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Intelligence Squared
Is Greece Becoming the New Borderland Between East and West? With Sean Matthews
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- [00:01]
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- [01:46]
Mia Sorrenti
Welcome to Intelligence Squared, where great minds meet. I'm producer Mia Sorrenti. How could Greece's Byzantine and Ottoman past shape its future? On today's episode, journalist and author Sean Matthews joins us to examine Greece's unique position as a Christian Orthodox state on the edge of the Islamic world. Across centuries, it has served as a political and cultural crossroads, and now its position between Europe and the near east is becoming ever more significant in today's fraught geopolitical context. Let's join our host, Helen Carr now with more.
- [02:23]
Helen Carr
Welcome to Intelligence Squared. I'm Helen Carr and our guest today is Sean Matthews. Sean is a Greek American journalist who has over the course of his career covered the Middle east as a correspondent with the Middle East Eye. Shaun has also Written for the Economist and AI Monitor, amongst others. The New Byzantines, the Rise of Greece and the Return of the near east is his first book. Welcome to Intelligence Squared, Sean.
- [02:49]
Sean Matthews
Thank you for having me on, Helen. It's a pleasure to be here.
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Helen Carr
Greece in your book seems to be having, seems to be having a comeback that historically it's perhaps been seen as a power on the edge of Europe rather than necessarily being immersed within it. And there's been a bit of a push pull as to where it exactly belongs as a European state or as something that belongs more to the Middle East. And I, I think your title gives a lot away in relation to your argument with this. And so why did you decide on the title, the New Byzantines?
- [03:22]
Sean Matthews
Yeah, I mean, look, I think that's kind of the forever tussle with Greece as a part of the east or part of the West. And the story with Greece really since it emerged as an independent state out of the Ottoman Empire in 1832, it was created after revolution, was kind of this pull towards the west. Really from the, from the mid 19th century all the way up until the post war era, Greece was always being pulled in the direction of the west. Whether that was from big European powers during the colonial era like Britain, which really took an independent Greece under its wing. And then in the post war era, the United States pulling Greece into NATO and obviously Greece joined the European Union. But what I say in the book is that at this stage now, with a decline we're seeing of Western powers in Europe and Greece's geographical position kind of on the periphery of Europe, as you said, it's being pulled back to the east, which of course it was always a part of. I say, right, this goes back to the Byzantine Empire, then Greece's kind of 400, 500 year period of rule under the Ottoman Empire. And those trends, those currents are reasserting themselves today.
- [04:28]
Helen Carr
I mean, I'm quite interested as a historian and with a childhood fascination with Greece as a space of incredible archaeology and, and the ancient world. How much do you think some of the, the 19th century Antiquarian archaeologists and that fascination with Greece has. How responsible do you think that was in relation to Greece becoming adopted as this sort of part of the, of the Western Western interest?
- [04:55]
Sean Matthews
Oh, it was very, I mean, it was very, very important. I mean the whole. So basically what you had was, you know, you have to really go back to the collapse of the Roman Empire. I don't want to get too lengthy on it, but to really, to kind of ground us once The Roman Empire, it split into the eastern and the western halves. And when the Roman Empire collapsed, the eastern half of the empire continued for centuries afterwards, really right up until the 1400s, as the Byzantine Empire. And this was an eastern empire that, you know, it ruled over present day Palestine, Israel, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, and. And of course, its heartland, its base was Constantinople, what is today Istanbul. So hence, that's the Byzantine part of the title. Of course, the Europeans, the Western Europeans were much more interested in ancient Greece, as you're saying. Right. The archaeologists who came to see the Parthenon, the Acropolis. Funnily enough, one of the books that I cite quite heavily in my book, the New Byzantines is a book from the 1970s titled Greece Without Columns. And it's from a British journalist. Yeah, David Holden. And basically his whole argument was to kind of unpack this myth of a western Greece centered on ancient Athens and the birthplace of democracy, and to look at it really as an appendage of the wider Middle east through the Byzantine history, through its time during the Ottoman, when it was controlled by the Ottoman Empire, and then really right up until today. Right. I mean, so many of the issues that Greece faces today, the Cyprus issue, its rivalry with an independent Turkey, the new alliances that it is forging in the Middle east, are all basically kind of pointing towards its eastern direction.
