JOURNALIST: We interrupt the flow of commercials and we won't be going to a news show right now, because we have the pleasure and honour of having the protagonist of recent days, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Nikos Kotzias, on the phone.
N. KOTZIAS: Good morning.
JOURNALIST: Good morning, Minister.
N. KOTZIAS: Good morning Dimos and Spyros, and good morning to our listeners. My daughter reminded me that today is Father’s Day. Many happy returns to all fathers.
JOURNALIST: To all of us. Many happy returns. Listen, Minister, I jotted down some notes last night to introduce our interview today. I’ll read you two of the notes I’ve written: “Kotzias unfolded before a national audience the talent he has had since he was young, which only we, the Communist Youth of the 1970s and 1980s, know of. Ideological instructor. Kotzias didn’t make a speech in Parliament. He gave a lecture, with irony to spare, as always, wherever necessary.” That is who Nikos Kotzias is to me.
N. KOTZIAS: Saturday reminded me a little of my youth and, of course, the fact that, first and foremost, I am a teacher.
JOURNALIST: I remember you in Elefsina, where you came to speak to us... you haven’t changed a bit.
N. KOTZIAS: A few added kilos. What I want to say now is this: I think the main thing all of us need to understand is that we are living in a world that is changing, and it is very important for the country to cover its back, as they say, and to have friendly relations with the north, literally. Skopje is prepared to open up to us. It loves and adores Greece. Half its population come to northern Greece every summer as tourists. At least twice a year, every citizen of this country shops in Greece. We are its biggest trade partner and we are the second largest investor there. In other words, there is a reality that we need to develop to the benefit of both peoples, so that the economies and societies of both regions can develop.
And for this to happen, we had to reach an agreement. Every agreement contains a compromise and a commitment. The compromise is that, as I said in Parliament, we did not defeat them. I called on New Democracy. I said, “You are asking for everything. Okay, this shows us who is a maximalist and wants to have it all. But this is what you ask for – and mistakenly, even in that case – when you win a war and dictate the terms of surrender to the other side.” We aren’t at war with these people. They are a friendly country, beyond the name issue. They are friends and people and citizens, and they are welcomed by the very protesters themselves, with great pleasure, as customers and consumers throughout the year. And it is right that they are welcomed.
We had to see what the main issue was for us. For us, the main thing was for the name to change and be clearly different from our Greek Macedonia. And the name we agreed on is a name that they want, that we want as a government, and that the Karamanlis government pursued in its finer moments. They shouldn't pretend it’s a name they've never had anything to do with. As I showed in Parliament, this was the name pursued by the Karamanlis government in its finer moments. Because in its not-so-fine moments, it accepted plain “Macedonia”.
What was the second thing we wanted? For the name, not the adjectival reference to be for all uses, international and internal. Do you know how difficult it is for the other side – and how much we should appreciate this – to change its name? Not just what all of us outside the country will call it, but also what they will call themselves within their own country.
And the third: For us to be certain, they need to change their Constitution. And now we have this surprising fact. The country, “North Macedonia”, will ratify the agreement this week. They will hold a referendum and hopefully win it. They will change their constitution, the name will be put into the Constitution, and then we will ratify. They are taking a risk because they trust that we mean what we say.
JOURNALIST: I felt that, at some point towards the end, you were pleased that New Democracy took this stance, because it was as if you said the wheat separated from the chaff; that in both countries there is now a dividing line between nationalists and modernists.
N. KOTZIAS: I wasn’t pleased that New Democracy has been swept away by its far-right contingent. I wasn't pleased that New Democracy sacrificed the stance it brought with Karamanlis in 2008 for a compound name that includes the term ‘Macedonia’, but I was pleased because their hypocrisy was revealed as they abandoned that position.
And in fact, if you remember, I said that New Democracy functions as a branch of VMRO in Athens. Because VMRO, which is New Democracy’s brother Party, and which is also screaming that the Zaev government conceded everything, is the Party that brought irredentism to Skopje, that put up the statues of Alexander the Great, that renamed the airport ‘Alexander the Great Airport’ and that named the motorway linking Greek to Skopje ‘Alexander the Great Motorway’. This miserable climate, of the most miserable statements against Greece, which gave birth to the irredentism we wanted to stop through this agreement – this Party is saying exactly what New Democracy is saying.
