Firm, but open-minded…
I would like to refer to Stavros Lygeros’s commentary («A phobic syndrome») in the November 19 edition, which, in my opinion, relates to two different subjects, put somewhat arbitrarily, together. Personally, I have no inclination for Turkish EU membership, for various reasons, and I fully agree with Mr Lygeros on the fact that the Greek government could, and possibly should, take a harder position on Turkey’s «EU a la carte» attitude. On the other hand, I completely disagree on the first part of the commentary, concerning the incident in Echinos, Thrace. Let’s assume that a television crew, composed of Muslims, not to say of people of Turkish descent (God and Lausanne 1923 forbid), behaved, in a Greek Orthodox church, as the Greek television crew is reported to have behaved in a local mosque. I can hear the outraged cries from Archbishop Christodoulos down to the last person in the street. Furthermore, while I do not know what the Greek minority in Imvros may or may not imagine doing in similar circumstances, I saw detailed TV coverage of the friendly and utterly civilized attitude taken in the streets of Athens by highly individualist Greeks (therefore, not a mob, according to Mr Lygeros’s distinction) to Albanian nationals celebrating the victory of their team over the Greeks in Tirana a couple of months ago. C. DE ARCAYNE, Kolonaki, Athens.
