Once seen as Moscow’s most loyal satellite state, Bulgaria today is a struggling democracy wrestling with the staple problems of a struggling economy and the development of democratic institutions. A visit last month by The Athenian’s diplomatic correspondent reveals neither a bastion of anti-Geek feelings nor a hotbed of pro-Turkish Moslem fundamentalism, as often suspected in Athens. In fact, quite the contrary…
“Here perhaps for the first time in the history of European art, emotion and pain are fully realized.” So the eminent art historian Manolis Hadzidakis has written of frescoes which can still be seen in Slavic Macedonia where tragedy seems to be indigenous.
The collapse of the Iron Curtain and the break-up of the Yugoslav Federation has dramatically drawn Greece back into Balkan affairs.
Signed in August 1920, it was Venizelos’ diplomatic masterpiece, granting Greece Thrace nearly to the gates of Constantinople and the administration of the Smyrna District. But it was never ratified. Three months later, Venizelos was overthrown by popular vote and King Constantine, detested by the Allies, restored. Though politically abandoned, Greece, in a renewed wave of nationalism, attacked Turkey alone, paving the way to the Asia Minor catastrophe.
A charming but I backward Balkan capital was transformed in the 1920s into a modern, forward-looking metropolis by the enterprise and talents of those who fled from Asia Minor Catastrophe
In an interview, historian Thanos Veremis reviews the discrepancies between the roles played by Turkey and Greece in NATO