- [06:26]
Helen Carr
Yeah. It's hard to think, and I'm guilty of thinking Greece, about Greece on those terms as being this sort of ancient space and a space of this incredible history and archeology. But what you mentioned Cyprus, and I'm wondering what is the historical relationship just to sort of ground this between Greece and its neighbors, particularly with Turkey? Because Turkey is such an important part of your book, right?
- [06:49]
Sean Matthews
No, the rivalry between Greece and Turkey really kind of defines Greek foreign policy today. And it's something that I think in the west that everyone watches very closely. In general, I always kind of see Turkey and Greece as foils of each other. After World War II, Greece descended into a horrible civil war between the left and the right. And it was U.S. intervention in that U.S. intervention that kind of turned the tide of the war against the communists on and put Greece kind of into the Western camp. Right. So Greece and Turkey, they joined NATO at the same time in 1952. And they were always, you know, they were always foes. Right. I mean, once Greece, Greece got its independence from the Ottoman Empire, and Greece, kind of the modern states that we know of Greece today, it came about by clawing territory out of the Ottoman Empire. So in the Balkans, you know, you had Greek partisans, you had the Greek army through various wars in the mid and late 1900s, but basically clawing territory away from the Ottoman Empire and forging what is today the modern borders of Greece. After World War I, Greece and Turkey had a horrible war which saw Greece actually invade Asia Minor. What is today, you know, the hinterlands and the proper territory of Turkey. Greece invaded this area and they tried to wrest it back because there were Greek minorities living there. So the age old tussle between Greece and Turkey, it's a key feature of the book. What I say in the book is that today what we're seeing is a shift in the balance of power in the Eastern Mediterranean away from Greece and towards Turkey. And this has a lot to do with Turkey's rise as an independent power, which I examined through the war in Ukraine, Israel's war in Gaza, and Turkey's growing military, military might and independence from the West. So historically, Greece was always reliant on Western powers to keep Turkey in check, whether that was Britain or whether that was later, after World War II, the US and because of this fracturing of the west, because of the Trump administration's flirtation with territorial expansion in the Western Hemisphere, it's pulled back from Eastern Europe. Greece is not able to rely on the United States as much as it was decades ago. So, yeah, the rivalry between Greece and Turkey and the shifting balance of power is a key part of the book. Greek media is they love to rip up these tensions and it's, you know, it's the nationalist frenzy. The voters love it. But what I say in the book is that in the old days, you know, the US Used to intervene and kind of pull them away from each other. So in 1996, you saw Greece and Turkey almost went to war over an uninhabited island in the Eastern Mediterranean. The Clinton administration at the time the US Intervened and pulled them apart. And what I say is that as the US Pulls out of Eastern Europe and Southern Europe and as the Trump administration and likely future administrations kind of reassess the role of the US in the world, that's much less likely. And you combine that with a growing Turkey, which is much more independent, that is no longer dependent on the west under President Erdogan, you have this kind of simmering tension in the Eastern Mediterranean, which is always going to be there.
- [09:47]
Helen Carr
So much of this book is written because of your career and your experience, but you open with a lot of these, a lot of anecdotes about similarities between your own experiences as a Greek American, but also some shared with Lebanese people who you have encountered. Can you explain a little bit more about that and how that was interesting to you in relation to writing the book?
- [10:10]
Sean Matthews
Yeah. So, I mean, I came to Greece basically as a Greek American, fourth generation. You wouldn't know it from my name because it was Americanized. I discuss that in the book. It went from Matthias to Matthews. But I came back to Greece as a journalist, kind of looking to get a foothold in the Middle east after living in Jordan and Egypt for a while. And I grew up kind of not seeing any similarities between Greece and the wider Middle east, what was the former Byzantine Empire and the former Ottoman Empire. So we would go to the Greek church growing up and we had the Greek customs and rituals like Souvlaki, Pastitsu and all of that. It wasn't until I came back to Greece in 2020 and use Greece as a hub to explore the wider region, basically as a freelance journalist traveling between Greece and Jordan, Greece and Lebanon, Greece and Egypt, that I saw all these similarities between the cultures, like baklava, like Turkish coffee, right. Which mysteriously renamed Greek coffee, and all these other things, even these invocations that you kind of associate with religiosity in the Middle East. You know, for me, that's one of the most fascinating parts of kind of Greek culture. I spend a lot of time in the Middle East. So anyone who kind of goes. Goes to the region knows, you know, phrases like Alhamdulillah or Mashallah that kind of get thrown out, you know, by Arab speakers. And Greece has their own equivalent of those basically, in Greek. And I think that that's a strand, I say, that connects Greece with the wider eastern world, the former lands of Byzantium and the Ottoman Empire. And it's something that, you know, people who come from the US or the UK go on vacation in Greece. You know, if you go to Mykonos or Santorini, you miss those things. But it's a. It's a very clear kind of, you know, anchor that Greece has to the wider Middle East.
