Turco-Russian confrontation: A hot debate in Greece

Greece has been watching developments in the recent Russia-Turkey row with increased concern. Although the Alexis Tsipras government has not been able to give a new impetus to relations between Athens and Moscow as anticipated, historical affinities with the "blond nation from the north" - as Russia is known in popular Greek mythology - have come to the fore since the downing of the Russian Su-24 by the Turks. 

If you put aside the ongoing problem with refugees flowing into Greece from Turkey as a half-domestic half-foreign issue, Greeks remain heavily involved in their ongoing domestic socio-political and economic crisis, which the last general election did not managed to solve. An inward-looking media have paid limited attention to what is happening outside the eurozone. 

However, the Paris bombings and particularly the Turkey-Russia crisis have given a new energy to a hot public debate that brings historical enmities to the foreground, places Islam against Orthodoxy, and has fueled theories of a new proxy Cold War. 

I have been following the public discussion among academics, journalists and strategists in Greece since the crisis broke out between Russia and Turkey. The general approach among the Greeks is that since the beginning of its disintegration, Syria has been a theater of serious confrontation between big international players, namely the U.S. and Russia. The first collateral damage we are witnessing from this is in the form of the flows of refugees that have been flooding Europe since last summer. Many analysts are already predicting major upheavals in our immediate neighborhood, including a redrawing of the map and a defining of new borders. Some even suggest that "Syria could be the cause of World War III." 

There...