YouSaid · the spoken record

Sean Matthews

lines on the record: 43
first: 2026-01-19
most recent: 2026-01-19
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Nation state, and then you see the first country of post war American intervention against the communists. And today what you see is a Greece that is rejoining the East in a sense because of this rise of new powers and all of these things. So I think there were kind of three big timeframes in which Greece's history is spread out in the modern era.”
2026-01-19 · Intelligence Squared · Is Greece Becoming the New Borderland Between East and West? With Sean Matthews · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For about 100 years, that was Greasy's story, right? And it was how do we create this nation state backed by Western European powers out of the crumbling Ottoman Empire. And the Greeks are always clawing territory here and there where they could. World War II happens. Greece is occupied by the Nazis. It descends into a horrible civil war, which the Greek author Kazanzakis calls a fratricide. It pitted brother against brother. It was a horrible conflict. But Greece emerges from that civil war, really, is a bastion. of US power projection into Europe and the wider Middle East. You know, the Truman doctrine, which the US kind of declared when they said that they were going to defend against communism and that every American dollar would go to defend states against the communist menace, it really started in Greece, which is interesting. So Greece, I say, is the first country actually of American post-war intervention. Again, so you see the trend, right? From the first country that was a Western...”
2026-01-19 · Intelligence Squared · Is Greece Becoming the New Borderland Between East and West? With Sean Matthews · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think you could. I mean, look, if you really start with the Greek Revolution of 1821, when Greece kind of gained its independence from the Ottoman Empire, this state that Europe, Western Europe, created, right? As we were saying, right, Greece was the first ethnic nation state to be fashioned out of Europe. So after Greece, they all came next, right? Bulgaria, Germany, but it was Greece was really the start of it. And Greece was really the start of this kind of quest within the Ottoman world for a nation state from”
2026-01-19 · Intelligence Squared · Is Greece Becoming the New Borderland Between East and West? With Sean Matthews · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think what we're going to see is that a lot of the flashpoints in global politics that we're seeing today, whether it be the rise of an independent Turkey, a revisionist independent Turkey, a revisionist Israel, a Middle East that is really walking on eggshells in terms of the wider conflict and the instability there. Greece is at the front lines of all of this. So Greece, I call it, it's a Bellwether, really, right? And it's the first, as you were saying, right, it's kind of that first state that is going to be exposed to all the wild swings that I think we're going to see in a much more chaotic world. So it's the country to watch in the future.”
2026-01-19 · Intelligence Squared · Is Greece Becoming the New Borderland Between East and West? With Sean Matthews · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Greece and leaving the West, which is interesting, is that, and I say this in the book as Greece deepens its relationships with the East, it's still trying to maintain a strong partnership with the United States and with NATO. And we've seen that the last two years as Greece has really opened itself up to the US with military bases. So a lot of people don't know this, but a lot of the supplies that are going to Ukraine in the war against Russia are actually entering the country as the first destination through Greece to the port of Alexandrupoli, which is a Greek port in northeastern borderlands. You also have an American base in Souda Bay on the island of Crete, another very eastern, very eastern island. So Greece very, very much wants the US here and wants these Western institutions here. The problem the Greeks have is trying to keep them here.”