And you will have seen that I said teasingly in Parliament, “Alexis, how is it that New Democracy is accusing us of conceding everything to Skopje, while its twin brother, the anti-Greek Gruevski – and it is no coincidence that he is their twin – says that “Zaev conceded everything to us.” And here we either have two agreements and we are kidding people that it is one agreement – I said this sarcastically – or what do we have? We have two forces that don’t want to make a compromise, because they think they can make political and other gains from bombast, nationalistic ranting and the effort to create a climate of hostility between the two peoples.
JOURNALIST: Were you pleased that Karamanlis didn't make a statement against the agreement?
N. KOTZIAS: Kostas Karamanlis has shown seriousness that, publicly and in Parliament, I underscored as a positive element of the country’s political scene. In fact, it is those who denigrate Konstantinos Karamanlis and Kostas Karamanlis who set the tone in New Democracy. The people from the far right, who were appointed – if you remember – by the imprisoned Papadopoulos as the head of the junta youth. These people are setting the tone today.
And what do they want? Do they want us to violate international law? Do they want the country to impose its will on Skopje and do they think the international community will just look on? Do you think that I’m exaggerating?
I remind you that, at the large demonstration a couple of weeks ago in Syntagma – not the much smaller one a couple of days ago – the following slogan was heard for hours: “Bring the guns so we can enter Skopje.” Isn’t that irredentism? Because some people tell me that “there isn’t irredentism in Greece.” What is this? Bring me a gun so I can enter a foreign capital? It is irredentism and it is warmongering.
JOURNALIST: I think you know first-hand that there were such plans in the 1990s.
N. KOTZIAS: At that time, a portion of the Greek political leadership had plans to break up fYROM. But listen. I ask again, and Mr. Theodorakis was very right in asking: Does Greece want a much smaller, friendly and cooperating country on its northern border, or does it want this country to be under Turkish influence? Or does it want this country to break up and great Albania and great Bulgaria to be created? Because foreign policy issues are very serious and very tough, unfortunately. Is it in Greece’s interests?
Because this rationale, that “we don't want to accept their being called what they want; we don’t want one or the other,” moves towards these two plans. First question: why is it in Greece’s interest for this country to break up and for great Albania and great Bulgaria to be created? I wish someone would finally tell me. Because they talk without considering the consequences.
JOURNALIST: You know, Mr. Kotzias, they say that “even if Skopje gets into NATO now, Turkey will still be able to manage things and do whatever it wants.”
N. KOTZIAS: No. Allow me to tell you the second thing about Turkey. Do you know what I was told by the leadership of the Albanians of North Macedonia – who are very patriotic about their country? When I saw them, and I have seen them at least 15 times for hours of discussions, they said, “Nikos, please don’t let the relations between the two countries be ruined, because Turks have come here and they have bought radio stations, TV stations and newspapers. They aren't promoting pro-Turkish propaganda. They are promoting propaganda for Islamic fundamentalism and they want to transform the limited and low level of Albanian nationalism – in fYROM; I’m not saying elsewhere – into Islamic fanaticism.
And I ask: is it in Greece's interest to have Islamic fundamentalism on our borders and a space where Islamist fighters are trained so they can come into Greece? Are these people in their right minds?
But to go back to Turkey. Turkey is currently training the country’s elite. Turkey is training the officers of its army.
JOURNALIST: That's how it is.
N. KOTZIAS: And what’s more, for ten years, under Gruevski, the younger generations of this friendly country grew up with the fairytale that they are the heirs of Alexander the Great and they are the heirs of ancient Greece and they have to take all of it back. And we stopped that. It’s over. And rather than being pleased that Gruevski was defeated – apparently because he is their brother Party – the people of New Democracy are dismayed. Because they were feeding each other, each one living off of the irredentism and pseudo-ancient Hellenism of the other. This suited New Democracy.
JOURNALIST: Mr. Kotzias, what has essentially bothered most people in this particular respect is perhaps the statement – and I’ll read it to you so you can answer people in this regard – from Mr. Zaev, who, at the beginning of his speech, said, “the Macedonians and the Greeks.” We want you to respond on this so people can understand precisely what it means. Because, you know, they’re saying, “if they say the Macedonians and the Greeks now, what will they be saying in a while?”
N. KOTZIAS: You tell me! I don’t know. Because someone told me we gave them Thessaloniki. A state that has four old Russian helicopters, that doesn't even have a single fighter jet, ships – in any case, it can’t have a navy – is going to come and take Thessaloniki. They make these things up to fool themselves.