- [11:49]
Helen Carr
I'm really interested how you think tourism has played a part in the development of Greece as this incredibly distinct European space. You know, this is a. This is a holiday destination. So somewhere that people have been traveling to for decades, for generations. It's been. It become incredibly popularized as a distinctly European, semi Western space to go to go and visit. That, I think, does separate it from the East. And I was wondering how much of an impact you think that that has had when Greece, as you're pointing out has so many cultural connections to the east. And if you think that that's shifting.
- [12:33]
Sean Matthews
No, I think it's there. I mean, look, a lot of the Greeks that I meet in the book, they like to call Greece. One gentleman, he called it to me the soft Middle east. Basically he said it's Lebanon without Hezbollah and with more girls. And I think that kind of summarized right the allure of Greece to maybe the western tourists. Right. You can go to the islands and you can have Uzo, which is like Ardaq, kind of the Arabic equivalent is Ardaq. You can have souvlaki, almost the same food, but you don't have to worry about the war and conflict. So, you know, kind of tongue in cheek, there's a little something there where Greece, it gives the taste of the east to western tourists. Right. I would say though that the tourism story, it features prominently in the book because you know, there are really, there are two themes that I kind of dissected when I moved back to Greece. The one is this pull factor that's pulling Greece back to the east. I say right through these geopolitical alliances, these threats from neighboring countries. And the other, of course is Greece's economic recovery from the financial crisis. Right. I mean Greece had a, like a great depression level crisis more than a decade ago. And it was tourism and real estate investment that really saved the Greek economy. And visitors to Athens will see now that the city, it's booming. You know, I say in the book, I mean try getting a reservation at a mid popular restaurant on a Thursday night. You can't do it even in winter, I should add.
- [13:51]
Helen Carr
Yeah, I think Athens is having a bit of a renaissance, isn't it? I think it has become quite one of these sort of hot new destinations to.
- [13:58]
Sean Matthews
It's very much the right. That's rise of digital nomads who can live and work anywhere, you know, remote work. It's really, it's changed the face of Athens and it kind of goes along with tourism. Right. So what I say in the book is actually, you know, that Greece's economic recovery in Greece is in many ways a success story for the European Union. You know, Greece's borrowing costs today, the lower the that of France is, which is remarkable. If you had told someone that in 2013 or 2014, maybe that says more about Western Europe's decline than Greece's rise. But everything is relative to a certain point. But again, Greece's economic recovery really is driven by this huge influx of real estate investments, speculation Tourism. And you see it, right? You can see it when you come to Athens or you go to the islands and you see construction everywhere, new boutiques, opening up cafes. It's becoming a very trendy city. At the same time, what I talk about in the book is the downside of that for. For Greece and the Greek people, which is that we're seeing a huge cost of living crisis in Greece for ordinary Greeks, right, who are getting priced out because of real estate, speculators and because of this work, remote vibe. And Greece's big struggle. The coming years is going to be how to balance, really, its rise as a tourism powerhouse, I think it's fair to say, which has been a godsend for the country, especially in the wake of the economic crisis. But how do they balance that with the cost of living for ordinary Greek people?
- [15:15]
Helen Carr
When I'm thinking about Greek tourism, especially in the summers, I'm also. It's interesting how well it's doing and how well Athens is doing is growing as a city, despite a lot of the climate disasters that have happened in Greece historically over the last few years as well. And I'm thinking particularly of enormous fires and hazards like that. And it still seems to be developing by quite an extraordinary land level, as per what you're saying. You do talk about 2019 in your book and how these old tropes about Greece are ceasing to exist. Why is 2019 such an important date in relation to how we consider Greece?