2026-01-19 · Intelligence Squared · Is Greece Becoming the New Borderland Between East and West? With Sean Matthews · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I think it's very telling kind of for the world order that we're looking at. So I should note that the Greeks themselves, they're really clinging to the West in a certain sense, right, which I find fascinating because they have a revisionist Turkey on one side, they're adjacent to the lands that Russia is claiming is a sphere of influence battering at Ukraine with this invasion. And kind of they see this chaos swirling around the Middle East. So they very much want the Western institutions to succeed. Greece would be the last one to leave the European Union and they would be the last ones to leave NATO if they were given a choice. They wouldn't do it. But those institutions are shaky. And that's why Greece has had to go and look for allies. And that's why they're looking for Israel as an ally against Turkey. That's why they've kind of struck a partnership with Egypt because they're concerned about migration and they want the Egyptian government to kind of crack down on migrants crossing the Mediterranean. They need investments and the Western governments are cash trapped. So they're looking to Saudi Arabia. They're looking to the United Arab Emirates. One of the things I think when we talk about”
2026-01-19 · Intelligence Squared · Is Greece Becoming the New Borderland Between East and West? With Sean Matthews · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think the impact, it might not be what we assume. One of the things I say is that in the book is that if you looked at Greece 15 years ago, 2010, between 2010 and 2015, it was the Western institutions that looked very strong, NATO and the European Union. And it was Greece that looked very weak. You know, there was a big debate whether Greece would crash out of the European Union. The government at the time, the government of Alexis Tsipras, which was the left-wing government, was flirting with Russia. And you fast forward today, actually, and what you notice is that the Greeks are the stable ones. And the Western institutions are the ones that look pretty shaky, which I find very ironic.”
2026-01-19 · Intelligence Squared · Is Greece Becoming the New Borderland Between East and West? With Sean Matthews · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, yes. What's interesting again for the Greeks, though, is that the historic role of Greece in Israel and Palestine, not a lot of people know this, but the main landhold, the second largest landholder in Israel is the Greek Orthodox Church. So they actually leased the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, its building. Yeah. So there's a lot of tension between the Greeks who are upset over attacks from far-right settler groups against church property and these kind of things. And the military alliance that we're seeing between Greece and Israel.”
2026-01-19 · Intelligence Squared · Is Greece Becoming the New Borderland Between East and West? With Sean Matthews · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“1960s, there's this dispute, right, between the Greek Orthodox Church and Jerusalem and the Israeli government over a whole slew of issues like land and property sales and the kind of the rise of settler, the far right settler movement, which it's a very big issue that is not being addressed in the Greek-Israeli relationship.”
2026-01-19 · Intelligence Squared · Is Greece Becoming the New Borderland Between East and West? With Sean Matthews · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The issue of where the Greek people on the Israeli Palestinian conflict and where is the Greek government are vastly different. And it's a very interesting trend to watch. In the book, I also spent quite a bit of time in Israel, in occupied East Jerusalem, which I think is, again, one of the most fascinating aspects of all of this, is that like in Istanbul, there was once a historic Greek community in Jerusalem. I mean, people forget this. So you had Greeks scattered across the wider Middle East in Cairo, in Jerusalem, in Istanbul. The Greek community in Jerusalem today numbers about 100 people, which is just a shell of its former self before the creation of Israel. There were anywhere between ten thousand and twenty thousand Greeks living in Jerusalem, which is a staggering number, yeah. And I say in the book, really, that Israel has been as intolerant to the Greeks as Turkey has been towards Christians and Egypt's Arab nationalists were towards Greeks, because the Greeks also got ran out of Egypt.”
2026-01-19 · Intelligence Squared · Is Greece Becoming the New Borderland Between East and West? With Sean Matthews · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the mayor of Athens basically told Israel to kind of shut up. And he said that he's not going to erase the graffiti. So there is a real tension, I think, between Greeks who are opposed to Israel's war in Gaza, which is, quite frankly, the vast majority of Greeks. And the Greek government, which has formed this very, very close partnership with Israel, which I should note is on both the left and the right of Greek politics, interestingly enough, you know, the alliance between Greece and Israel started with Alexis Tsipras, who was kind of the left-wing firebrand of Greek politics during the crisis years. And he was the one with US support who really forged this partnership with Benjamin Netanyahu because both were so concerned about Turkey. The government of Kiriaku Spizotakis, which is the current center-right government in Greece, they've kind of put the relationship much more forward. They signed a defense deal. There's a lot more military exercises. But yes.”