Now, let’s go to Zaev's statement. We have to separate historical Greek and ancient Greek Macedonia from geographical Macedonia. If we don’t, we’ll get confused. Zaev calls himself a Macedonian based on the geographical position of the region where he was born and raised.
Is geographical Macedonia all Greek? No. In the current reality, a small part belongs to Albania, a larger part belongs to Bulgaria, what is called Pirin Macedonia, a third belongs to North Macedonia, to that state, and the largest part, 52-53%, belongs to Greece.
Three members of Borisov’s cabinet, Bulgaria’s Prime Minister, come from Pirin Macedonia and call themselves Macedonian. Why do they say Macedonian? Not because they come from Greek Macedonia, Greek heritage and Greek history, but because they come from a part of the geographical Macedonia of the Ottoman province that went to Bulgaria. Zaev is speaking the same way.
I was very strict on this point in Parliament: When did these parts (of geographical Macedonia) go to the then Yugoslavia, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and, afterwards, socialist Yugoslavia, and it broke away and became the ‘Republic of Macedonia’ and Pirin Macedonia? In 1913, after the first Balkan Wars. In the Treaty of Bucharest. And what does the Treaty of Bucharest do? It grants Greece today’s Greek Macedonia. Anyone who disputes the Treaty of Bucharest disputes, first of all, Greek Macedonia and the fact that we took the largest portion of geographical Macedonia. He disputes the fact that geographical Macedonia was divided up. But – and this is the worst of all – he also disputes international law. Because Greece bases its international position and foreign policy on taking international law seriously and implementing national law.
Aren’t we the one’s saying to Erdogan every day, “these islands are Greek”? Not just because we are the heirs to the history of ancient Greek civilization, because there is ancient Greek cultural heritage in Ephesus and Alikarnassos, but because it was given to us in the Treaty of Lausanne. And when do we react very sternly? When Mr. Erdogan comes and disputes the Treaty of Lausanne. Those who are bothered by the fact that geographical Macedonia was broken up, and who purposely confuse Greek Macedonia, the history of Macedonia and our Greek heritage with the geographical agreement of the Treaty of Bucharest, are disputing international law. And Greece must be the last country in the region to allow international law to be disputed. It is on international law that we base our rights, in Cyprus, in Thrace, in the Aegean, everywhere.
Suddenly, just because they are in the opposition, or maybe some out of good intentions – because those people exist too – out of ignorance they are disputing the 1913 division of geographical Macedonia in the Treaty of Bucharest because they are bothered by what Mr. Zaev said. Let anyone who dares open the Pandora’s box of the Balkans by disputing the agreements and international treaties.
JOURNALIST: Mrs. Bakoyannis doesn’t know all of this? Did you anticipate the stance she took during the parliamentary debate?
N. KOTZIAS: On this issue, despite her passionate hostility towards me, Mrs. Bakoyannis was one of the best in New Democracy. After 2008, she adopted the position for a compound name that included the term ‘Macedonia’. She put this position together and put it on the Ministry’s website, and it is still there today. Why? When we came into office, we didn't want to change anything on this part of the Ministry’s website. Because if we had changed it, they would have said we were moving towards new accomplished facts. We left it because the main thing was to hold negotiations and to reach a new state of affairs via the negotiations. This line, which was Karamanlis’ line, which was the line adopted by Mrs. Bakoyannis, wasn’t disputed even by Mr. Samaras when he was Prime Minister. He let Mr. Venizelos follow this line at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Of course, today, in hindsight, Mr. Venizelos says he followed a personal line, and Mr. Avramopoulos, who was also a Minister of Foreign Affairs for New Democracy, also says he followed a personal line. What kind of government did Mr. Samaras have, where, on one of the three key foreign policy issues, the Minister of Foreign Affairs did what he liked, against the Prime Minister, supposedly in retrospect?
So, Mrs. Bakoyannis, Mr. Avramopoulos and, subsequently, Mr. Venizelos – who may not agree with the agreement, but who agree with its core – defended the compound name including the term ‘Macedonia’, and suddenly Mrs. Bakoyannis found herself in a tight spot within New Democracy. The extreme rightists, further to the right of Samaras – not Samaras with his views; further right than Samaras – asked for a change of stance.
And Mr. Mitsotakis’ pollster whispered in his ear that “if the Party stops being serious and adopts the VMRO positions of Mr. Gruevski, it will win votes through the anxiety and insecurity it creates in northern Greece,” and he forgot that he will lose many more votes than he gains. Because he is showing a lack of seriousness.
