Simitis finds little time to relax on Aegean holiday

Mr Costas Simitis … little time to enjoy the sights of Sifnos

Letter from
Greece
Patrick
Comerford

The Greek Prime Minister, Mr Costas Simitis, is spending his holidays this week in the Aegean on the western Cycladic island of Sifnos, 76 miles south of Athens. In Classical times, Sifnos enjoyed great wealth, derived from its gold and silver mines, and its treasury was dedicated to Apollo at Delphi. Today, Sifniots claim, the island has 365 churches and chapels, one for each day of the year.

However, Mr Simitis is unlikely to find much time to relax among the 365 churches of Sifnos or to enjoy the island’s great festival tomorrow, the feast of the Panagia or Virgin Mary, which comes only second to Easter for its great festivities and celebrations.

Instead, he will be considering how to fight his latest slump in the opinion polls, concentrating on a speech in which he is expected to outline his plans to keep his economic and public sector reforms on track, and contemplating the potential challenges within his own centre-left party, the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (Pasok).

Pasok has been in office for all but three of the past 20 years, but dissatisfaction is running high. Last month, for the first time, Mr Simitis’s rating sank below 30 per cent, his lowest ever, and for the first time he polled below Mr Costas Karamanlis, the untested leader of the main opposition party, New Democracy.

As he sees his popularity being eroded, Mr Simitis is now expected to announce a series of anti-poverty measures, along with tax cuts and increased public spending, in a major speech in Thessaloniki next month.

Greeks had hoped that joining the EMU last January would mean greater prosperity and a better standard of living.

The Prime Minister’s supporters point out that in the past few years Mr Simitis has achieved low inflation, faster growth than the EU average and an acceptably low budget deficit.

But his opponents point out that hopes for 5 per cent growth this year have been scaled back, the ailing stock market has hit a three-year low, and consumer inflation is running at 3.9 per cent, with persistent dry weather making fruit and vegetables expensive.

In Thessaloniki, Mr Simitis may want to make the most of the Olympic Games taking place in Athens in 2004, promising that all Greeks and not just Athenians will reap benefits.

But for most Greeks taxes remain high, paying them is time-consuming and complicated, and the poll figures reflect the belief of many that they have seen little change in a daily struggle with bureaucracy and public services.

The Prime Minister’s closest political adviser, the Environment Minister, Mr Costas Laliotis, conceded: “We must not close our eyes and ears to the messages incorporated in the polls.”

Elections are some time away, but Mr Simitis is facing growing criticism within Pasok, the party founded by the late Andreas Papandreou.

The Prime Minister has warned that he will not sacrifice policies for the sake of popularity. But heated street protests led by the public sector unions – his power-base in Pasok – forced him to shelve plans to overhaul the state pension scheme.

Now he has brought the party congress forward by six months to October in the hope of reaffirming his leadership before launching a much-needed cabinet shuffle. A cabinet shuffle is particularly popular among Pasok voters (69.3 per cent), and ministers whose proposals have caused a public uproar recently are expected to go. Although Mr Simitis is standing for re-election as party leader, one of his principal rivals inside the cabinet, the ageing Defence Minister, Mr Akis Tsohatzopoulos, who leads the party’s old-fashioned tax-and-spend populists, may see this as his last opportunity to become party leader and prime minister.

The Defence Minister, angered by a trimmed defence budget and a decision to postpone buying new fighter jets, has never been reticent about his ambitions. Having suffered two previous defeats at the hands of Mr Simitis, Mr Tsohatzopoulos could see the party congress in October as his last chance for revenge.

Mr Simitis, for his part, must win and win convincingly if he can hope to keep the populists silent as he forges ahead with reforms.

If he fails to win convincingly, then the best-qualified alternative is his Foreign Minister, Mr George Papandreou.

Mr Papandreou would have a better chance than most to unite Pasok’s two main factions: the populists loyal to Mr Tsohatzopoulos who still invoke his father’s memory, and the pro-euro modernisers.

A few weeks ago, on the fifth anniversary of Andreas Papandreou’s death, the Foreign Minister danced a zeibekiko to his father’s favourite tune – Vassilis Tsitsanis’s Cloudy Sunday – on the island of Samos.

