Thanos Davelis

While summer may be winding down, water scarcity, overcrowded streets and rising housing costs are infuriating locals across southern European countries - especially those that rely on tourism. Greece is no exception, and we are seeing reactions to overtourism not only on Greece's top island destinations, but also in cities like Athens.

Making housing more affordable is going to be one of the central themes of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis' keynote speech at the Thessaloniki International Fair in early September.

Last week Greece - and the region of Attica where Athens is located - suffered another major wildfire that threatened the suburbs of Athens and burned an area almost twice the size of Manhattan. This wildfire came a year after Greece experienced Europe's largest ever wildfire on record, which burned over half of the Dadia National Park.

About a week before Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan latest threats to intervene militarily in Israel on behalf of the Palestinians, reports indicate that Israel had foiled a major terrorist attach orchestrated by Hamas operatives in Turkey.

This week saw tensions between Greece and Turkey reach levels we have not seen since 2022 in the Aegean as Turkey sent its warships into an area south of the Greek islands of Kassos and Karpathos. Expert Constantinos Filis joins Thanos Davelis to look into whether we are seeing a gradual return of tensions in the Aegean after more than a year of calm. 

Professor Gonda Van Steen, the Koraes Chair at the Centre for Hellenic Studies and Department of Classics at King's College London and a member of the academic committee for the Alexandria Cavafy House, joins Thanos Davelis to explore why making Cavafy widely accessible - from his Alexandria home to the Cavafy Archive in Athens - is important, and look at why his work still inspires us today.

While Hungary's Victor Orban - who currently holds the rotating presidency of the EU - is bidding to become the dominant hard-right force in the EU, he's also raising eyebrows on the international level.

With the US in the midst of an intense diplomatic push to prevent a war between Israel and Hezbollah forces in Lebanon, Turkey has also waded into the mix.

While it's still unclear what Turkey is looking to achieve should a conflict erupt, it looks like a policy is taking shape, especially after Ankara followed up on Hezbollah's threats to Cyprus with its own "warning."

With SYRIZA on the brink of civil war, PASOK facing a new leadership fight, and New Democracy still reeling from the aftermath of the European elections, it seems like a period of uncertainty has set in among Greece's top political parties.

Greece sent its frigate "Psara" to the Red Sea this week to join Operation Aspides, the EU's mission in the Red Sea to protect merchant ships from Houthi attacks. The Psara is replacing the Hydra, which completed a three month deployment in the Red Sea, at a time when the Houthis are escalating their campaign.