JOURNALIST: We have the pleasure of talking with a person, a member of the government, a top-ranking member of the government, who doesn’t talk very often. Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias. Good morning.
N. KOTZIAS: Good morning to your listeners, good morning to Dimos and Spyros, to youth … both of you are young to me.
JOURNALIST: And to me. Every time I hear your name, Nikos, in conversation, I’m taken thirty years back.
N. KOTZIAS: It is always a pleasure to meet and talk with people who were young then and are so successful today, like you, Dimos.
JOURNALIST: You know, I have been good friends for years, and we have worked together in difficult times, with Nikos Toskas, the current Civil Protection Minister. And when I learned that you are working together and share opinions, I said, Nikos …
N. KOTZIAS: We are together in the “PRATTO” movement, and he always brought me your greetings.
JOURNALIST: I also said this in the meeting with Papadrosos the day before yesterday, when we heard the news from Berlin, the statement, that is, from the Berlin spokesperson. A little later, the tough announcement came out too. But tell us why you reacted immediately with regard to the joint patrols.
N. KOTZIAS: It is obvious that there needs to be coordination and cooperation with Turkey on confronting the refugee issue. But because the popularity of certain politicians in Europe is on a relatively downward trend, they are trying to find someone to blame. Some believe Greece is to blame. In reality, what is to blame is the war in Syria itself, and in fact I would say that the forces that start such wars don’t pay for them; they are paid for by the countries there, as well as by countries like Greece.
Second, we have an economic breakdown of the UN in the region. Unfortunately, the UN doesn’t have the money to provide for the camps. Up until the summer it was about 150 to 200 dollars per family, per month. Today it’s 13 dollars a month; that is, a whole family has to live on 43 cents a day – to live in the camps and secure food, clothing, survival. In general, this can’t be done on so little money.
And I had said, then, in February, in Europe: Gentlemen, the way we are conducting ourselves, with regard to the financial needs of these populations and the fact that we don’t have a timely political solution to the Middle East issue, a million new migrants will be coming to us. You may remember, because you are a respected journalist, that the international press came down on me for raising such an issue, because I supposedly wanted to create a distraction, at the time, from other issues. Some of them are very far from our region and don’t realize exactly what the problem is.
We want cooperation with Turkey. This cooperation can take place from the lowest to the highest level. We talked to Mr. Davutoglu, the Prime Minister did, and separately I talked to Foreign Minister Sinirlioglu at the UN, and we agreed to step up our cooperation.
Some came up with the term “joint patrols,” but joint patrols means Turkish vessels entering Greek territorial waters, with all the long-term consequences that has.
So I explained to them, let’s not kid ourselves, and don’t listen to the proposals some are putting forward, because, in reality, if you want us to prevent refugees from coming to Greece, we have to either close the Turkish coast, to which Turkey will not agree, or create relocations centers in Turkey itself; that is, as we register them in Mytilini or on some other islands in the coming days and they go to Europe, they could be registered on Turkish territory and go from there directly to Europe. This would result in better control of the refugee flows and enable these people – rather than taking risks at sea, where we even had dead infants – to go directly to their refugee destination.
JOURNALIST: Can we characterize this as a gift from Berlin to Ankara?
N. KOTZIAS: I would say here, Dimos, that sometimes certain international news outlets and certain commentators don’t understand the difference between joint patrols, joint actions, cooperation, and they use these words as if they are interchangeable. We have carried out a campaign and we explain to them that there is no equality or equal weight among these words. And I think this is understood. And we shouldn’t fuel the situation and show concern because there are those who don’t understand these words. To whomever we explain that joint patrols are unacceptable, but that rejecting them doesn’t mean rejection of the need for cooperation and coordination on confronting the refugee flows, they agree with us and understand it. And I have to tell you, sincerely – and I have said this to various Greek commentators – that no such request has been made officially to Greece; nor is anyone exerting pressure on us and nor could they ever exert pressure on us for this to be accepted. In general, our foreign policy has the following characteristic: In the weakness we have in our economic power, we are trying to shift the scale with our geopolitical power and our geopolitical role.
JOURNALIST: Have we managed that?
N. KOTZIAS: If you read the statements from the U.S. to China and from Israel to Abu Dhabi, I think it has been taken very carefully into consideration.
JOURNALIST: Has a role also been played by the story with Egypt and the natural gas and the possible cooperation with Cyprus and Greece?
N. KOTZIAS: We have created a serious collaboration, which exists from the previous governments; it was a thought I expressed as early as the 1990s, as an ambassador at the time at the Foreign Ministry. We have the trilateral with Israel. We have also proposed to Jordan – at the UN, where we were ten days ago – that such a trilateral be created. We are also thinking of creating quadrilaterals; that is, for four countries to cooperate; four countries that are a stabilizing factor. I also believe that when the Cyprus issue is resolved – and we are working in that direction, without deluding ourselves, always --- there will be much greater stabilization throughout the region.
We carried out the analysis – you will be well aware of this – that there is, around us, a triangle of destabilization. There is Ukraine, which the other partners did in fact see; there is Libya and Syria at the lower vertices of the triangle. They didn’t understand this at first, and I explained to them – and now they have understood – that Greece is at the center of this triangle, it is the most stabilizing force in this triangle and, consequently, it would be nonsensical to destabilize the country for economic reasons. They understood this so well that there are dispatches – which I cannot make public – in which a major capital says that its President convinced the Prime Minister of another country that its minister cannot keep talking about a Grexit, etc., because there is a huge geopolitical issue here due to which no one should bother the country.
JOURNALIST: Mr. Kotzias, talking about the triangle and hearing earlier about your relations with Mr. Toskas, he left open the possibility of jihadists entering our country – are people and situation being monitored? What do you say?