As he staggered and swirled in the solitary dance, those who watched and clapped included the Turkish Foreign Minister, Ismail Cem.

Tradition and the Turkish presence underlined Mr Papandreou’s desire to bridge the gap between populists and reformers.

But if the steps of the zeibekiko were a hint that he wanted to follow in the footsteps of his father and grandfather as prime minister, Mr Papandreou has told friends and allies within Pasok he is prepared to wait.

He believes he has plenty of time to make his bid for the party leadership in the future.

This news feature was first published in ‘The Irish Times’ on 14 August 2001

New Turkish tourists symbolise Greek search for a pluralist, tolerant society

Minarets still dominate the skyline of Rethymnon in western Crete, where Turkish fountains and hanging balconies decorate the narrow streets and alleyways

Letter from
Crete
Patrick
Comerford

A militant campaign led by Archbishop Christodoulos of Athens has vigorously fought against the government’s determination to drop any reference to religious affiliation from Greek identity cards. The campaign came with veiled threats and challenges to the authority of the government of the Prime Minister, Mr Costas Simitis. But many Greek Orthodox bishops were unhappy with the campaign, and it appears to have backfired as a petition organised by the primate failed to garner the hoped-for number of signatures.

At times, it is easy to confuse Greek identity and loyalty to the Greek Orthodox Church. But the presence of a continuing number of Muslims in northeastern Thrace and in the Dodecanese islands is living testimony to the diversity within the Greek identity and to Greece's struggle to be a more open, tolerant and pluralist society.

The Muslim minority in Crete suffered severely after Crete’s formal unification with the modern Greek state in 1912. Many were removed to the Anatolian mainland of Turkey, while smaller numbers were relocated to the Dodecanese – principally Rhodes and Kos – only to find they were living in a Greek society once again in 1948.

Many Cretan towns still retain fine examples of late Ottoman architecture. The skyline of Rethymnon is dominated by both the Venetian fortezza, capped by the dome of a 16th century Turkish mosque, and by the minarets of the Nerandzes and Veli Pasha mosques. The charm of its side streets and alleyways is enhanced by a multitude of wooden hanging balconies, Turkish fountains, and doorways with Turkish inscriptions in florid Arabic script. In the island’s capital, Iraklion, the former mosque of Vezir Tzami is now the Church of Saint Titus, proudly displaying the severed head of the Apostle Paul’s martyred companion.

The new rapprochement between Turkey and Greece – symbolised this summer by the joint visit to Samos by the two foreign ministers, Ismail Cem and George Papandreou – has brought a new type of tourist to Crete. In recent months, the children and grandchildren of repatriated Cretan Muslims have returned to Iraklion in search of the houses and streets where their ancestors once lived. Greeks have been used to visiting Istanbul – the city they still call Constantinople and continue to dream of as Byzantium – as tourists and as pilgrims to the Patriarchate. But few expected to see Turks becoming enthusiastic tourists in Greece.

For Ms Lena Chryssakis, this is a welcome development in tourism. For years, she and her husband Manolis have run Mika Villas, a popular destination in the foothills above Hersonnisos for “young and lively” Irish holidaymakers. As a trained tour guide with a love of Classical, Byzantine and Venetian Crete, she has delighted in taking special tours to the island’s archaeological sites, including the ancient Minoan palaces and remains at Knossos and near Archanes, in the hills above Iraklion.

Now the arrival of a new generation of Turks in search of their ancestral homes has provided her with an opportunity to proudly introduce visitors to the history and culture of Crete. Many are surprised to find that the old houses in the Turkish quarter of Iraklion, bounded by Avgoustou and Chandakos streets, have been lovingly renovated.

A recent group of Turkish tourists explained that their grandparents once lived in central Iraklion, close to the Cathedral of Aghios Minas. Hidden away from the eyes of tourists, this part of Iraklion is typical of many Greek towns, with its narrow streets, busy shops, and traditional houses. Here, centuries ago, the young El Greco, Domenikos Theotokopoulos, trained as an icon painter.

