There goes the revolution

When Syriza came to power in Greece, with an outstanding electoral performance and a very unconventional political leader, people in Turkey, including myself, felt a most welcomed fresh breath of hope. Perhaps for the first time, business as usual would cease to be the unchanging political stance in Greece, and more importantly, perhaps the institutionalized and cheap Turkish-Greek rivalry would come to an end.

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras had strong and vocal revolutionary rhetoric, brilliantly seconded by his very atypical minister of finance, Yanis Varoufakis. Everyone knew that it would be extremely difficult for Greece to totally change its economic policy in the short run. But the way the troika of the European Council, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund was handling the issue, combined with the strong clientelism of Greece had taken the situation to a deadlock. Syriza's new rhetoric was hailed as a turning point in the dire situation. But Syriza was also seen as the standard bearer of the wave of the new left in Europe, mostly symbolized by Podemos in Spain and to a certain degree by Prime Minister Matteo Renzi in Italy.

The first steps of the Syriza government - oddly in alliance with a very conventional conservative party - were extremely disappointing. Not really because of the ideas professed, but mainly because of the terrible, disagreeable way these ideas were put forward, with immense condescension by Varoufakis, at the EU meetings. The result was Tsipras firing Varoufakis and the extreme anger created among EU money lenders who incredibly forced the party to practically shut down the Greek economy for more than a month.

That showed everyone who the boss was, and out of despair and mismanagement Tsipras opted for early elections, which he won, almost without the left-wing from Syriza. This has been seen as a continuation of Greek voters' support for their new leader and atypical politician. As a matter of fact, Tsipras won the elections not because he was the best, but mainly because he was seen as the least despicable. Most Greek voters did not participate in the voting, so again this was business as usual.

But perhaps the most striking disappointment came when the wave of migrants started to roll in over the Aegean Sea to illegally cross the borders of the EU. More than 2 million refugees live in Turkey, mostly from Syria and Iraq. This huge population of refugees started a migratory movement toward the EU all of a sudden for basically two reasons. The first is that Turkey, which had a peaceful environment, became less dependable for refugees fearing the resumption of the PKK's armed struggle. The second issue was that the absence of perspectives and integration in Turkey created a sense of despair among refugees, which pushes them toward Europe and, more precisely, Germany.

In that sense, better cooperation between Greece and Turkey was sorely needed. The image of drowned children still haunts our memories. A number of Turkish opinion-makers - myself included - heavily insisted on unilateral normalization of our relations with Greece, and some even proposed simply and purely disbanding the Turkish Aegean Army to give Greece confidence and hope.

Instead, what we had on the part of Tsipras, was again business as usual. A blunt "no" to joint Turkish-Greek sea patrols because that would allow the Turkish Coast Guard to enter Greek territorial waters. That sounds so familiar to us Turks, fed up with the rhetoric of our own nationalists, that the disappointment was exponentially increased. Tsipras, by revitalizing an old slogan of Greek anarchists inform the 1970s that "the Aegean belongs to the fish," ignited a spark of hope in our bilateral relations. The same Tsipras, by taking a stance worthy of a Theodoros Pangalos against possible humanitarian cooperation with Turkey, drowned all hopes at once. There goes the hopefulness, there goes the revolution.