Shocking Greeks

AIM Athens, 30.4.1999

96% are opposed to NATO strikes against Serbia. 64% have a good opinion of Slobodan Milosevic, 53% of Evgeny Primakov, 5% of Tony Blair, 4% of Bill Clinton and of Havier Solana. 4% are satisfied with EU's attitude towards the Kosovo crisis while 51% who approve their government's handling of it. Quiz: where and when was the that poll taken?

An "educated guess" would be Belgrade on the eve of the strikes. Then, some people could have felt relatively free to say they did not like Milosevic and his handling of the Kosovo problem; almost all though would have been unhappy with the West's attitude of that problem, which had made strikes imminent. The Balkans, however, have traditionally confounded the pundits. This poll was indeed taken during the second and third week of the strikes, in Athens (by V-PRC and published in the daily "Ta Nea" on 17 and 19 April 1999). It offered quantitative evidence to what all observers noted as one-sided Serbophilia of the Greek public. Moreover, it confirmed what "politically correct," "Western-oriented" Greek scholars, journalists and analysts have consistently refused to admit, if not even denounced as superficial or biased analysis, when it was mentioned by others. Namely that Greek political culture is profoundly anti-Western and hardly democratic.

It may be considered legitimate for public opinion in a Balkan country to oppose the use of force to help solve such an intricate problem. One could even indulge with the very low popularity of Western leaders and institutions involved in the decision-making for the NATO strikes, though this would have meant ignoring all other aspects of their record. When nevertheless they indicate they are at the same time fond of one of the most horrendous dictators of the late twentieth century (Milosevic), and of the prime minister of a very authoritarian country (Primakov), then it can be safely concluded that democratic values are not salient for Greek public opinion.

This was already shown, inter alia, by a EU-wide (Eurobarometer) poll in Spring 1993. Then, a mere 21% of Greeks considered "tolerance and the respect for others" as an especially important quality to encourage in their children, as compared with 42%-62% in the other EU countries, and even 29% in the previously communist East Germany. There can probably be no other explanation that Milosevic is liked by 64%, while, simultaneously, 53% believe that "Milosevic and the Serb government violate Albanians' human rights in Kosovo," vs. 22% who do not think there are any violations. Clearly, a sizeable number of Greeks have no problem liking a political leader even though they know he violates human rights.

It may seem paradoxical therefore that the Greek government which has, as a NATO partner, approved the strikes and facilitated NATO armed forces (a "service" opposed by 57% and approved only by 26%) can enjoy a 51% to 37% positive approval rating for its handling of the Kosovo problem. Especially when in no other policy area does it receive, in other surveys, an approval rating of more than 35%. Or to see that 53% of Greeks favor their country's continuing membership in the Alliance that is carrying out strikes that they so unanimously oppose (vs. 26% who prefer withdrawal). Nothing unusual however for careful observers of the Greek political scene. When PASOK first came to power, in 1981, it and the majority of Greeks opposed the presence of American bases in Greece. The PASOK government, a few years later, simply renegotiated their presence on Greek soil. Notwithstanding this about-turn, Greeks continued to be opposed in principle to the U.S. bases but accepted the deal and continued to give PASOK higher marks in foreign policy than in other policy areas.

In can be argued that the main reason why, since 1981, and with the almost accidental exception of 1990-1993, Greece has been governed by socialist PASOK is that this party has traditionally better reflected the deep rooted, and among other things anti-Western, Greek political culture. In the 1990s, especially after the conservative New Democracy went again into opposition, it too adopted a more nationalistic and anti- Western posture. It was, in a way, a "return to the roots."

There have traditionally been two currents of anti-Westernism in Greece. One has reflected the Orthodox Christian component of Greek culture. From the time of the various medieval crusades, Eastern Christianity, which was one of their victims, has been so strongly anti-Western that it even preferred to see the Byzantine Empire fall at the hands of the Ottomans rather than unite with Western Christianity to help defend the Empire. In modern times, Eastern Christianity successfully resisted the influence of Enlightenment, seeing it as a "Western evil:" this has made the concepts of individual civil rights and political liberalism as yet incompatible with cultures that venerate Orthodoxy.

The second anti-Western current has been the socialist, anti-imperialist one, that had everywhere, in the past, considered the West only as the cradle of capitalism, and not also of civil rights. When PASOK came to power, in 1981, its political platform resembled more that of (Chile's) Allende's than that of the various European social-democratic parties. Its skillful founder and leader, Andreas Papandreou, soon after encouraged the neo-Orthodox convergence of the anti-Western left with the anti- Western Orthodox Church, which provided the ideological foundation of his populist, (Argentine's) Peron-like, style of government.

Papandreou's successor and current prime minister, Costas Simitis, has on the other hand been a convinced European-style social democrat. His three-year record in power has been characterized by a semi-successful effort to rationalize Greek policy-making. Ironically, the three major challenges he has faced to date have reflected how profoundly the country has been impregnated by its anti-Western culture. First, as he was coming to power, in January 1996, he was manipulated into a Greek-Turkish conflict over a desert rocky Aegean islet claimed also by Turkey, Imia. His newly sworn government opted for a compromise solution brokered by the US, which has been widely perceived since then as a national humiliation.

Then, in February 1999, the Greek government allowed once more the country's "shadow state" to meddle in the Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan's attempts to find asylum in a European country, an intrusion that led to another "national tragedy" as Ocalan ended up been captured by the Turks as he was leaving the Greek Embassy in Kenya. Finally, in the Kosovo crisis, Greece's media and most opinion-makers, by manipulating facts and distorting the truth, easily reactivated the Greeks' traditional anti-Western reflexes.

Such an environment undermines Greece's efforts to be a key player in the Balkans. The pictures of Greek demonstrators waving Greek and Serbian flags while burning American ones, shown almost daily all over the region and the world, are seriously damaging the government's credibility. It is indeed an irony that in this last year of the twentieth century, the official Greek position seems to be closer to that of the country's traditional "black sheep," the very few genuine human rights non-governmental organizations, than to the views of its electorate. In a meaningful move, in late April, Greek foreign minister George Papandreou put on his NGO hat to sign a public appeal for an effort to find a reasonable solution to the Kosovo conflict. The appeal was launched by Greek and Bulgarian NGOs, some of which (like the respective Helsinki Committees) have repeatedly been named by local media and politicians as those countries' "worst enemies".

Panayote Dimitras (AIM)