The area around Aghios Minas is also the setting for the novel Freedom and Death by Nikos Kazantzakis, author of Zorba the Greek. The hero of the novel, Captain Michailis, was Kazantzakis’ own father. The book is an epic account of his struggle against the Turks for Cretan liberation and of his marriage to Margi Christodoulakis, the great-aunt of Manolis Chryssakis, who continues to live in this part of Iraklion.

But if the back streets of Iraklion are attracting new attention from the grandchildren of those who fought against Captain Mikhailis, they are home, too, to another of Greece’s tiny minorities, the Roman Catholics. For centuries Crete had a large Venetian population. Although they inter-married and integrated with the Greek Orthodox minority, the small sleepy eastern village of Neapolis, home to Lena Chryssakis’ father and his family, has one claim to universal fame: it was the birthplace of the only Pope born in Crete, the Franciscan friar Alexander V (1409-1410).

Traditionally, the largest Catholic presence in Greece has been on the islands of Tinos and Syros. But today there are four Catholic churches on Crete. The small modern church of Saint John the Baptist, hidden in the side streets, close to the studio of Iraklion’s acclaimed icon painter, Antonis Theodorakis, offers a full programme of recitals and live music throughout the summer.

In Chania, there has been a renewed interest in Crete's ancient Jewish minority, dating back 2,400 years. The island’s only surviving synagogue, Etz Hayyim, was designated one of the world's 100 endangered cultural monuments, and after decades of neglect was restored under the direction of Nicholas Stavroulakis, with the help of the Lauder Foundation, and rededicated in October 1999.

Tourism and a renewed confidence among once-dwindling minorities may yet help Crete to become an example of the pluralism and tolerance that become the hallmark of modern Greek society.

This news feature was first published in ‘The Irish Times’ on 6 August 2001.

Communists take lead in Cyprus election

By Patrick Comerford

With over 50 per cent of the votes counted, the Cypriot Communist party (AKEL) was in the lead late last night in elections for a new parliament on the island. The AKEL was over 2 per cent ahead of the main government party, Democratic Rally (DISY).

The new parliament will play a key role in preparing the island for EU membership in the coming years. Both DISY and AKEL are pro-European and have moderate views on how to resolve the long-running division of Cyprus, an issue that was pushed into the background during a bitterly-fought election campaign.

With 54.3 per cent of the vote counted, AKEL was leading with 35.4 per cent. The DISY was at 33.2 per cent.

AKEL claimed victory even before half the votes were counted. DISY bitterly congratulated their old rivals, even though, as its leader said, just a few percentage points separated them.

Crowds waving red flags started to gather outside AKEL’s HQ in Nicosia to start victory celebrations, while supporters in other towns were taking to the streets and honking car horns.

Voting was extended by 40 minutes at some of the 1,151 polling stations because of the long queues for voting, and election officials later said there had been an unusually high turnout of 92 per cent.

The election results could also dictate the shape of the next presidential election in February 2003.

DISY is the main party in the centre-right government of President Glafcos Clerides.

Analysts said DISY had suffered as the party of government and that the smaller parties gained from the protest vote. Parties need to reach a 1.8 per cent threshold to gain a seat in parliament.

Earlier, exit polls show the Greens (1.8 per cent), a new party opposing a federal settlement to the division of Cyprus, New Horizons (3 per cent), and the Fighting Democratic Movement (2.8 per cent) could each gain a seat for the first time.

The centre-right party, Diko, is expected to take between 14 and 16 per cent of the vote, while the socialist party, Kisos, is struggling to hold between 6 and 8 per cent.

However, DISY’s junior coalition partners, the United Democrats, scored low in the exit poll with between 1.7 and 2.7 per cent.

The United Democrats are the party of the island’s EU negotiator, Dr George Vassiliou.

Counting was expected to continue until early today.

The new 56-seat House of Representatives meets on June 7th.

This news report was first published in ‘The Irish Times’ on Friday 28 May 2001

Cypriot EU membership bid gets ‘full-hearted’ backing from Ireland

By Patrick Comerford

The former president of Cyprus, Dr George Vassiliou, who is on a three-day official visit to Ireland, has described his talks with the Taoiseach as “very friendly”, and says he is happy with the progress being made by Cyprus towards full membership of the EU.

