By Adam McConnel
- The writer teaches Turkish history at Sabanci University in Istanbul. He holds an MA and PhD in history from the same university.
ISTANBUL
Before the Ramadan Eid, I spent nearly a week in Varkizas, Greece, a wealthy coastal town just south of Athens, close enough to be a suburb.
As most are aware, Greece’s economic problems continue despite some slight signs of recovery, and negotiations with European creditors are ongoing and tense.
During the days I spent there, Athens’s trash collectors went on strike over an ongoing dispute with the government, and garbage began to accumulate in the streets (though not in Varkizas, where removal continued).
Far more eye-catching were the roadside signs of economic distress not only in Varkizas, but everywhere that I traveled while there.
Shuttered shops, a constant street-level feature, have now been closed for so long that they are visibly decaying.
Even though some Athens neighborhoods remain prosperous and bustling, and Athens’s beaches are crowded as always, a general feeling of malaise is evident.
Seven or eight years ago this was not the case.
In the nearly 20 years that I’ve lived in Turkey, I’ve traveled to Greece on a dozen different occasions, sometimes staying as long as a month.
I also have dear friends and acquaintances there, and had last visited in 2014.
The frequency with which I’ve traveled to Greece has made it easy for me to compare and contrast developments in both countries.
But when I returned to Istanbul ten days ago, I experienced something new.
Of the many times that I’ve returned to Istanbul from Greece, this was the first in which I was struck by a stark difference between Istanbul’s green, colorful, vibrant, modern appearance and the run-down atmosphere in Athens.
Greece’s current economic and political maladies contribute to the more general regional problems.
Emigration
A positive future for Greece would mean a more positive future for everyone here, but the intransigence of politicians and creditors in Brussels and Berlin, as well as the incompetence and corruption of Greece’s political classes, make the prospects for improvement any time in the near future dim.
My friends there tell me that hundreds of thousands of young Greeks have no hope for their future, and are either looking to emigrate or struggling to get by in a badly depressed, economically and professionally limited reality.
Will Greeks end up joining the tens of thousands of Armenians, Georgians and Central Asian Turks that have streamed into Turkey looking for jobs?
Turkey’s economic vitality provides a spectacular contrast to Greece’s situation.
Despite the political instability and violence inflicted on Turkish society over the past five years by the various armed extremist groups focused on attacking it -- the PKK and its various incarnations, the DHKP-C, FETO, Daesh -- Turkey’s economy continues to grow and gain productivity.
Despite the overwrought, even malicious coverage in the international press, Turkey’s future looks increasingly positive.
With each passing day, as political stability is maintained, as the effort to root out Fethullah Gulen’s cultists and reform state institutions continues, as Turkey’s democracy strengthens and deepens, Turkish confidence in a more prosperous future increases.
Right now, Greece and Turkey are moving in opposite directions.
Two years ago, in the run-up to Greece’s referendum on its agreement with European creditors, I published a commentary for Serbestiyet.com focused on the political effort in both Greece and Turkey to reform state institutions.
In that column I expressed pessimism, informed by my contacts in Greece, about the ability of Greece’s leftist governing party-coalition, Syriza, to change the trajectory of Greece’s economy and society.
Greek voters rejected that July referendum, but Syriza and its Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras were still forced to deal with Greece’s financial issues through compromises in their ideology.
So my informants’ pessimism has been borne out by consequent events. In the last two years, Greece saw continued economic stagnation, little improvement in the quality of Greek state institutions, and a decline in Syriza’s popularity.
Elections are due in 2019, assuming that the Syriza government maintains its governing ability until then.
Elections
Whenever those elections do happen, Nea Demokratia, the more conservative of Greece’s two traditional political parties (center-left PASOK is the other), looks poised to regain control over parliament.
That would most likely mean a return to Greece’s “politics as usual”.
The head of Nea Demokratia is Kyriakos Mitsotakis, yet another politician coming from a long-established political dynasty.
His father was a former prime minister and his older sister is Dora Bakoyannis, a former Athens mayor and Greek foreign minister.
Mitsotakis has degrees from Harvard and Stanford, a background in finance, and talks of privatization, bureaucratic reform, and limiting austerity measures.
He’s also been making the rounds of European capitals to win support for his policy prescriptions.
All of this has been seen before in Greek politics, but implementation as a governing party is entirely different than criticizing while in opposition.
And Mitsotakis has not only the Greek state to worry about but even his own party.
Mitsotakis was elected Nea Demokratia’s leader as a dark horse candidate and apparently faces stiff opposition from within the party.
“Hope springs eternal,” as the saying goes, but only time will tell whether Mitsotakis, assuming that he’ll be the next Greek premier, can accomplish meaningful state institutional reform.
Turkish tourism to Greek islands
One relatively new phenomenon at least provides some relief, as well as a positive note in relations between Greece and Turkey.
As the Ramadan Eid began, articles in the Turkish press noted a wave of Turkish tourists heading to the Greek islands.
This is despite the unfavorable exchange rate between the euro and the Turkish Lira, which has depreciated from approximately 2.1 to 4.1 against the euro over the past seven years.
For several years now, Turkish tourists have been able to travel to the Greek islands on limited visas, and are now a welcome source of revenue there.
So my hope is that, despite the Greek state’s recent extremely unfortunate decision to protect instigators of last year’s failed coup attempt in Turkey, Turkish tourism in Greece can remain a source of badly needed revenue for the Greek economy.
That, in turn, can continue to be a platform upon which Greek and Turkish citizens can interact and establish better relations. Both shoring up the Greek economy and improving Greek-Turkish relations are important aspects of building a better future for this entire region.