N. KOTZIAS: I believe that the way hundreds of thousands of refugees are coming, proud Syrians in their majority – you know that the Syrians are a very proud people – no one can say that not one of the 430,000 who came this year alone is related to latent intentions. It is a case for the Greek and European authorities for there to be systematic and intensive monitoring of the issue.
JOURNALIST: Are you concerned?
N. KOTZIAS: Whatever might happen concerns us, so that we can avert it. If your aren’t concerned, the worst will happen.
JOURNALIST: Do you feel that the U.S. is closer than ever before to Greece?
N. KOTZIAS: I think that the policy of the Obama administration is a policy that is close to Keynesian schemes of economic policy. It is far from neoliberalism, and, as you know, in Europe, for the time being, neoliberalism is dominant, regardless of whether deep rifts have been put in it by the negotiations and life itself. In America, as a result, outlooks on how economic policy is made are closer to us than are the outlooks of many other western countries.
JOURNALIST: Can you talk to us about the Greek initiative for a conference in Athens on the coexistence of religions and cultures in the Middle East?
N. KOTZIAS: Thank you very much. I must say that it is this coming Monday and Tuesday. Many, many important figures are coming: Foreign Ministers – like those of Netherlands and Egypt – Muslim leaders, almost all of the Patriarchs and all the leaders of Orthodoxy, the Cardinal who is the Vatican’s Foreign Minister, important Rabbis. And politicians are coming, and religious leaders, as well as great scientists from major universities, like the Sorbonne, Oxford, etc.
It is an initiative aimed at two things.
First, to explain once again that the Middle East was not a land of barbarity, as it sometimes seems in Europe, but was a land where European dreams are realized – for example, multicultural and multifaith societies. We have in Syria, earlier, and in Iraq the survival of the most diverse religions, and a great deal of Christianity, and Orthodox Christians in particular, who lived there for 2,000 whole years. We have different cultures that coexisted in these spaces. Today it is none other than Europe that wants religious and cultural plurality, regardless of how it means it at any given time. So, what existed here for 2,000 years, peace in the Middle East, is being destroyed.
The second is that this is not being destroyed in theory; that is, someone is destroying a religion and a culture in a region. This destruction means that hundreds of thousands of Muslims, Christians – Copts and Orthodox Christians – are being slaughtered in these regions, and so we have, beyond the matter of protection of religion and culture, the issue – which is more important – of protecting human life.
So the first message of the International Conference is: protection of culture, religion, human life, solidarity, understanding of what is really happening in the Middle East.
And the second is that we want to set up an international observatory, here in Athens, that can consistently monitor cultural and religious rights.
At the end of this international conference, which is already successful in terms of participation, I will announce a second initiative; a new one. And this initiative and the one I am going to announce are a central core of our foreign policy – a proactive, multidimensional foreign policy.
And in fact I have said that we, fighting for our national interests, fighting on these issues that the Chinese call fundamental or central, and that we call national interests – because they correspond with other countries’ issues – at the same time I want to point up a new international role for our country. Because as long as the country can maintain an international dimension in its foreign policy, a dimension that transcends the day-to-day and our national interests, we will be heard that much more and our pursuits and thoughts on our direct national issues will be better understood. I want to nurture an international role for the country; a role that makes the country stronger and a more important factor than it is today, and thus more convincing on its immediate issues/interests.
JOURNALIST: Should we perhaps also set up an observatory for the Greek degree-holders who are going abroad? You will have seen this, on the many trips you take and meetings you have. We are champions in this area. As far as I know, you have been active on this.
N. KOTZIAS: First of all, we have our General Secretariat for Greeks Abroad – and it would be worth our discussing this at some point, or your talking to Michalis Kokkinos – where we are taking new and, I would say, original actions for Greeks Abroad.
Second, as you know, because before I became a minister, in January, I worked as a professor at the University of Piraeus, I have counted the “cost” of the Greek academics who have gone abroad. We calculate them at some 140,000, of which over 10,000 are doctors and scientists in related fields. That is, we raise a child in our country, in nursery school, kindergarten, she goes to primary school, secondary school, university, she specializes, does post-graduate work or a PhD, and then, when we have paid for everything …
JOURNALIST: We’ve paid a great deal.
N. KOTZIAS: … the families, through hard work and pain, the country overall – the go abroad as ready scientists. This isn’t the same as the immigration of the 1960s.
JOURNALIST: And they’re not just ready when they leave, they are also distinguished, because, for better or for worse, our mathematical minds can’t be compared …
JOURNALIST: … and the doctors.
N. KOTZIAS: I was coming back from Luxembourg, and sitting next to us was a young man, a doctor in Munich, who was coming to Athens for three days to see his family, and he said, “I had thought we didn’t have studies as good as those abroad, and I discovered that, for example, as ophthalmologists, we are the only ones where everyone does surgery, whereas in Germany only select doctors perform surgery; professors, etc.” Our scientists are very experienced, they have extensive general education, and as soon as they are combined with the material and technical infrastructure that exists in many countries in central and northern Europe, they become stars. €14 billion, Mr. Verykios, for free.
JOURNALIST: We have to do something to keep them here, Mr. Minister. There has to be a programme.
N. KOTZIAS: Economic growth and, above all, what the country needs is a development plan, development programmes, which are part of all the agreements we make as the Foreign Ministry in economic diplomacy.
JOURNALIST: Severe, scathing, with a strong sense of self-criticism, as always, Nikos Kotzias. Thank you very much. Have a good day.
N. KOTZIAS: I hope we can talk again. Good day to your listeners.
October 15, 2015