JOURNALIST: Mr. Theodorikakos may have convinced Mr. Mitsotakis, but not Mrs. Bakoyannis.
N. KOTZIAS: That's their problem. Mrs. Bakoyannis adapted, probably with difficulty, to her Party’s line. I think that's why she came out and insulted me – not on the last day, but on the second day of the debate – in a way that does not correspond to the political culture our country must have.
JOURNALIST: But in my opinion it raised the issue of the importance of, how much weight is put on, the degrees Greek politicians have. Regardless of the fact that we, coming from a particular political space, know what Kotzias is.
N. KOTZIAS: I have seven degrees.
JOURNALIST: For as long as I can remember, you have been more involved with academic issues than politics.
N. KOTZIAS: I have international recognition. I have received four honorary doctorates from major universities in recognition of my academic work...
JOURNALIST: Now even the Russians, whom you have disappointed a little. You called them a “petrol station” on that show ...
N. KOTZIAS: I am very proud that, in the most improbable countries I visit in the world, I find students of mine from the University of Piraeus, and they are professors. I have four students in Albania, young people who are professors at the University of Albania. I have professors at the University of Armenia, the University of Georgia. I even found students of mine who are active academically in Vietnam. Female students, not males.
And it is the joy of my life, as a university professor, in my capacity as Minister of Foreign Affairs, to have the opportunity, during the short visits I make, to have my old students come, early in the morning or late at night, to greet their old teacher. Whatever New Democracy says, this great satisfaction of the teacher cannot be taken away by anyone.
I am a university teacher who had the pleasure, and I still have it once a year, of giving a lecture; my old class, a great class, “Special Topics in Greek Foreign Policy” it was. I always had the pleasure of having the fullest classrooms. And this was for students finishing their course, who usually didn’t attend classes.
My class, “Special Topics in Greek Foreign Policy,” the last class students take in their final year, is attended. They fill the room, sit on the steps, on the radiators, hanging from the windows. The joy of teaching. No one can take that away from me.
JOURNALIST: Mr. Kotzias, what does the teacher have to say to the people – maybe they got swept up in things, maybe they’ve seen things and History will show how things go later on – who yesterday gathered in Pisoderi, and we had the incidents and pictures that do not do honour to the country?
N. KOTZIAS: I'll say this: First of all, I saw that 100,000 people gathered in Syntagma – they said there were 250,000 people. On the evening of the Hellenic Parliament’s vote on the motion of no confidence in the Greek government, there were 4,000 people. I think it is great progress from 100, 120 thousand – they claimed 250,000 – to 4,000 people, which means that people have understood our policy and have understood that some people were playing political games.
And Mr. Voutsis was told that among these people there were Golden Dawn troopers who wanted to attack and occupy Parliament, and I remind you that this has happened before in the European south. It was when the putschists seized the Parliament of the then new Republic of Spain. And their King, Juan Carlos, maintained his stance and denounced and broke the coup. And today they wanted to enter Parliament and occupy it.
In Northern Greece – I haven’t had the time yet to study the incidents – the head officers told me that, together with people who believe deeply that they are right – it is reasonable for there to be people with a different opinion, with their concerns, and I will explain this – there were also Golden Dawn troopers with wooden clubs and iron bars. Just so we’re clear. It’s bad for there to be incidents, for chemicals to be used. My lungs are full of chemicals, and I hate them. But it would be good if certain people didn't try to hinder the Greek state from complying with international agreements and didn’t want to make the Greek state look foolish.
Now I’ll go to the well-intentioned people. Listen, many people abroad say to me, “you have a real problem – they want to take islands from you, they have occupied Cyprus – with Turkey. What is your obsession with this little state” – respected state, but it is much smaller than us, as big as central Macedonia, our region, with a smaller population – “why this obsession?”
And I explain: first, there is the anguish a Greek feels over his history. Second, there is the anguish of some people – which is wrong as to how they express it – who say, “the big countries oppressed us in the economic crisis, so why should we be nice to smaller countries?” But I have another way of seeing it: you don’t need to do to others what you didn’t like being done to you. And third, they have a hostility to this archaism of Mr. Gruevski, who appeared and tried to take their heritage, history and culture, and we have to explain to them that the main enemy of this agreement is precisely this guy with his archaism, this ally of New Democracy.