- [15:55]
Sean Matthews
For me, it's when I started as a Greek American, really coming back to Greece more. And kind of one of the sparks for this book was created because I was looking for books to read about Greece as a young journalist who was coming back here, and they kind of fell in two camps. I say, you know, on the right, you had these. These books that were written in commentary about Greece as, you know, a lazy socialist state within the European Union that was inundated with migrants from the Muslim world, right? I mean, real scaremong green stuff. And then on the left, of course, you had, you know, their own criticisms of the neoliberal order and, you know, the economic challenges we faced, which were genuine in many ways. But they also kind of decried kind of Greece's treatment from Western powers like Germany and the US and when I arrived in Greece, what I kind of noticed was that both of those tropes were being smashed to bits, I said, because basically a lot of the investment that we saw coming into Greece was actually from the Muslim world and from the wider east, right? You'll have to include Israel in that too, which is a Jewish state. But, you know, Israelis, Palestinians, Lebanese, Egyptians and Turks are really fueling the property boom that's going on in Greece and this construction boom around tourism.
- [17:01]
Helen Carr
Yeah.
- [17:01]
Sean Matthews
So it was kind of an interesting, you know, pivot from the scare migraine about migration, which really showed Greece's connection with the wider Eastern world. I think one of the trends that I picked up in the book is that because Greece is located in the southernmost periphery of the European Union, it's very easy to see the new kind of power centers that are emerging in the world order. And you can see the investments in Greece are coming from Eastern countries. For example, last year, the United Arab Emirates had one of the largest single foreign direct investments in Greece, which is really remarkable. Right. That the biggest source of fdi, single biggest source of FDI in Greece, it wasn't France or Germany, it was the uae. And that's kind of the old tropes that I'm saying are being smashed to bits. Because the prism of looking at Greece, you know, first of all as a, you know, as a lackey to, like, Western capitalism, but then also as a country that's, you know, ravaged by Muslim migration, both of those are totally wrong.
- [17:50]
Helen Carr
Okay, could you say you could almost compare Greece as a country to some of the European border nations or border states that. In that it's not necessarily porous, but it is a space of cultural connectivity. So there is a sway either side, depending on which part the east or the west kind of holds more financial power or even more military power. Would you think that would. That would be an interesting or fair comparison to make, that it is, as a country, potentially influenced by this? Like a border would be?
- [18:29]
Sean Matthews
Yeah, I think it's a very fair comparison. I mean, borders come up so much in my book. It's funny, you know, because I travel a lot in the book. So about half the book takes place in Greece, but then the other half takes place in Egypt, in Israel, Palestinian territories, and in Turkey, basically all the countries where there were once historic Greek communities living in the wider Middle East. So this idea of borders and about boundaries, it came up with so many of the Greeks that I spoke with, especially in the wider Middle east, these historic communities living there. I think the lesson that we take from Greece in terms of borders and this idea of a porous exchange is the concept of the Mediterranean not so much as a border, but as a connector. It's funny to say, but the great British colonialists kind of KNEW in the 1900s they called, they called the Mediterranean. Basically it was never the border of Europe for them. The border of Europe was always the African desert, the Sahal. And they understood that the Mediterranean was really a connecting element for Greece to the coast of North Africa, to Lebanon, to Turkey. So I think we in the Western world have long associated the Mediterranean as kind of a hard stopping point and border for Greece and for Europe from the Muslim and the Arab world. But that's not the case. Right. And I think what we're seeing from migration, what we're seeing from rising powers in the region like Turkey, like a revisionist Israel, like Gulf states, is that the Mediterranean kind of connects much more than it divides and that Greece is on the front lines of that.
- [19:56]
Helen Carr
There's a really interesting book and it's medieval. Its focus is medieval history, which is my period, but it's by Robert Bartlett and it's called the Making of Europe. And it does actually talk about how borders actually helped to define how these nations consider themselves to be as European nations. And it was the kind of moving of the borders, borders and the shifting cultures and the fusion of different cultures and how they connected in multiple different ways. And I think that's really interesting in how one might consider Greece. But obviously Greece is also, it's got its island culture. And I'm interested how the islands perhaps are distinct or perhaps very similar in relation to are they becoming more influenced by the east to today than they were before? I mean, how do the well known islands around Greece fit into this?