2026-01-19 · Intelligence Squared · Is Greece Becoming the New Borderland Between East and West? With Sean Matthews · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's really interesting, actually. The level, an interesting anecdote, there was a complaint from some Israeli tourists, I think, about graffiti. You know, Athens is known for his graffiti. It's very famous for it. If anyone, if you've been, you'll know it's almost on every wall. And there was a complaint from Israeli tourists, which kind of filtered down to the government over kind of all this graffiti that many Greeks had sprayed, kind of attacking the Israeli defense forces.”
2026-01-19 · Intelligence Squared · Is Greece Becoming the New Borderland Between East and West? With Sean Matthews · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In Israel, which is interesting when you consider kind of the historic ties that Greece has had with Israel and Palestine, Greece was actually one of the countries that was most hostile to Zionism, interestingly enough. And it took a very pro-Arab position after World War II in the late 1940s and the 1950s kind of opposing Israel. And then into the 1990s and today, we've seen this total switch where Greece has moved very, very close with Israel and their partners in the Eastern Mediterranean, their military's drilled together. Greece is buying weapons from Israel. And all of this is really kind of centered around Greek and Israeli concerns about Turkish revisionism in Syria, in the Eastern Aegean, and in Libya.”
2026-01-19 · Intelligence Squared · Is Greece Becoming the New Borderland Between East and West? With Sean Matthews · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it's very peaceful. I think the big conflict here, obviously, has been Israel's war on Gaza and the conflict in the Middle East. And actually, I discussed at length the relationship between Greece and Israel, which for me is one of the most fascinating trends in the region. In 2020, Israel signed the so-called Abraham Accords agreements, which got a lot of fanfare. The Israelis normalized relations with three Muslim Arab countries, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco. Around the same time, Greece and Israel started to align much more closely in this partnership because both of them are alarmed over Erdogan's Turkey. And I say that that partnership between Greece and Turkey hasn't gotten a lot of attention in the Western press. It's almost been overshadowed by the Abraham Accords, but it's been really pivotal for the region. And it features quite heavily in my book, this idea of Greece kind of looking around the Middle East for partners to check Turkey. And of course, the partner that the Greeks have chosen.”
2026-01-19 · Intelligence Squared · Is Greece Becoming the New Borderland Between East and West? With Sean Matthews · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Through its consulate there and through kind of this shadow campaign is locked in kind of a shadow or with Greece over kind of influence of our northern borderlands.”
2026-01-19 · Intelligence Squared · Is Greece Becoming the New Borderland Between East and West? With Sean Matthews · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, yeah, it has to do with the Cypress issue. And then, of course, also with the eastern Aegean Islands. So Greece and Turkey are locked in this really intense maritime dispute over their exclusive economic zones, which are basically the areas of the sea that each one can claim. And the dispute was kind of, it was kind of nerdy a few decades ago, but because there's the chance of seeing finding natural gas under the sea, it's become much more intense because there's money involved. And decreasing the Turks are, you know, they're kind of stuck in this quagmire where they're fighting over these maritime zones, and Turkey claims almost the entire swath of eastern Mediterranean that Greece claims, including the sea around all of its eastern Aegean islands. So that's part of the revisionism that I discuss in the book. Also, the other aspect which I discussed in the book, which doesn't get a lot of attention in the West, is Turkish meddling in Greece, Greece's northern borders. There's a Muslim minority community that lives in northeastern Greece, and Turkey...”
2026-01-19 · Intelligence Squared · Is Greece Becoming the New Borderland Between East and West? With Sean Matthews · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Very heavily, and it sent a lot of settlers actually to the north. But for me, again, the way I approach the Cypress issue in the book is looking at it as one of the pivot points in which we saw Turkey moving away from the West and kind of carving out a niche for itself as an eastern power in the wider Middle East.”
