Below is the text of Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias’ speech during the opening of the proceedings of the 10th General Assembly of the World Hellenic Inter-Parliamentary Association:
N. KOTZIAS: We thank you for your love for this land and for your help in difficult times. I said, when the Soviet Union collapsed, in 1989-1990, that there was an international debate on what the future of the world is. In this debate, the one view was that Japan would win the competition. The other was that the European model would win, and the third, the U.S., the Anglo-Saxon model.
In 1994, however, there was a new view in the international debate that I found very interesting. It said that the winner of the game of international competition would be the one with a strong nation state and a strong diaspora. The example of Israel, the example of the Chinese, and, further in the future, the example of India. An example that has significant potential, but potential that Greece has not utilized.
In its most difficult times, if Greece wants to find itself at advantage facing the future, it needs the power of its Diaspora. It needs the people who convey the most varied cultures, the most varied experiences of institutional systems, the most interesting views on the future.
The diaspora is the power for a state not just to have solidarity everywhere in the world, but also to be able to learn from the whole world. We have you as our supporters and, in a sense, our teachers regarding what is happening and what the world thinks of us. You are not just a diaspora. You are the politicians of the Diaspora. The politicians – I often say about myself that I am not a politician. I am a political animal, in the Aristotelian sense; a citizen who is in the public sphere. And politics, in this perspective, is the difference.
In this land, in this Athens of the Acropolis, was born what our philosophers describe as a system of institution-building; the creation, that is, of institutions. By 800 BC, the people believed that God gives institutions, whether directly, himself, or via some monarch who receives them in the form of instructions from God. This was logical, because we were in an era when societies and their productivity developed very slowly. And generation upon generation found the same institutions before them.
But then came Athens, with the new productive model, the new method of refining metal, a method stolen by Prometheus from Caucasus, and, with this new method of refining metal, productivity accelerated and the people began to experience major changes in their lives within 10 and 20 years. And what did they learn from this?
They learned that institutions are not given by God or the monarch, but are the work of humankind. And because humans create institutions, they have the right to change them. And that to change them, they need the city, the citizen, the politician. All of us who deal with politics as Greeks are children of the greatest philosophical discovery. People create institutions. People can change them. Humankind need the politicians. In this sense, you, the politicians of our Diaspora link the politics and the diaspora and the tradition of Greece with regard to politics.
Today, Greece – I don’t need to explain this, you are experiencing it – is going through a very difficult time, and in this difficult time, many of Greece’s problems have not arisen because Greece couldn’t resolve them itself or due to the internal balance of power, where controversies exist. They arose because there is the great weight of power and institutional experience of our partners, our friends. There is a major battle being waged with regard to the Greek issue among the politicians of third countries and societies, in public opinion. If Greece wants to win the battles of the future, it needs to find a way to win the hearts of the citizens of third countries, to influence their policy in a more positive direction.
And for us, the most important factor that wages this battle is the Greeks of the Diaspora, and the politicians in particular. We need you today as never before. The countries where you live need you to back Greece as never before.
Greece, like religion, Orthodoxy, has a spirit of ecumenicity. At the same time, this spirit of ecumenicity is also linked to patriotism. This patriotism is more vital than ever, because our country is living in an environment that we at the Foreign Ministry often describe as a triangle of instability. Ukraine is at the top, Libya is at the bottom left, and the Middle East on the right. And our country’s importance, internationally, is great. We are the most stable point inside this triangle. Together with Cyprus, Italy and Israel, we form a line of stability in the region.
So, patriotism requires that, beyond restoring the country’s real image in the international environment, we make it understood – and in the U.S. it was understood very well, and we thank them for that – that Greece’s role is not just economic. It is profoundly geopolitical, and the fate of our country also links us to the fate of your young people or second homeland.
Finally, I would like to say to you that our foreign policy, if you follow it closely, is a foreign policy within the framework of ecumenicity and patriotism. In this framework of the responsibility politicians, who build institutions; that is, change institutions to the benefit of their societies. It is today a proactive policy that endeavors to avert and remedy inertias. It is a democratic foreign policy that belongs to the space of the democratic community of states. It is a foreign policy that serves security and stability, and that wants to contribute to the perspective of the intellectual, cultural and economic wealth of the Greeks.
I would like once again, as the Foreign Minister, to thank you for making this long journey to your Ithaki. This long journey to Ithaki is never wasted. Ithaki exists, its people await you and look for your support. And I believe that the unified forces of Hellenism, of Greek society and Diaspora, will reaffirm the examples I referred to at the beginning of my speech, according to which the power of states, of nations states in the 21st century, is linked with the involvement of the Diaspora and the nation state. Without the Diaspora, we are a disabled state. Without our state, you cannot even be a Diaspora with a perspective of identity. We are together, we exist together, we are supported by and support you. Our perspective is for Hellenism, through the Diaspora, to link patriotism with ecumenicity.
Thank you very much.
July 21, 2015