Despite a warmer climate in diplomatic relations between Greece and Turkey, Dr Vassiliou said there had been no progress on the question of Turkey’s presence in northern Cyprus and the division of the island. But he was certain the accession process must continue, and insisted Turkey could not veto Cypriot EU membership.

“If nothing happens before accession, a lot can happen after,” he said. “Once Turkey realises it cannot stop accession, and the Taoiseach agrees that it is not entitled to, then Turkey will soon see it is in the interest of Turkish Cypriots, and of Turkey itself, to solve the problem.”

He said Turkish Cypriots were in favour of Cypriot accession because it would “guarantee their lives, their human rights, and give them access to vital financial support for development”. After accession, he was confident Cyprus would be “understanding and co-operative” when it came to the EU’s dealings with Turkey.

Referring to the Balkans and the Middle East, he said Cyprus was a force for stability and democracy in the region. “As the outer flank of the EU in the Middle East, we will help the EU to continue its very creative and positive role in the region,” he said.

Dr Vassiliou’s visit includes talks with the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Cowen, party and business leaders and officials from Government Departments and authorities. He was president of Cyprus from 1988 to 1993, and now heads the Cypriot negotiating team for accession to the EU.

He said he had been assured that Ireland was supporting the Cypriot accession “full-heartedly”, and this had been backed up by technical help and advice and practical assistance.

Mr Cowen told Dr Vassiliou yesterday that Cyprus was well to the forefront of the applicant countries, having concluded 18 of the 29 chapters in the negotiation process. The Minister reiterated Ireland's willingness to help in the accession process, and reminded Dr Vassiliou of Ireland's full support for UN efforts to achieve a solution to the division of the island, based on a bizonal, bicommunal, federal approach.

Although the results of the Nice summit had not been greeted with enthusiasm by everyone, the candidate countries had every reason to be happy, because Nice had opened the way to enlargement, Dr Vassiliou said. “There could have been more, but this is not a reason to complain.”

Asked whether 2003 was a realistic date for Cypriot accession, Dr Vassiliou said he did not expect it was possible for Cyprus to join by then. But he looked forward to completing negotiations early next year, “ideally during the Spanish presidency”, with the accession treaties approved and signed later in the year.

Most of 2003 would be spent on ratification, “and a realistic date is January 1st, 2004, certainly before the European Parliament elections in the summer of 2004”.

This news report was first published in ‘The Irish Times’ on Friday 6 April 2001

Debt-ridden airline with colourful past faces Olympian task to find partner

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, wife of Olympic Airways founder Aristotle Onassis, was a “courteous passenger”; Former Greek Prime Minister, Andreas Papandreou, and wife Dimitra “Mimi” Liani, an ex-Olympic Airways stewardess. Her abuse of power in his party forced his resignation as leader.

Olympic Airways has had a rich history – linked with Aristotle Onassis is has become part of the Greek national psyche. It now faces an uncertain future

Patrick Comerford

The Greek Government is seeking a strategic investor to buy a 65 per cent stake in the ailing state-owned Olympic Airways, in the hope of ensuring the flag carrier’s survival. “Expressions of interest” for the cash-strapped carrier are being sought from companies experienced in aviation, with a solid financial background and a restructuring plan.

The sale would form part of an extensive restructuring process that would leave the Greek state with some debt-ridden parts of Olympic Airways, which has accumulated debts of about $100 million.

Today, Olympic Airways is among the 50 largest airlines in the world, with 33 Boeing and Airbus aircraft and about 8,500 employees. But the company's pre-Olympic history goes back 70 years to 1930, when the first Greek airline was established as the Icarus partnership, replaced within a few months by the Hellenic Air Transport Company (EEES). The new company's first scheduled flight to Thessaloniki was inaugurated the following year, carrying the Prime Minister, Eleftherios Venizelos, among the 28 enthusiastic passengers.

Technical Airline Enterprises (TAE) was established in 1935, but with the outbreak of the second World War the airline was placed at the service of Greece's war efforts against Germany. Civil aviation resumed in 1946 with TAE back in the air, although during the Greek civil war, TAE domestic flights were often hit in crossfire.

[Onassis] was
stern, distant
and inquiring.

He had a
critical eye, so
we always tried
to be perfect


In April 1957, TAE was bought by shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis from the Greek state and renamed Olympic Airways. At the time, Onassis was at the zenith of his legendary career. He had already succeeded as a tanker tycoon, and with his wife, Tina Livanou, and their children, Alexander and Christina, had reached international celebrity status.

“The airplane was a new field for him,” Captain Pavlos Ioannidis, one of his closest associates for two decades, later recalled. “He wanted to fly all over the world, as he wanted to send his fleet of ships all over the world. That was it. Cost couldn’t stop him; nothing could. Proof of this is that he started with Dakotas and DC4s and ended up flying to five continents.”

A Dakota from TAE was decorated with the new airline logo – five Olympic circles that had to be altered later because the Olympic symbol is protected under international law – and Captain Ioannidis flew the first flight from classical Athens to Byzantine Thessaloniki.

Denise Karagiorga, the sole cabin crew member, along with the captain, the co-pilot and the radio operator, later recalled: “We didn’t serve a meal that day because it was a short flight. Nothing out of the ordinary happened.”

But Vassilis Vasilikos, the author of Z and later Greek ambassador to Unesco, saw a deeper, cultural significance in Olympic’s first flight: “By inaugurating the link between Thessaloniki and Athens 40 years ago, it succeeded in joining Byzantium and antiquity, the two main constituents of our national identity.”

A few months after taking over Olympic, Onassis provided a plane to bring home the body of the Cretan writer, Nikos Kazantzakis, author of Zorba the Greek, who had died in exile. The airline had become part of the Greek national psyche.

In its first years, the new national airline had just 865 employees and 15 propeller planes – 14 DC3s and one DC4 – linking the Greek capital with Mytilini (Lesbos), Belgrade, Frankfurt and Thessaloniki, which had connections to Istanbul and Belgrade. One of those early flights was halted on the runway, and the passengers disembarked, because “one of our wheels had been borrowed from TWA”, Ioannidis recalled recently. “They needed it and came to get it back.”

But the airline grew rapidly during the 18 years between 1957 and 1975 when it was owned by Onassis. The first international route, Athens-Rome-Paris-London, was launched in 1957, and in 1958 new routes were opened from Athens to Zurich-Frankfurt and to Tel Aviv. In the mid-1960s, the Athens-New York route was inaugurated, with Pavlos Ioannidis flying the first transatlantic flight.

Mr Ioannidis remembers the touches Onassis brought to the airline. “When we launched our European routes, he put in gold-plated cutlery. In first class he put a candle on the tables. He wanted a piano on the 707s and 747s.” Denise Karagiorga, the sole flight attendant on the first flight in 1957, knew Onassis. “He was the man who never let anybody know when he was going to show up,” she told Olympic’s in-flight magazine, Kenisi (Motion). “He might well show up at the last moment. He was stern, distant and inquiring. He had a critical eye, so we always tried to be perfect.”

Stavroula Stefanou, one of Olympic Airway’s most experienced flight attendants, remembers meeting Jackie Kennedy soon after her marriage to Onassis. But she “didn’t have any special demands. I remember she just asked me to bring her a vodka and not to wake her up until half-an-hour before landing in Paris ... She was very courteous and kept her distance.”

On a flight to Mykonos, the crew helped deliver a baby. The pilot was invited to become the godfather, and at the baptism the management of Olympic Airways was named as the godmother.

But one ex-flight attendant has also been associated with the fall of a government. The late Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou met Dimitra Liani, a flight attendant popularly known as “Mimi”, on an Olympic flight. Their open affair and the public humiliation of his second wife, Margaret Papandreou, contributed to the election defeat of his Panhellenic Socialist Movement (Pasok) in June 1989. They married the following month, but her abuse of power in the party eventually forced his resignation as party leader.