2026-01-19 · Intelligence Squared · Is Greece Becoming the New Borderland Between East and West? With Sean Matthews · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The lack of a solution to Cyprus back in the mid 2000s when Turkey was in negotiations to join the European Union really kind of spelled this pivot for Turkey away from the West. And it convinced them to start thinking again about their place in the East. So, you know, Turkey was in talks with the European Union, but they needed to have a solution that is a great problem, right? Because the northern half of Cyprus is occupied by Turkey illegally, which they invaded in 1974. And Turkey would never be let into the European Union without a solution to the Cypriot issue because you can't occupy another country. be in the European Union. And unfortunately, the talks that with the UN response during at the time in the mid-2000s collapsed. And today you have this kind of hazy fog over Cyprus where the internationally recognized government, which is majority Greek, is in the south and there continues to be a Turkish occupied half in the north, which Turkey is militarizing.”
2026-01-19 · Intelligence Squared · Is Greece Becoming the New Borderland Between East and West? With Sean Matthews · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For sure. And I didn't want to condense Greece's relations to the wider Middle East through the Cyprus issue, right? Which is this issue that goes back to really the 1950s when you had communal tensions between Greeks and Turks on the island. But what I do say for Cyprus is that, interestingly enough, is that the collapse of the parent collapse of a solution to the Cypriot conflict kind of really symbolized this turn of Turkey away from the West. And this is something that the Greeks have Istanbul, who I met, told me. So the Greek community of Istanbul today is about 2,000 people, and it's really shrunk. It's facing really the threat of extinction. There are holdover of the times when Istanbul was part of the Ottoman Empire and the city was roughly 30% Christian. Anyway, one of the interesting things for me when I was meeting with the community is that they basically flags to me and they said that the”
2026-01-19 · Intelligence Squared · Is Greece Becoming the New Borderland Between East and West? With Sean Matthews · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think Cyber is a good example. Admittedly, I left Cyprus out of my book and I left it out for a reason because I didn't want to condense Greece's relationship.”
2026-01-19 · Intelligence Squared · Is Greece Becoming the New Borderland Between East and West? With Sean Matthews · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's used to flavor things like ice cream and coffee. It's used in meat marinades. And it only comes from this from Kios. Anyway, when I first traveled to the Middle East, the last place in Greece I was, I was on HEOs. And I thought I had left Hios behind at the time. This was six or seven years ago. And what I say in the book is that people from the Middle East actually knew more about these Eastern Greek Aegean islands than people in the UK and the US. So I think that says something also about the connections between the Eastern Aegean Islands and the wider Eastern world.”
2026-01-19 · Intelligence Squared · Is Greece Becoming the New Borderland Between East and West? With Sean Matthews · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Both the Greeks and the Turks argued that the islands like Rhodes, Chios, and Lesvos belong naturally to the Turkish mainland. Greece argued that because they wanted the Turkish mainland for itself, and Turkey argued that because Turkey wanted to keep the islands, obviously, with the Turkish mainland. So I think that says a little bit about the culture, I think. And just geographically where these islands are centered, right? They're much more part of the east than part of the west. And again, in the book, One of the main islands that I discuss is Hios. My family house from an island, a very, very small island next to Hios called the Inusis. And it was actually Hios that really got me thinking about the connections between Greece and the wider Middle East. There's a product from HEOs called Mastic, and it's a resin. And it's almost unknown in the Western world, in the UK, in the US, unless you go to a Greek specialty shop. But it's a hugely popular product in the wider Middle East.”