There is a fourth reason that doesn’t have to do with international politics or inter-state politics: That in our region, throughout the region, there is a sensitivity to the name issue. Sometimes I tell foreigners: a handsome young man meets a beautiful young woman and is enamoured of her. Then they fall in love. They love each other so much that they decide to get married. Their love brings them a child; a son, let’s say. I prefer daughters, but take a son as our example.
JOURNALIST: “May the good mother’s first child be a daughter,” as the saying goes.
N. KOTZIAS: Let’s say it’s a son, to make our example easier. And now, suddenly, we see this loving couple of 10 years arguing. What, my dear Spyros and my dear Dimos, are the two parents arguing about? About what to name the child. Whether he’ll take the name of one father-in-law or the other.
And there are three or four solutions here. They can give him another name and not argue. They may be fortunate enough for both fathers-in-law to have the same name. They can agree on a compound (hyphenated) name, which is what we did; for example, Giorgos-Konstantinos, with one side of the family calling him Giorgos and the other side calling him Konstantinos, and, in the end, when the child goes to school he gets another name: Dinos, Akis or something else. The third, the compound name, is the best option, with one-sided exclamations, like Zaev made yesterday, on both sides. And the other option is divorce. Isn’t that the reality in our region? This reality was the foundation of the name problem. People are sensitive to the three factors I mentioned; the real ones and a special tradition. They feel it is a problem. They ask you, “What do I call it?”.
JOURNALIST: Now we understand why the amphitheatres fill up when you lecture at universities. Because you make yourself understood through examples.
JOURNALIST: Mr. Kotzias, before we leave you, I would like you to tell us what political scene you see taking shape, if we bear in mind that there was a seismic political shift in the Independent Greeks that did some damage, with two people leaving.
N. KOTZIAS: But it held.
JOURNALIST: Yes, it held. What do you see happening from here on in?
N. KOTZIAS: I think that the biggest losers in the parliamentary debate were Mr. Samaras and the far-right wing of New Democracy. No comma after ‘Samaras’; it’s the same thing. Because, in the end, what was exposed was that Mr. Samaras was the first to sign for plain ‘Macedonia’ in the European bodies. The Extreme Right proved to be saying nothing other than the false words of the junta regarding Cyprus and Macedonia...
JOURNALIST: I think the winner on the Right was Samaras, because the man from Kalamata got his revenge. After 28 years, he managed to make Mitsotakis’ two children renounce the ideological policy of their father and defend the policy of Samaras, who brought down their father.
N. KOTZIAS: Quite right. Within New Democracy, Samaras won. But what did I say? In Parliament, Samaras was defeated.
JOURNALIST: That’s another thing.
N. KOTZIAS: That’s what I’m saying. In Parliament, we won and Samaras lost. New Democracy was overwhelmingly defeated defending the Samaras line. And can I give you a piece of news before we leave? Right after the late Mitsotakis passed away – regardless of any differences one might have had with him, he was a great politician and parliamentary man, in spite of the events of 1965 – the Ministry of Foreign Affairs proposed, as it should have, to the Mitsotakis-Bakoyannis family that we hold a two-day scientific conference in his honour and discuss ‘Mitsotakis and foreign policy’. We scheduled it four times. One time, the Mitsotakis Institute couldn’t make it. The second time there was a scheduling issue for Mrs. Bakoyannis and us – understandable. The other two times, we were called by Mr. Mitsotakis’ office and told that the President didn’t want a two-day conference honouring Mitsotakis to take place at this time. I wondered about it at the time. In hindsight, I understand. Because a discussion honouring Mitsotakis would force his son to acknowledge his father’s work regarding the name of Macedonia and remind him for two days of how badly his father was treated.
JOURNALIST: I didn't know that.
N. KOTZIAS: This is the first time I’ve said it. And the Ministry of Foreign Affairs didn’t hold this two-day conference. I remind you: We wanted it, we scheduled it, because Mr. Mitsotakis was a Minister of Foreign Affairs. We should honour the memory of Ministers of Foreign Affairs, especially in the case of such a strong personality who also served as Prime Minister. Unfortunately, the President of New Democracy didn’t want it to happen. I don’t know how else to interpret it. I guess New Democracy will issue an announcement. I hope they don’t lash out at me. The fact is, we wanted to do it and it didn’t happen.
JOURNALIST: Thank you very much.
N. KOTZIAS: Thank you.
June 19, 2018