Dimitrios' World

When the angry twenty-four-year-old who tells me that the Social Contract between the state and its citizens is broken, is my son, I take notice and listen. Alejandro is an angry young man representative of many of his generation. He is well educated and travelled, he speaks many foreign languages yet insecurity pervades as to what the world has in store for him and his generation as job security becomes more scarce, as stable political systems try to reinvent themselves to cope with growing governance issues, and as mass protests have become the norm across Europe. He also represents the epitome of European integration and its emphasis on diversity. On the other hand, with a Greek father and a Spanish mother, his two countries have been among the most severely hit by the decade-long economic crisis with the highest rates of youth unemployment in the EU, standing at nearly 40% in Greece and 33% in Spain as per July 2018. The ongoing “yellow vests” protests in France are...

I was proud of my country and its institutions on Saturday, 28 September when numerous arrest warrants were issued for members of the neo Nazi,  national  socialist gang that calls itself a party -- Golden Dawn. Among those arrested where its party leader as well as other standing members of parliament. I am still proud that they will be tried for their numerous hate crimes including their organized crime activities. It was about time to crush them even if if they cannot be nipped in the bud anymore.  A week has passed. So much has changed, yet much remains the same. Instead of witnessing and experiencing a mass sensation of relief, and a wider debate around the issues of hate, racism and tolerance, all we have seen is much ado about nothing....an embedded suspicion of the political system and within it where the so called 'democratic' political parties of the left and the right continue to snipe at each other in public about the objective of the arrests and the cra...

Question: what does a frustrated and desperate citizen do when he realizes, as a horrified onlooker at the developments in his country, that not one of the parliamentary or extra-parliamentary parties (or constructs) expresses him? What does he do when the democracy he believes in and wants to constructively engage in is broke?  It has taken the murder of Pavlos Fissas by a member of Golden Dawn, Greece's brand of neo-Nazis, to shock society into action....a society that has been largely silent when the Nazis murder or rough up immigrants. Yet even this call for a higher calling that this ideology minimizes us and should have no place in mainstream politics or otherwise has brought us closer by awakening most to the danger of extremism but has polarized us further as other mainstream political and social actors seek to equate extremism on the right with extremism on the left. Roger Cohen correctly coins it when he writes that " [t] he perfect political storm for violent e...

The empowerment of the social capital of the country has become one of the most important aspects arising out of the Occupy Gezi movement in Turkey. While the definitions of the term ‘social capital’ are many, I would posit that the World Bank’s is the most inclusive: Social capital refers to the institutions, relationships, and norms that shape the quality and quantity of a society's social interactions. Increasing evidence shows that social cohesion is critical for societies to prosper economically and for development to be sustainable. Social capital is not just the sum of the institutions which underpin a society – it is the glue that holds them together. In other world, the social capital refers both to a country’s institutions and their representatives and to its civil society and the interplay between both. It raises the issues of legitimacy, accountability, democracy, education and responsibility by both the institutions and civil society. In the case of Turkey, th...

Surrealism is a good word to describe what one experiences in Cihangir in the center of European Istanbul near Taksim Square. The tension is palpable, the air heavy with humidity. People having their usual conversations in cafes with their thoughts on how their life's have fundamentally changed since 31 May. Strangers are walking up and down the streets ready to partake in the protests that will follow later with their gas masks (the choice is infinite both in terms of type and color) and their goggles to protect their eyes from the pepper gas and other such niceties we will all have to deal with later and into the night. Others still are carrying various types of supposedly protective head gear...so many days of this has made both protesters and those simply standing by better prepared to deal with the onslaught or so we think.... The sounds of helicopters making their reconnaissance flights are heard overhead. The streets are slowly filling up and now the now the air is inundat...

As I watched Space Shuttle Atlantis take off yesterday and remembered watching, as a teenager in California, Space Shuttle Columbia in April 1981 take the shuttle program into space and recall all its ups and downs (with the disasters in 1986 and 2003), I also understand the sense of destiny that makes a nation proud (in this case the US and its space quest).... The emotions are always the same - goose bumps, tears that cannot be held back, and a sense of pride of having had the privilege to live and study in the US for a significant part of my life. .... And then I always reflect on my country...What about my country, what is its sense of destiny?...It seems to have none, perpetually lost is its pettiness, unable to overcome the burden of its glorious past and the gifts its peoples gave to the world starting with the greatest of all - democracy. The shuttle program is coming to an end with the Atlantis mission but I do not have any doubts that the United States will be l...

Undeniably, the riots of December 2008 in Athens and elsewhere in Greece have made a return to normalcy extremely difficult. Yesterday, we heard that 31 shots with the intention to kill were fired against three policemen on guard duty with one in stable but critical condition after marathon surgery. The holiday season is over and trouble is about to break loose again. While I try to convince myself that the end of apathy and the audacity of hope are near, if not here, the continued downswing of my country where what seems to prevail is the violence of a tiny minority, where the authorities are at a loss as to how to (re)act, where the police do not know anymore how to act, where should the violence and destruction begin anew, fear will become all the more prevalent should the rock and Molotov throwers become the norm. A demolition derby is in place, in full swing while we, most ordinary citizens, watch stupefied, irritated, apathetic at times and at a loss to react at others. I kee...