2026-01-19 · Intelligence Squared · Is Greece Becoming the New Borderland Between East and West? With Sean Matthews · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The Cladic Islands, like Niconos and Pardos and Santardini, have really just become hubs for what is a global tourism boom, right? It's priced ordinary Greeks out. So you have a huge crisis on these islands, actually, where doctors and teachers, they can't afford to rent, houses or apartments. And it's catch 22 for Greece, right? Because they need the tourism flow, but they're pricing out their locals from these islands. And there is a concern, right, that these islands are losing their culture and their traditions. Again, these islands were never really part of Greece. The last kind of island segment that I would look at are the eastern Aegean Islands. So Hios, Rhodes, Lesvos, which for me are the most eastern, right? They share, they're right on the coast of Turkey. Ironically, you know, when Greece and Turkey were forming their borders around the time of the First World War,”
2026-01-19 · Intelligence Squared · Is Greece Becoming the New Borderland Between East and West? With Sean Matthews · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Then ceded to Greece in the mid 1800s, it's like traveling between two different countries, in a sense. Because basically all of the westernizing tendencies that kind of you see in the architecture, in the food, even the way people carry themselves and the way that they kind of, they base themselves on human relations, you see a big difference between yan and out, which was controlled by the Ottomans for 400 years, and Corfu, which kind of escaped the Ottoman control. I personally, I like Yan and a more, but that's my book. I think the other trend for the island is that you should consider is the kind of the big name ones like Mikonos Santorini. And again, I see another Eastern instinct here from the Greeks, which is Dubaification. And I write about this in my book, which is that, you know, Greece is intent on extracting every cent it can out of Western Taurus and Eastern Taurus for that matter. And the islands in the Clatic Islands.”
2026-01-19 · Intelligence Squared · Is Greece Becoming the New Borderland Between East and West? With Sean Matthews · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“An interesting question. When you talk about Greece's island culture, I think it's very fascinating because I almost think of them in three subsets. You know, the first island that I think especially about if British listeners would know is Corfu. It was made famous by Lawrence Durrell. It's a very popular tourism spot. So Corfu is located in the Ionian Sea, and it's bordering Greece's western periphery and on the coast of Albania. And for me, I call Corfu. It's kind of like the most European island within Greece. And that is because, in fact, it was never conquered by the Ottoman Empire, which I think is really interesting. So I never went to Profunder book, but I've been before, and I compare it to the city on the mainland, which is the largest city on the mainland next to it, which is Yanina, which was conquered by the Ottoman Empire. And basically I say that, you know, traveling from Yanana, this city in northeastern Greece, which was under Ottoman rule for 400 years, to Corfu, which was under British control.”
2026-01-19 · Intelligence Squared · Is Greece Becoming the New Borderland Between East and West? With Sean Matthews · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No element for Greece to the coast of North Africa to Lebanon to Turkey. So I think we in the Western world have long associated the Mediterranean as kind of a hard stopping point and border for Greece and for Europe from the Muslim and the Arab world. But that's not the case, right? And I think what we're seeing from migration, what we're seeing from rising powers in the region like Turkey, like a revisionist Israel, like Gulf states, is that the Mediterranean kind of connects much more than it divides and that Greece is on the front lines of that.”
2026-01-19 · Intelligence Squared · Is Greece Becoming the New Borderland Between East and West? With Sean Matthews · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think it's a very fair comparison. I mean, borders come up so much in my book. It's funny, you know, because I travel a lot in the book. So about half the book takes place in Greece, but then the other half takes place in Egypt, in Israel, Palestinian territories, and in Turkey. Basically, all the countries where there were once historic Greek communities living in the wider Middle East. So this idea of borders and about boundaries, it came up with so many of the Greeks that I spoke with, especially in the wider Middle East, the historic Greek communities living there. I think the lesson that we take from Greece in terms of borders and this idea of a porous exchange is the concept of the Mediterranean, not so much as a border, but as a connector. It's funny to say, but the great British colonialists kind of knew in the 1900s, they called the Mediterranean basically. It was never the border of Europe for them. The border of Europe was always the African desert, the Sahel. And they understood that the Mediterranean was really connecting.”
2026-01-19 · Intelligence Squared · Is Greece Becoming the New Borderland Between East and West? With Sean Matthews · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But, you know, Israelis, Palestinians, Lebanese, Egyptians, and Turks are really fueling the property boom that's going on in Greece and this construction boom around Torazan. It was kind of an interesting pivot from the scare mongrain about migration, which really showed Greece's connection with the wider Eastern world. I think one of the trends that I picked up in the book is that because Greece is located in the southernmost periphery of the European Union, it's very easy to First of all, as a lackey to Western capitalism, but then also as a country that's ravaged by Muslim migration, both of those are totally wrong.”
