ARIANA FERENTINOU

Loss of visionary who brought Turkish and Greek youth together ARIANA FERENTINOU

Loss of visionary who brought Turkish and Greek youth together

This week I lost a very dear and close person for the part of my life I have spent in Türkiye, which means more than 20 years. I am sure the same feeling of sudden loss is shared by a great number of people who happen to come across this special person in their lives.

August 05 2022
New trends among the Greek public ARIANA FERENTINOU

New trends among the Greek public

Let’s admit it. We are more interested in individuals and personalities rather than people and societies. And we interpret the whole through the one, or as the Latins used to say “totum pro parte,” “the whole for a part.” In other words, it means something is named after something of which it is only a part. A convenient method of everyday thinking, which makes us jump quickly to conclusions and generalizations.

July 22 2022
Remembering recent past in Turco-Greek relations ARIANA FERENTINOU

Remembering recent past in Turco-Greek relations

Kostas Karamanlis the former leader of Greece’s New Democracy party is associated with the better days of Turkish- Greek relations. He was prime minister of Greece during the first phase of AKP’s rule, when the current Turkish president was serving as the prime minister and Abdullah Gul was the president. Karamanlis led his party to a landslide victory in 2004 and remained in office until 2009 when he was defeated in a mid-term election.

June 03 2022
US Congress makes Mitsotakis feel at home ARIANA FERENTINOU

US Congress makes Mitsotakis feel at home

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis was very pleased with his latest trip to the American capital and particularly with his speech to the American Congress.

May 20 2022
Greek PM Mitsotakis to visit US with great expectations ARIANA FERENTINOU

Greek PM Mitsotakis to visit US with great expectations

With the clock ticking away, the prime minister of Greece, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, appears increasingly confident that his official visit to the U.S. on May 16 will boost his profile abroad as being on the “right side of history.” During his meeting with President Joe Biden, according to the White House statement, both leaders will discuss efforts to support Ukraine and impose economic sanctions on Russia, talk about climate and energy security, and take stock of joint efforts to promote global security through NATO, among others.

May 08 2022
Tensions escalating once again ARIANA FERENTINOU

Tensions escalating once again

It was only last month, on March 13, a cold Sunday afternoon when a sudden air of optimism was blowing between the two sides of the Aegean. The reason was a hastily prepared meeting that day, between President Erdogan and Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis. Mitsotakis was to come to Istanbul on that day to attend the Feast of Orthodoxy, a day of great significance for the Patriarchate at Fener. The plan was that after attending the mass in Fener, Mitsotakis was to meet the Turkish president.

April 28 2022
The yoyo of Greek-Turkish relations ARIANA FERENTINOU

The yoyo of Greek-Turkish relations

A photo caught my eye. It showed two defense ministers, Hulusi Akar and Nikos Panagiotopoulos, last Wednesday in Brussels shaking hands and half-smiling in an empty audience room. They were there for a NATO defense ministers’ meeting, and they agreed to keep their channels of communication open. Also, they both expressed their satisfaction for the next round of bilateral exploratory talks due in Athens next Tuesday, Feb. 22.

February 18 2022
More interesting things about the Balkans ARIANA FERENTINOU

More interesting things about the Balkans

Athens-based Kapa Research company, one of the oldest in social research studies in Southeast Europe, has been monitoring the area of the Balkans for the past 20 years and its latest comparative research includes all nine countries of the area: Albania, North Macedonia, Bulgaria, Greece, Kosovo, Cyprus, Romania, Serbia, and Turkey. The research tries to find how the people of this geography face new challenges such as COVID-19, how pessimistic or optimistic they are about their country’s economy, what they think of the other countries in the region and what they feel about mother-Europe.

December 09 2021
Interesting finds about the Balkans ARIANA FERENTINOU

Interesting finds about the Balkans

Yesterday, I received an interesting e-mail in my Inbox. It was a survey conducted during the last two months, October and November, on the way people assessed several major topics that came to the agenda recently. There were issues such as COVID-19, economy, international relations, international alliances, popularities of countries and leaders, etc. What was particularly interesting was that the survey covered the area of the Balkans and included both Greece and Turkey. The interviews for the research took place in October, and some 7,000 people were interviewed from Albania, North Macedonia, Bulgaria, Greece, Kosovo, Cyprus, Romania, Serbia and Turkey. An essential aspect of this survey is that it is longitudinal and discovers angles that relate to different Balkan countries in a way that maybe we did not think before.

November 26 2021