- [20:48]
Sean Matthews
It's an interesting question. When you talk about Greece's island culture, I think it's very fascinating because I almost think of them in three subsets. The first island that I think especially a lot of British listeners would know is Corfu. It was made famous by Lawrence Durrell. It's a very popular tourism spot. So Corfu is located in the Ionian Sea and it's bordering Greece's western periphery and on the coast of Albania. And for me I call Corfu. It's kind of like the most European island within Greece. And that is because in fact it was never conquered by the Ottoman Empire, which I think is really interesting. So I never went to Corfu in the book, but I've been before. And I compare it to the city on the mainland, which is the largest city on the mainland next to it, which is Yanana, which was conquered by the Ottoman Empire. And basically I say that traveling from Yaoina, this city in northeastern Greece, which was under Ottoman rule for 400 years, to Corfu, which was under British control and then ceded to Greece in the mid-1800s. It's like traveling between two different countries in a sense, because basically all of the Westernizing tendencies that kind of, you see in the architecture, in the food, even in the way people carry themselves and the way that they kind of, you know, they base themselves in human relations. You see a big difference between Yaanana, which was controlled by the Ottomans for 400 years, and Corfu, which kind of escaped the Ottoman control. I personally, I like Yaanana more, but that's, you know, that's my book. I think the other trend for the islands that you should consider is kind of the big name ones like Mykonos, Santorini. And again, I see another Eastern instinct here from the Greeks, which is Dubai Ification. And I write about this in my book, which is that, you know, Greece is intent on extracting every cent it can out of Western tourists and eastern Taurus for that matter. And, you know, the islands in the Cyclop, the Cycladic islands like Mykonos and Paros and Santorini have really just become hubs for what is a global tourism boom, right? And they're, you know, it's priced ordinary Greeks out. So you have a huge crisis on these islands, actually, where doctors and teachers, they can't afford to rent houses or apartments. And it's catch 22 for Greece, right, because they need the tourism flow, tourism dollars, but they're pricing out their locals from these islands. And there is a concern, right, that these islands are losing their culture and their traditions. Again, these islands were never really part of Greece. The last kind of island segment that I would look at are the Eastern Aegean Islands. So Chios, Rhodes, Lesvos, which for me are the most eastern, right? They share, they're right on the coast of Turkey. Ironically, when Greece and Turkey were forming their borders around the time of the First World War, both the Greeks and the Turks argued that the islands like Rhodes, Chios and Lesbos belong naturally to the Turkish mainland. Greece argued that because they wanted the Turkish mainland for itself. And Turkey argued that because Turkey wanted to keep the islands obviously with the Turkish mainland. So I think that says a little bit about the culture, I think, and just geographically where these islands are centered, right, they're much more part of the east than a part of the West. And again, in the book, one of the main islands that I discuss is Chios. My family hails from an island, a very, very small island next to Chios called Enusis. And it was actually Chios. That really got me thinking about the connections between Greece and the wider Middle East. There's a product from Heos called mastic and it's a resin. And it's almost unknown in the western world in the UK and the US unless you go to a Greek specialty shop. But it's a hugely popular product in the wider Middle East. It's basically, it's used to flavor things like ice cream and coffee, it's used in meat marinades and it only comes from chios. Anyway, when I first traveled to the Middle east, the last place in Greece I was, I was on Chios and I thought I had left Chios behind at the time. This was six or seven years ago. And I said, okay, now I'm going to the Middle East. You know, I'm gone with Greece. And I think the first week that I arrived in Jordan, a bunch of friends took me to taste ice cream flavored with mastic from the island of Chios. And you know what I say in the book is that people from the Middle east actually knew more about these eastern Greek Aegean islands than people in the UK and the us I think that says something also about the connections between the eastern Aegean islands and the wider eastern world.
- [25:14]
Helen Carr
Sounds like a really trendy ice cream shop as well.
- [25:17]
Sean Matthews
It's really good. Yeah.
- [25:24]
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- [28:31]
Helen Carr
So when you're talking about islands and, and the, you know, the, the, the influence of the east and western islands, the island that was coming to my mind so much in this was Cyprus. I mean, how could you use Cyprus as an example to talk about the, that push pull between east and Western culture and the relationship with, with Turkey, I mean, how does that. Do you think Cyprus is a good example to be able to investigate that?
- [28:58]
Sean Matthews
I think Cyprus is a good example, admittedly, you know, I left Cyprus out of my book. And I left it out for a reason, because I really, I didn't want to condense Greece's relations.
- [29:08]
Helen Carr
It's a whole book in itself.