2026-01-19 · Intelligence Squared · Is Greece Becoming the New Borderland Between East and West? With Sean Matthews · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Me, it's when I started as a Greek American really coming back to Greece more. As a young journalist who was coming back here, and they kind of fell into camps, I say. You know, on the right, you had these books that were written in commentary about Greece as lazy socialist state within the European Union that was inundated with migrants from the Muslim world, right? I mean, real scare mongrain stuff. And then on the left, of course, you had, you know, their own criticisms of the neoliberal order and the economic challenges we faced, which were genuine in many ways, but they also kind of decried kind of Greece's treatment from Western powers like Germany and the US. And when I arrived in Greece, when I kind of noticed was that both of those tropes were being smashed to bits, I said, because basically a lot of the investment that we saw coming into Greece was actually from the Muslim world and from the wider east, right? You'll have to include Israel on that too, which is a Jewish state.”
2026-01-19 · Intelligence Squared · Is Greece Becoming the New Borderland Between East and West? With Sean Matthews · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because of real estate speculators and because of this work remote vibe. And Greece's big struggle the coming years is going to be how to balance really its rise as a tourism powerhouse, I think it's fair to say, which has been a godsend for the country, especially in the wake of the economic crisis. But how do they balance that with the cost of living for ordinary Greek people?”
2026-01-19 · Intelligence Squared · Is Greece Becoming the New Borderland Between East and West? With Sean Matthews · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Very much the right that's rise of digital nomads who can live and work anywhere, remote work. It's changed the face of Athens, and it kind of goes along with tourism, right? So what I say in the book is actually, you know, that Greece's economic recovery, and Greece is in many ways a success story for the European Union. Greece's borrowing costs today, the lower than that of France is, which is remarkable if you had told someone that in 2013 or 2014, maybe that says more about Western Europe's decline than Greece's rise, but everything is relative to a certain point. But again, Greece's economic recovery really is driven by this huge influx of real estate investment, speculation, tourism. I mean, you see it, right? You can see it when you come to Athens or you go to the islands and you see construction everywhere, new boutiques opening up cafes. It's becoming a very trendy city. At the same time, what I talk about in the book is the downside of that for Greece and the Greek people, which is that we're seeing a huge cost of living crisis in Greece for ordinary Greeks, right, who are getting priced out.”
2026-01-19 · Intelligence Squared · Is Greece Becoming the New Borderland Between East and West? With Sean Matthews · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“From the financial crisis, right? I mean, Reese had a great depression level crisis more than a decade ago. And it was tourism and real estate investment that really saved the Greek economy. And visitors to Athens will see now that the city, it's booming. You know, I say in the book, I mean, try getting a reservation at a mid-popular restaurant on a Thursday night. You can't do it, even in when you're, I should. Yeah.”
2026-01-19 · Intelligence Squared · Is Greece Becoming the New Borderland Between East and West? With Sean Matthews · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I think it's there. I mean, look, a lot of the Greeks that I meet in the book, they like to call Greece one gentleman he called it to me, you know, the soft Middle East. Basically, he said it's Lebanon without Hezbollah and with more girls. And I think that kind of summarized the allure of Greece to maybe the Western Taurus, right? You know, you can go to the islands and you can have Uzo, which is like Ardot, kind of the Arabic equivalent as Ardoc. You can have Suvaki, almost the same food, but you don't have to worry about the war and conflict. So, you know, kind of tongue-in-cheek, there's a little something there where Greece, it gives the taste of the East to Western tourists, right? I would say, though, that the tourism story, it features prominently in the book because there are two themes that I kind of dissected when I moved back to Greece. The one is this pull factor that's pulling Greece back to the east, I say, right, to these geopolitical alliances, these threats from neighboring countries. And the other, of course, is Greece's economic recovery.”
