Greece and the West must protect the wintering Christians of Syria

As Christians have been an endangered species in the Middle East for a century, all true Christians in the West and around the world despaired at the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, an overthrow that was due to the invasion of Sunni mercenary forces from the Turkish-occupied Syrian province of Idlib with the cooperation of the US, Israel and Turkey.

The despair of Christians everywhere is due to the fact that Hafez al-Assad and his son Bashar, who for 54 years were the protectors of Christianity, Shiite Islam and other minorities in the multi-religious and multi-ethnic Arab Syria, are now a thing of the past. Members of the Alawite minority themselves have shown minority solidarity with the 500,000 Christians in the country, which includes the relatively small Greek community and the large minority of Syrian Orthodox Christians. The writer had highlighted the issue since 2013.

After the fall of the Ottoman Sultanate in its once Arab provinces and the advent of nationalism, Turkish, Arab and Jewish, the countdown began for the centuries-old numerous and thriving Christians of the Sultanate: the Asia Minor Catastrophe (1922) and the Anglo-French partition of Palestine with the Arab-Israeli Wars, the Nakba (Catastrophe of the Palestinians, 1947) and the illegal Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Territories in combination with the Western-backed action of the so-called “Islamic State” in Iraq (2014-2017) led to the Exodus of the Christians of Turkey, Palestine and Iraq.

At present, the population groups in Syria that have cultural ties with Greece and Cyprus are: a) Orthodox Christians or other denominations speaking Greek, b) Sunni Muslims (Syrian/Turkish-Cretans) bilingual speaking Greek, i.e. the Cretan dialect, and Arabic, and c) Arabic-speaking Christians who have partially used Greek as the language of worship in churches and constitute 2.5% of the Syrian population. In short, in Syria today there are populations that present one of the two basic characteristics of modern Modern Greeks, i.e. the Greek language and the Christian Orthodox religion.

After the seizure of power in Syria by the supposedly Islamist organization Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), revenge is being manifested against Christians and other minorities in Syria. Christians are held hostage by Western-oriented mercenaries, supposedly Islamists, who systematically commit acts of intimidation, vandalism, violence and discrimination. Eyad Herrera, a spokesman for the Antiochian Greek Organization (AGO), stressed that the mercenaries of the new regime returned to Antioch with a vengeance against the Greek Christians, the Greek Orthodox Church and the Archdiocese of Hama, with several incidents of theft, attacks and destruction of property. Many Christian families have fled their cities, calling on the new regime to restore stability and security.

The hypocritical attitude of Western governments is reflected in the fact that despite the risk of the American-driven mercenary regime in Damascus eliminating the Christian presence in Syria, Western governments have not only not taken action but are not even protesting. Therefore, Orthodox member countries of the European Union such as Greece, Cyprus, Bulgaria, Romania and Estonia must stop being complacent and put the situation of Christians in Syria on the EU or UN agenda. Russia and the Russian Orthodox Church, which have a greater degree of influence due to Russian military bases in Syria, must do the same.

Today, Hellenism in Syria has an important but untapped base of cultural diplomacy, the Greeks and Greeks of the country. Finally, instead of having the Greek government hastily and uncritically welcoming the overthrow of Assad, they would do well to step back and do the right thing, which they ostentatiously failed to do with our compatriots in the Sea of Azov in Ukraine. The criticality of the circumstances requires the protection of these populations by ensuring their stay in Syria and not their transfer to Greece, as in the latter case Greece and Cyprus would lose a crucial friendly population in the Middle East. Greece is called upon to prove to the Greek people that he can and wants to protect the Christians and Greeks of Syria.