- [29:09]
Sean Matthews
Yes, it's a whole book in itself, for sure. And I didn't want to condense Greece's relations to the wider Middle east through the Cyprus issue. Right. Which is this issue that goes back to really, the 1950s, when, you know, when you had communal tensions between Greeks and Turks on the island. But what I do say for Cyprus is that, interestingly enough, is that the collapse of. The apparent collapse of a solution to the Cypriot conflict kind of really symbolized this turn of Turkey away from the West. And this is something that the Greeks of Istanbul who I met told me. So the Greek community of Istanbul today is about 2,000 people, and it's really shrunk. It's facing really the threat of extinction. There are holdover of the times when Istanbul was part of the Ottoman Empire and the city was roughly 30% Christian. Anyway, one of the interesting things for me when I was meeting with the community is that they basically, they flagged Cyprus to me and they said that the lack of a solution to Cyprus back in the mid-2000s, when Turkey was in negotiations to join the European Union, really kind of spelled this pivot for Turkey away from the west, and it convinced them to start thinking again about their place in the East. So Turkey was in talks to talks with the European Union, but they needed to have a solution to the separate problem because the northern half of Cyprus is occupied by Turkey illegally, which they invaded in 1974. And Turkey would never be let into the European Union without a solution to the Cypriot issue, because you can't occupy another country and be in the European Union. And unfortunately, the talks that the UN was sponsoring at the time in the mid 2000s collapsed. And today you have this kind of hazy fog over Cyprus, where the internationally recognized government, which is majority Greek, is in the south, and there continues to be Turkish occupied half in the north, which Turkey is militarizing very heavily. And it sent a lot of settlers actually to the north. But for me, again, the way I approach the Cyprus issue in the book is looking at it as one of the pivot points in which we saw Turkey moving away from the west and kind of carving out a niche for itself as an Eastern power in the wider Middle East.
- [31:21]
Helen Carr
Is this what you mean when you describe Turkey as a revisionist?
- [31:25]
Sean Matthews
Yes. Yeah. It has to do with the Cyprus issue and then of course, also with the eastern Aegean Islands. So Greece and Turkey are locked in this really intense maritime dispute over their exclusive economic zones, which are basically the areas of the sea that each one can claim. And, you know, the dispute was kind of, you know, it was kind of nerdy a few decades ago, but because there's the chance of seeing finding natural gas under the sea, it's become much more intense because there's money involved. And the Greeks and the Turks are, you know, they're kind of stuck in this quagmire where they're fighting over these maritime zones. And Turkey claims almost the entire swath of eastern Mediterranean that Greece claims, including the sea around all of its eastern Aegean islands. So that's part of the revisionism that I discuss in the book. Also the other aspect which I discuss in the book, which doesn't get a lot of attention in the west, is Turkish meddling in Greece's northern borders. There's a Muslim minority community that lives in northeastern Greece. And Turkey through its consulate there and through kind of this shadow campaign, is locked in kind of a shadow war with Greece over kind of influence over its northern borderlands.
- [32:33]
Helen Carr
I'm interested in thinking about the east and obviously this ongoing dispute between Greece and Turkey. But there have been more serious wars and conflicts within the East. I mean, yes, it's this growing financial power, but there's also a lot of war and conflict that is going on all at the same time. I mean, how does that impact Greece? You talked earlier about migrants. Do you find that it has a significant impact on Greece? Because I always consider Greece to be a reasonably. Today, a reasonably peaceful nation.
- [33:07]
Sean Matthews
Yeah, it's very peaceful. I think the big conflict here obviously has been Israel's war on Gaza and the conflict in the Middle East. And actually I discuss at length the relationship between Greece and Israel, which for me is one of the most fascinating trends in the region. In 2020, Israel signed the so called Abraham Accords agreements, which got a lot of fanfare. The Israelis normalized relations with three Muslim Arab countries, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain in Morocco. Around the same time, Greece and Israel started to align much more closely in this partnership because both of them are alarmed over Erdogan's Turkey. And I say that that partnership between Greece and Turkey, it hasn't gotten a lot of attention in the Western press. It's almost been overshadowed by the Abraham Accords, but it's been really pivotal for the region and it features quite heavily in my book this idea of Greece kind of looking around the Middle east for partners to check. Turkey and of course the partner that the Greeks have chosen is Israel, which is interesting when you consider kind of the historic ties the Greece has had with Israel and Palestine. You know, Greece was actually one of the countries that was most hostile to Zionism, interestingly enough. And it took a very pro Arab position after World War II in the late 1940s and the 1950s, kind of opposing Israel. And then into the 1990s. And today we've seen this total switch where Greece has moved very, very close with Israel and their partners in the eastern Mediterranean. Their militaries drill together. Greece is buying weapons from Israel. And all of this is really kind of centered around Greek and Israeli concerns about Turkish revisionism in Syria, in the eastern Aegean and in Libya.
- [34:42]
Helen Carr
How does that play out in cities like Athens? I mean, is that something that is accepted or is it the Greek government facing pushback with that?
