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Hundreds of people gathered on Monday at Athens Cathedral to pay their final respects to Greek composer and politician Mikis Theodorakis, who was an integral part of the Greek political and musical scene for decades. Theodorakis passed away last week on Thursday at the age of 96. After his death was announced, Greece declared three days of national mourning, while tributes poured in from...

24 λεπτά

Turkish President Erdogan and the de-facto ruler of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nayhan, spoke on the phone earlier this week in the latest sign of a possible thaw between the regional rivals. Turkey and the UAE have been at odds over Ankara’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood and on opposing sides on a number of issues - from the conflict in...

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Vassilis Nedos, Kathimerini’s diplomatic and defense editor, joins us on The Greek Current today to look at his latest op-ed in Kathimerini, where he highlights what Greece needs to be paying attention to when we look at the ripple effects in the region to the US and NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Taliban’s takeover of the country. We also look into Vassilis Nedos’s latest coverage of...

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With the world and the US focused on Afghanistan, Turkey carried out airstrikes that hit genocide survivors in Iraq and members of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in mid August. One of the airstrikes hit a medical clinic in Sinjar, killing eight people, while another airstrike saw a Turkish drone kill Yazidi leader Hassan Saeed on the day he was scheduled to meet with the Iraqi prime...

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US Senator Bob Menendez, the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was in Greece and Cyprus last week and this week, where he held a number of key meetings with leading officials, including Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades. His trip highlighted the increasing strategic value of Greece and Cyprus for US policy in the Eastern...

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Earlier this year Turkey’s President Erdogan had hoped to build leverage over the US, the EU, and NATO by reaching a deal with Washington, DC to take over and secure Kabul’s international airport after the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. That deal is all but dead after the Taliban took over Kabul. Turkey is continuing its dialogue with all the sides in Afghanistan, however, including the...

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At the end of July, the leaders of Serbia, North Macedonia, and Albania met in Skopje, where they agreed to bolster regional economic integration, vowing to abolish border controls between their countries by January 2023. They named their initiative “Open Balkans” or “Mini-Schengen” – after the European Union’s free travel zone. The announcement comes as leaders in the Western Balkans are...

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This summer has highlighted a number of challenges the world is likely to face as a result of climate change - from the deadly floods in Germany and northern Europe, to heatwaves and wildfires that ravaged Greece, Turkey, and Mediterranean countries. Another area that is increasingly under pressure is the sea. This year, we witnessed a thick, slimy layer of so-called “sea snot” cover Turkey’s...

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On Tuesday Greece’s Health Minister Vassilis Kikilias unveiled a series of new public health safety measures that foresee tough restrictions on individuals that have not been vaccinated against Covid-19. The measures come as Greece continues to see a steady increase in confirmed coronavirus cases and deaths, as well as hospitalizations and intubations, over the past several weeks. Data shows...

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Since the beginning of August, Greece has battled devastating wildfires on the island of Evia, in the Peloponnese, and in Attica. The biggest disaster, however, took place in northern Evia, Greece's second-largest island. Over a million square meters of land has burned, destroying forests, homes and business, and killing thousands of animals in what Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis called...

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HALC's Stathis Theodoropoulos discusses the Delta variant and the way out of the pandemic with HALC Board Member Dr. George Chiampas, assistant professor and attending physician in the department of emergency medicine at Northwestern University and Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago. He is also the chief medical officer for US Soccer and serves as the Medical Director for the Bank of...

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HALC's Stathis Theodoropoulos interviews Kathimerini's Vassilis Nedos about his latest column, which focuses on the strain of denialism behind climate change and the pandemic.

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HALC's Stathis Theodoropoulos discusses Turkey's controversial drone program with HALC Executive Director Endy Zemenides.

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As fires continue to rage across Greece, HALC's Stathis Theodoropoulos interviews Petros Kasfikis, the Washington DC corresponding for the Athens News Agency and Mega TV to analyze the latest developments.

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50 years ago, the Turkish government closed the doors of Halki Seminary, an institution that served as the main school of theology for the Ecumenical Patriarchate, thus depriving the Ecumenical Patriarchate the ability to train Orthodox clergy in its historic home. In the decades since, the Hellenic community, religious freedom and human rights advocates, and even the US government have called...

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Armenia’s government said on Wednesday that three of its soldiers were killed after Azeri forces attacked Armenian positions near the border where clashes have become more frequent despite a ceasefire agreed to after Azerbaijan’s assault on Nagorno Karabakh last fall. Both sides later accepted a Russian ceasefire proposal to try to calm tensions. Meanwhile, this week the US House of...

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Over the last ten years, Tunisia has been viewed as the “lone success story” of the Arab Spring. The country was plunged into crisis earlier this week, however, after its president suspended parliament and dismissed Tunisia’s prime minister in a move denounced as a coup by Tunisia’s main political parties. Steven Cook, an expert on Arab and Turkish politics as well as US-Middle East policy,...

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Far-right groups have had a strong presence in recent rallies by anti-vaxx groups against government efforts to step up vaccination, as they see the pandemic and the social pressures it has created as an opportunity to regroup in the post-Golden Dawn era. In fact, according to police, around half of the some 3,500 people that gathered at a Syntagma Square demonstration last week belonged to...

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Across Turkish-occupied territories in northern Syria, a pattern of violence and criminality has been established, and Turkish-backed groups are accused of becoming criminal syndicates that kidnap for money and exploit citizens’ resources for their own gain. A recent piece in Al Monitor focuses on Afrin, the majority Kurdish enclave in northern Syria that has been occupied by Turkish-backed...

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Democratic and Republican senators voiced heavy criticism of Ankara on Wednesday during a hearing on US policy toward Turkey in which Victoria Nuland, the undersecretary of state for political affairs, testified. Key Senators called out Ankara for backsliding on human rights, undermining NATO, being an “aggressor” toward Greece and Cyprus, and much more. They also demanded more action from the...

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