Still in Greece reading the newspapers and talking with everyday Greeks, after finishing co-leading a tour. Very strange the attitude here to Turkey and the EU membership–best summed up as apprehensive cynicism.

Officially, they profess a desire for Turkish EU membership.

Why? That shares the burden of potential problems with the entire EU, might allow accelerated Westernization of Turkey, and ensures no one can blame Greece for being an obstacle. That also explains the slight discomfort of learning that France and Germany of all people suddenly now don’t want Turkey in, after Greece magnanimously got out in front in expressing support.

And the truth? Privately, Greeks are deathly afraid of the idea of open EU borders with Turkey, no passports, working and owning without a notion of a nation state, and Islamic Anatolian peasants being co-equals with Athenians. And no one thinks if problems arise, anyone in the EU “rapid response” force will do much of anything to help in a pinch. After all, violating Greek airspace and denying past atrocities against Greeks are a Turkish past-time, both secular and Islamist.

How that need for friends translates is also strange: a willingness to take a very unEuropean taking to Putin, the fellow Orthodox, who promises gas and oil deals as a price to nodding to his harangues. And the old anti-American gospel is slowly metamorphosizing into something like “We have no intention of severing our cherished NATO ties” or, perhaps, “Don’t listen to the fossilized conspiracy theories of the hoi polloi about an American-Zionist-Turkish Axis, but please keep up your military profile in the SE Mediterranean.”