- [34:51]
Sean Matthews
It's really interesting actually. You know, the level, an interesting anecdote. There was a complaint from some Israeli tourists, I think, about graffiti. You know, Athens is known for its graffiti. It's very famous for it. If anyone, if you've been, you'll know it's almost on every wall. And there was a complaint from Israeli tourists which kind of filtered down to the government over kind of all of this graffiti that many Greeks had sprayed, kind of attacking the Israeli Defense Forces over the war in Gaza. And the mayor of Athens basically told Israel to kind of shut up and he said that he's not going to erase the graffiti. So there's a real tension, I think, between Greeks who are opposed to Israel's war in Gaza, which is quite frankly the vast majority of Greeks, and the Greek government which has formed this very, very close partnership with Israel, which I should note is on both the left and the right of Greek politics. Interestingly enough, you know, the alliance between Greece and Israel started with Alexis Tsipras, who was kind of the left wing firebrand of Greek politics during the crisis years. And he was the one with US support, who really forged this partnership with Benjamin Netanyahu because both were so concerned about Turkey. The government of Kyriakos Mitsotakis, which is the current center right government in Greece, they've kind of, you know, they've put the relationship much more forward. They signed a defense deal, a lot more military exercises. But yes, the issue of where, where are the Greek people on the Israeli Palestinian conflict? And whereas the Greek government are vastly different. And it's a very interesting trend to watch, you know, in the book. I also spent quite a bit of time in Israel in occupied East Jerusalem, which I think is again, one of the most fascinating aspects of all of this is that like in Istanbul there was once a historic Greek community in Jerusalem. I mean, people forget this. So you had Greeks scattered across the wider Middle east in Cairo, in Jerusalem, in Istanbul. The Greek community in Jerusalem today numbers about 100 people, which is just a shell of its former self. Before the creation of Israel, there were anywhere between 10,000 and 20,000 Greeks living in Jerusalem, which is a staggering number. Yeah. And I say in the book, really, that Israel has been as intolerant to the Greeks as Turkey has been towards Christians and Egypt. Arab nationalists were towards Greeks because the Greeks also got ran out of Egypt in the 1960s. There's this dispute, right, between the Greek Orthodox Church and Jerusalem and the Israeli government over a whole slew of issues like land and property sales and the kind of the rise of settler, the far right settler movement, which. It's a very big issue that is not being addressed in the Greek Israeli relationship.
- [37:27]
Helen Carr
Yeah, that relationship with Israel is sort of. What you're saying is that really just the tip of the iceberg to a much greater political issue between not only Israel and Greece, but Greece and Turkey and other Arab states as well.
- [37:40]
Sean Matthews
Yes, yes. What's interesting again for the Greeks though is that the historic role of Greece in Israel and Palestine, not a lot of people know this, but, you know, the main landholder, the second largest landholder in Israel is the Greek Orthodox Church. So they actually leased the Knesset, the Israeli parliament. It's building. Yeah, yeah. So there's a lot of tension between Greeks who are upset over attacks from far right settler groups against church property and these kind of things. And the military alliance that we're seeing between Greece and Israel.
- [38:14]
Helen Carr
You note that for around 80 years Greece was pulled in the direction of the west, but now it seems to be rejoining the East. I mean, do you think this is going to leave the west in a difficult situation or do you think that it's not going to have as much of an impact as one might think it?