2026-01-19 · Intelligence Squared · Is Greece Becoming the New Borderland Between East and West? With Sean Matthews · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Which mysteriously renamed Greek coffee. And all these other things, right? Even these invocations that you kind of associate with religiosity in the Middle East, for me, that's one of the most fascinating parts of kind of Greek culture. I spend a lot of time in the Middle East. So anyone who kind of goes to the region knows the no phrases like Alhamdulillah or Mashallah that kind of get thrown out by Arab speakers. And Greece has their own equivalent of those, basically, in Greek. And I think that's a strand I say that connects Greece with the wider Eastern world, the former lands of Byzantium and the Ottoman Empire. And it's something that, you know, people who come from the US or the UK to go on vacation in Greece, if you go to Mekanos or Santorini, you miss those things. But it's a very clear kind of anchor that Greece has to the wider Middle East.”
2026-01-19 · Intelligence Squared · Is Greece Becoming the New Borderland Between East and West? With Sean Matthews · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so I mean, I came to Greece basically as a Greek American fourth generation. You wouldn't know it from my name because it was Americanized. I discussed that in the book. It went from Matthias to Matthews. But I came back to Greece as a journalist, kind of looking to get a foothold in the Middle East after living in Jordan and Egypt for a while. And I grew up kind of not seeing any similarities between Greece and the wider Middle East. What was the former Byzantine Empire in the former Ottoman Empire? So we would go to the Greek church growing up and, you know, we had the Greek customs and rituals like Suvlaki, Pastitsu, and all of that. It wasn't until I came back to Greece in 2020 and used Greece as a hub to explore the wider region, basically as a freelance journalist traveling between Greece and Jordan, Greece and Lebanon, Greece and Egypt, that I saw all these similarities between the cultures, like the Baklaba, like Turkish coffee, right?”
2026-01-19 · Intelligence Squared · Is Greece Becoming the New Borderland Between East and West? With Sean Matthews · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Greek media is they love to rip up these tensions, and it's you know, it's the nationalist frenzy. The voters love it. But what I say in the book is that in the old days, you know, the US used to intervene and kind of pull them away from each other. So in 1996, you saw Greasy Turkey almost went to war over an uninhabited island in the eastern Mediterranean. The Clinton administration at the time, the US intervened and pulled them apart. And what I say is that as the US pulls out of Eastern Europe and Southern Europe, and as the Trump administration and likely future administrations kind of reassess the role of the US in the world, that's much less likely. And you combine that with a growing Turkey, which is much more independent, that is no longer dependent on the West under President Erdogan, you have this kind of simmering tension in the eastern Mediterranean, which is always going to”
2026-01-19 · Intelligence Squared · Is Greece Becoming the New Borderland Between East and West? With Sean Matthews · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of the West because of the Trump administration's flirtation with territorial expansion in the Western Hemisphere, it's pulled back from Eastern Europe, Greece is not able to rely on the United States as much as it was decades ago. So yeah, the rivalry between Greece and Turkey and the shifting balance of power is a key part of the book.”
2026-01-19 · Intelligence Squared · Is Greece Becoming the New Borderland Between East and West? With Sean Matthews · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Forging what is today, the modern borders of Greece. After World War I, Greece and Turkey had a horrible war, which saw Greece actually invade Asia Minor, what is today, the hinterlands and the proper territory of Turkey. Greece invaded this area and they tried to wrest it back because there were Greek minorities living there. So the age-old tussle between Greece and Turkey, it's a key feature of the book. What I say in the book is that today what we're seeing is a shift in the balance of power in the eastern Mediterranean away from Greece and towards Turkey and this has a lot to do with Turkey's rise as an independent power which I examined through the war in Ukraine, Israel's war in Gaza, and Turkey's growing military might and independence from the West. So historically, you know, Greece was always reliant on Western powers to keep Turkey in check, whether that was Britain or whether that was later after World War II, the US. And because of this fragile...”
