another possibility. That, once in power, he will be able to complete his transformation, from a firebrand of the far left to the most comforting thing of all: just another politician.

By Andreas Kechagias

Image credit:

Picture 1: Thierry Ehrmann, licensed under CC BY 2.0

Picture 2: Sheila, licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

Picture 3: Jan Wellmann, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

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