- [38:31]
Sean Matthews
I think the impact it might not be what we assume. One of the things I say is that in the book is that if you looked at Greece 15 years ago, 2010, between 2010 and 2015, it was the Western institutions that looked very strong, NATO and the European Union, and it was Greece that looked very weak. There was a big debate whether Greece would crash out of the European Union. The government at the time, the government of Alexis Tsipras, which was the left wing government, was flirting with Russia. And you fast forward today, actually, and what you notice is that the Greeks are the stable ones and the Western institutions are the ones that look pretty shaky, which I find very ironic, and I think it's very telling, kind of for the world order that we're looking at. So I should note that the Greeks themselves, they're really clinging to the west in a certain sense, which I find fascinating, because they have a revisionist Turkey on one side. They're adjacent to the lands that Russia is claiming is a sphere of influence battering at Ukraine with this invasion and kind of, they see this chaos swirling around the Middle East. So they very much want the Western institutions to succeed. Greece would be the last one to leave the European Union, and they would be the last ones to leave NATO. If they were given a choice, they wouldn't do it. But those institutions look shaky, and that's why Greece has had to go and look for allies. And that's why they're looking for Israel as an ally against Turkey. That's why they've kind of struck a partnership with Egypt, because they're concerned about migration, and they want the Egyptian government to kind of crack down on migrants crossing the Mediterranean. They need investments, and the Western governments are cash trapped. So they're looking to Saudi Arabia, they're looking to the United Arab Emirates. One of the things I think, when we talk about Greece and leaving the west, which is interesting, is that, and I say this in the book, as Greece deepens its relationships with the east, it's still trying to maintain a strong partnership with the United States and with NATO. And we've seen that the last two years as Greece has really opened itself up to the US with military bases. So a lot of people don't know this, but a lot of the supplies that are going to Ukraine in the war against Russia are actually entering the country as the first destination through Greece to the port of Alexandroupoli, which is a Greek port in northeastern. In its northeastern borderlands. You also have an American base in Suda Bay on the island of Crete, another very eastern, very eastern island. So Greece very, very much wants the US here and it wants these Western institutions here. The problem the Greeks have is trying to keep them here.
- [40:53]
Helen Carr
Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, do you think this will be the state of play for Greece for a prolonged period of time, or do you think it's going to begin to play a much larger role in global politics?
- [41:07]
Sean Matthews
I think what we're going to see is that a lot of the flashpoints in global politics that we're seeing today, whether it be the rise of an independent Turkey, a revisionist independent Turkey, a revisionist Israel, a Middle east that is really walking on eggshells in terms of the wider conflict and the instability there. Greece is at the front lines of all of this. So Greece, I call it, it's a bellwether, really. Right. And it's the first, as you were saying, Right. It's kind of that first state that is going to be exposed to all the wild swings that I think we're going to see in a much more chaotic world. So it's the country to watch in the future.
- [41:43]
Helen Carr
Yeah, absolutely. I think it's just really interesting to consider Greece on these terms rather than necessarily a space that belongs to Europe, but a space that is conflicted and is just being pulled in the opposite direction, almost returning back to its origins. I wonder if you could almost describe a sort of chart as to what the significance of Greece would have looked like if you were to almost map it out, taking a macro perspective.
- [42:15]
Sean Matthews
I think you could. I mean, look, if you. If you really start with. If you start with the Greek Revolution of 1821, when Greece kind of gained its independence from the Ottoman Empire, this state that Europe, Western Europe created, right. As we were saying, right. Greece was the first ethnic nation state to be fashioned out of Europe. So after Greece, they all came next, right. Bulgaria, you know, Germany. But it was. Greece was really the start of it. And Greece was really the start of this kind of quest within the Ottoman world for a nation state from the Arabs, from Bosnia, from Serbia, from all these countries that were once ruled by the Ottoman Empire. Greece was the first one to get the bug for it for about 100 years. That was Greece's story, right? And it was, how do we create this nation state backed by Western European powers out of the crumbling Ottoman Empire? And the Greeks were always clawing territory here and there where they could. World War II happens. Greece is occupied by the Nazis. It descends into a horrible civil war which the Greek author Nikos Kazanzakis called the fratricide. It pitted brother against brother. It was a horrible conflict. But Greece emerges from that civil war, really is a bastion of US power projection into Europe and the wider Middle East. The Truman Doctrine, which the US kind of declared when they said that they were going to defend against communism and that every American dollar would go to defend states, you know, against the communist menace. It really started in Greece, which is interesting. So Greece, I say, is the first country actually of American post war intervention again. So you see the trend right from the first country that was a western nation state. And then you see the first country of post war American intervention against the communists. And today what you see is a Greece that is rejoining the east in a sense because of this rise of new powers and all of these things. So I think there were kind of three big timeframes in which Greece's history is spread out in the modern era.
- [44:08]
Helen Carr
And I think that's a brilliant note to end on. That was Sean Matthews, author of the New Byzantines, the Rise of Greece and Return of the near east, which is available now online or at a bookshop near you. I've been Helen Carr and you have been listening to Intelligence Squared. Thank you for joining us.
- [44:27]
Mia Sorrenti
Thanks for listening to Intelligence Squared. This episode was produced by Margarita Volpatto and it was edited by Mark Roberts. For ad free episodes and full length recordings. You can become a member@intelligencesquared.com membership and to join us at future live events, head to intelligencesquared.com attend to see our full live events program. You've been listening to Intelligence Squared. Thanks for joining us.
- [44:55]
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