2026-01-19 · Intelligence Squared · Is Greece Becoming the New Borderland Between East and West? With Sean Matthews · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, no, the rivalry between Greece and Turkey really kind of defines Greek foreign policy today. And it's something that I think in the West that everyone watches very closely. In general, I always kind of see Turkey and Greece's foils of each other. You know, after World War II, Greece ascended into a horrible civil war between the left and the right. And it was U.S. intervention in that U.S. intervention that kind of turned the tide of the war against the communists and put Greece kind of into the Western camp, right? So Greece and Turkey, they joined NATO at the same time in 1952. And they were always, you know, they were always foes, right? I mean, once Greece got its independence from the Ottoman Empire, and Greece kind of the modern states that we know of Greece today, it came about by clawing territory out of the Ottoman Empire. So in the Balkans, you know, you had Greek partisans, you had the Greek army through various wars in the mid and late 1900s, basically clawing territory away from the Ottoman Empire.”
2026-01-19 · Intelligence Squared · Is Greece Becoming the New Borderland Between East and West? With Sean Matthews · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it's from a British journalist, David Holden. And basically, his whole argument was to kind of unpack this myth of a Western Greece centered on ancient Athens and the birthplace of democracy and to look at it really as an appendage of the wider Middle East through the Byzantine history, through its times during the Ottoman when it was controlled by the Ottoman Empire, and then really right up until today, right? I mean, so many of the issues that Greece faced today, the Cyprus issue, its rivalry with an independent Turkey, the new alliances that it is forging in the Middle East are all basically kind of pointing towards its eastern direction.”
2026-01-19 · Intelligence Squared · Is Greece Becoming the New Borderland Between East and West? With Sean Matthews · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, it was very, I mean, it was very, very important. I mean, the whole, so basically, what you had was to really go back to the collapse of the Roman Empire. I don't want to get too lengthy on it, but to really kind of ground us, once the Roman Empire, it split into the eastern and the western half, and although when the Roman Empire collapsed, the eastern half of the empire continued for centuries afterwards, really right up until the 1400s, as the Byzantine Empire. And this was an Eastern Empire that it ruled over present-day Palestine, Israel, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt. And of course, its heartland, its base was Constantinople, what is today Istanbul. So hence that's the Byzantine part of the title. Of course, the Europeans, the Western Europeans were much more interested in ancient Greece, as you're saying, right? The archaeologists who came to see the Parthenon, the Acropolis, you know, funnily enough, one of the books that I cite quite heavily in my book, The New Byzantines, is a book from the 1970s titled Greece without column.”
2026-01-19 · Intelligence Squared · Is Greece Becoming the New Borderland Between East and West? With Sean Matthews · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Goes back to the Byzantine Empire. Then Greece is kind of 400, 500 year period of rule under the Ottoman Empire. And those trends, those currents are reasserting themselves today.”
2026-01-19 · Intelligence Squared · Is Greece Becoming the New Borderland Between East and West? With Sean Matthews · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, look, I think that's kind of the forever tussle with Reese is a part of the Easter part of the West. And the story with Greece really, since it emerged as an independent state out of the Ottoman Empire in 1832 or was created after a revolution, was kind of this pull towards the West, really from the mid-19th century all the way up until the post-war era, Greece was always being folded in the direction of the West, whether that was from big European powers during the colonial era like Britain, which really took an independent Greece under its wing. And then in the post-war era, the United States, pulling Greece into NATO, and obviously Greece joined the European Union. But what I say in the book is that at this stage now, with a decline we're seeing of Western powers in Europe, increase geographical position kind of on the periphery of Europe, as you said, it's being pulled back to the east, which of course it was always a part of, I say, right.”
2026-01-19 · Intelligence Squared · Is Greece Becoming the New Borderland Between East and West? With Sean Matthews · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT