[ALBSA-Info] Article by Takis Michas - 28 August 2001

[Agron Alibali]

WSJE: Column: A Greek Tempest In A Teapot Boils Over (by Takis Mihas, 28-8-01)


WSJE: Column: A Greek Tempest In A Teapot Boils OverDow Jones News Service via Dow Jones  By Takis Michas  (Editor's Note: Mr. Michas's book "The Unholy Alliance: Greece andMilosevic'sSerbia during the 1990's" (A & M University Press) will be published inearly2002.)  Like two locomotives racing toward each other on the same track, thestate-subsidized Orthodox Church of Greece - led by the telegenicArchbishopChristodoulos - will soon collide with the government of Prime MinisterCostasSimitis. After the collision, Greece may be the worse for it.  The pending smash-up is apparently caused by the Greek government'swillingness to obey an EU directive and strike all reference to a person'sreligion from Greece's government-issued identity cards. Last year theGreekgovernment removed the religious entry saying that it violated individualrightsand privacy. The church strongly objected, accusing the government oftryingtoundermine the role of the Orthodox religion. The church organized massralliesin Athens that attracted more than 500,000 people. More recently the churchcollected over three million signatures for a petition demanding areferendum onthe issue. The only other petition in Greece in recent years that carried acomparable number of signatures was one demanding that suspected Bosnianwarcriminals, Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, not to be extradited to theInternational War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague.  The Orthodox Church of Greece has considerable institutional powers thatderive partly from the country's constitution, which establishes theinseparability of the church and the state. This arrangement endows thechurchwith political power while ensuring the acceptance of its views by manyGreeks.  The church benefits from an unwillingness by Greek politicians toconfrontit.The conservative New Democracy Party - a major opposition party - refusestodistance itself from the church's political positions. Indeed, in mostinstances, the archbishop's views are openly advocated by the overwhelmingmajority of New Democracy Party lawmakers and by the conservative media.Thisattitude may prove to be very shortsighted. If the New Democracy is everable toform a government, its foreign and domestic policies will be shaped byviewssimilar to those of Archbishop Christodoulos. That may be bad news forGreeceand for the whole of southeast Europe.  But a special sense of national identity may give the church more powerthanthe national constitution does. The dominant view of Greek nationalidentitysees Orthodoxy as its basic constitutive element. To be truly Greek is tobeOrthodox, or so many Greeks believe.  The identification of Greekness with Orthodoxy poses a very real threattothemembers of other religious denominations. "A conflict of interest betweentheGreek Orthodox Church and other churches," says Prof. Dimitrios Dimoulis,atBrazil's Sao Paolo University, "is viewed as a conflict between what is intheinterest of the nation and what is against the nation." Whenever such aconflictoccurs, the Greek Orthodox Church can always resort to a nationalistdiscourseand accuse the other religious minorities of failing to act in accordancewiththe national interest. This was the case in 1993, when a Roman Catholicpriestargued for the abolition of the practice of including a person's religiousdenomination on Greek identity cards. In his reply to the priest, Mr.Christodoulos - who at the time was the bishop of Dimitrias - accused themembers of the Roman Catholic minority on the Cyclade Islands of sidingwiththeenemy when Italy attacked Greece during World War II. Thus do religiousfervorand excessive nationalism feed each other in modern Greece.  Similarly, when the present row over the identity cards erupted lastyear,Archbishop Christodoulos rushed to blame the Jews: "You know who is behindtheidentity cards issue?" he asked, in an interview with a Greek daily. "TheJews!"  What raises the stakes in the current conflict between the church and thegovernment is that for the first time in recent history the church iscallingimplicitly for the overthrow of an elected government. In his statementsArchbishop Christodoulos has questioned Prime Minister Simiti's ability togovern, saying that he is a poor substitute for the former leader of rulingPasok party, Andreas Papandreou, who died in 1996. ArchbishopChristodoulos'statements come at a difficult time for Mr. Simitis who has called for anemergency party convention for Oct. 11. He called the gathering to ask forthesupport of the party leaders for his policy of (modest) economic reform,whichhe believes is being undermined by the collectivist wing of the party,whichremains wedded to the statist-nationalist policies of the late Mr.Papandreou.  The Greek Orthodox Church and its present leader have consistentlysupportedextreme nationalist positions. In the early 1990s the Greek church helpedleadthe opposition to the neighboring state's plan to call itself Macedonia. Itplayed a decisive role in fomenting nationalist feelings by organizing andparticipating in the mass rallies against the new state. High-rankingchurchofficials openly called for the forceful annexation of southern Albania(where asizable Greek minority lives) by Greece, in the mid-1990s.  For almost a decade, the Greek church provided rhetorical cover for warcrimesin Bosnia. The church even invited Radovan Karadzic to visit Athens, in thesummer of 1993, in order to honor him at a rally in a Piraeus stadium.GreekOrthodox priests traveled regularly to war-ravaged Bosnia to providespiritualsuccor to the Bosnia Serb army in Sarajevo, Zvornik and other places. InJune1997, Republika Srpska President Biljana Plavsic awarded medals of honor tosomeGreek Orthodox priests for helping the Bosnian Serbs during the war. Mrs.Plavsic has since been indicted for war crimes and is currently awaitingtrialat The Hague.  After a 1996 conflict over an islet in the Aegean Sea that brought GreeceandTurkey close to war, Archbishop Christodoulos denounced the peacefuloutcomeandadvocated a military solution. Recently the Greek archbishop rejected theU.N.-sponsored framework for talks that may resolve the decades-oldconflictinCyprus.  Archbishop Christodoulos's worldview was outlined in an article he wrotein1993. In it he called upon Serbs, Russians, Romanians, Greeks andBulgarianstolay aside their differences and unite in an alliance against the Muslims.Naturally he expected the Greek Orthodox Church to play a "decisive" roleinthis alliance.  In the part of Christendom that once answered to the Roman CatholicChurch,Western Europeans have learned the perils of combining church and state. IntheChristian East, the dividing line between political and religiousleadershipismuch less clear. That will mean big trouble to a beleaguered prime ministertrying to sustain a democratically elected government in the EU's southeastcorner. The real question is not whether religious affiliation remains ongovernment identity cards, but whether or not the Greek Orthodox Church iswilling to give up playing politics.  (END) DOW JONES NEWS  08-28-01



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