Today, Olympic admits its “Achilles’ heel” is the under-developed state of Greece’s airports. But the 2004 Olympic Games have brought a rush to improve standards, and a new airport to serve Athens is being built at Sparta by March. Whoever buys Olympic must operate out of the new airport.

This full-page feature was first published in the Business This Week section of ‘The Irish Times’ on 19 January 2001

The Crete of Kazantzakis

The grave of Kazantzakis. It bears the pithy epitaph: “I fear nothing, I hope for nothing, I am free” (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Crete’s main airport lies to the east of the island’s capital Iraklion, well-positioned to whisk tourists further east to the popular resorts of Hersonnisos, Piskopiano, Malia and Aghios Nikholaos. Few return to explore the “Little Athens” of Crete, with its narrow streets and open markets, and their enchanting mix of Byzantine churches, fortified Venetian gates and walls, Ottoman minarets and fountains. This is the city whose museum houses the greatest collection of Minoan artefacts, where El Greco was first schooled in icon painting, and that inspired Greece’s greatest modern writer, Nikos Kazantzakis (1883-1957).

In the West, Kazantzakis is best remembered for Zorba the Greek (1946) or, perhaps, The Last Temptation. But for Cretans, his outstanding works are his autobiographical but posthumous Report to Greco (1960) or Freedom and Death (1946), set in Iraklion during the struggle against Ottoman oppression. Freedom and Death first appeared in Greek as Captain Michailis, and the eponymous hero is the author’s own father. The characters are the people of 19th-century Iraklion, the settings are its streets, churches, fountains, mosques, and houses. His own epic version of the Odyssey occupied Kazantzakis for 10 years. His novels included Christ Recrucified, The Fratricides, and the fictionalised biography of Francis of Assisi, The Poor Man of God. But his work also included poems, plays, travel books, encyclopaedia articles, journalism, translations, school textbooks and a dictionary.

Educated in Athens and Paris, in his later years, Kazantzakis was banned from entering Greece for long periods, and died in exile in Germany on October 27th, 1957. When his body was brought back from Freiburg, the Greek Orthodox Church refused to allow any priests to provide rites or ceremonies in Athens, and western writers often claim he was denied an Orthodox burial because of his unorthodox views, or because of The Last Temptation. But Aristotle Onassis provided a plane to take the coffin to Iraklion, and Kazantzakis laid in state in the Cathedral of Aghios Minas. Those who came to pay tribute were the Archbishop of Crete and the resistance leader and future prime minister, George Papandreou.

Manolis Chrisakis, the proprietor of Mika Villas, a popular destination in Piskopiano for Irish tourists, denies his great-uncle was ever excommunicated by the Greek Orthodox Church, and insists he was never disowned by the Church of Crete, which is semi-independent under the Patriarch of Constantinople. Family photographs of the funeral on November 5th show Orthodox priests mingling with men dressed like Dirk Bogarde in Ill Met by Moonlight as the coffin was paraded through the thronged narrow streets of Iraklion up to the city walls. A year later, a priest led the traditional family prayers at the graveside on the southernmost bastion, built by the Venetians in the 16th century.

Peter Bien of Dartmouth, who translated many of the novels, once wondered whether Kazantzakis would be read 50 years after his death. Although he never received the Nobel Prize, Kazantzakis is still hailed by Greeks as a literary giant of the 20th century. At Mirtia near Knossos, the country mansion once owned by Captain Michailis now houses the Kazantzakis Museum.

These days, many Iraklians gather on the Martinengo Bastion at the weekend to get a free view of the football stadium below, and to pay their respects at the tomb of Kazantzakis. Here one can look north across the city out to the deep blue of the Mediterranean, or south towards Mount Juktas, described in all its beauty in the opening scenes of Zorba. The mountain ridge looks like a sleeping man - transformed by Cretan lore into the dead Zeus and giving rise to the classical Greek slur that all Cretans are liars. Kazantzakis inherited the islanders' healthy scepticism towards religious and political dogmas. His tomb is marked only by a simple wooden cross framed by a flowering hedge and an undecorated gravestone with the pithy epitaph: “I fear nothing, I hope for nothing, I am free”.

This feature was first published in The Irish Times on Saturday 6 January 2001