Introduction
Greece has been receiving immigrants for about 30 years. After the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, hundreds of thousands of immigrants came to the country and were incorporated into society. Many more passed through Greece on their way to other European countries. Since 2015, the spotlight has been on the ongoing refugee crisis and the millions of – mainly – Syrian refugees who have left their country to find refuge in other countries.
Though the first months of the refugee wave Greek society and the state reacted in solidarity and supported the refugees morally, materially, and politically, 2016 was a turning point for two reasons. First, the EU–Turkey Agreement (European Commission 2016; European Parliament 2021) put an end to their coming onto European ground and sent the message that they would no longer be welcome. Second, in Greece, in the intra-party elections for the biggest opposition party New Democracy, Kyriakos Mitsotakis (now in government) was elected as party leader with the support of the far-right wing of the party. Among his most common and frequent references ever since he got elected as the party leader and following the EU and local elections in May 2019 were the anti-migration and anti-refugee references and the law-and-order agenda based on the broken window and zero tolerance dogmas (Kelling and Wilson 1982; Harcourt and Ludwig 2006; Muniz 2012; Thompson 2015).
The intertwining of the anti-migration, anti-refugee rhetoric and the law-and-order agenda was based on the notion that increased numbers of immigrants and refugees were connected with criminality and its alleged increase, which can, however, be easily disputed. It is certainly difficult to measure and evaluate the criminality rates. What we know is that there is a higher rate of criminality among immigrants; however, when the type and the gravity of the crime is taken into account for this evaluation, we see that the criminal acts of Greeks consist of more severe crimes or that immigrants’ actions are measured as criminal even when it relates to illegal entry into the country or drug use (Psarra 2017). This does not mean that the criminality rates have not increased over the last 30 years that Greece has turned into a country of reception for immigrants (Labropoulou 2018) but then again, the fact that immigrants get marginalized and are led to crime, serious crime included, goes without saying. Furthermore, the influx of refugees in the country was seen as a result of the open borders policy applied by the coalition government of SYRIZA–ANELL (Coalition of Radical Left–Independent Greeks). This resulted in blaming the government for the refugees searching for shelter in Greece and Europe and moreover helped create the view that the waves of refugee could and had to be blocked. This in turn helped enhance the anti-refugee sentiment in the country. This shift in the attitudes towards migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers can be traced by comparing the polls conducted in 2016 and early 2019 (Dianeosis 2016, 2020). This attitude change should not only be seen in correlation with the burden or fatigue of the local population (either on the islands, which are the first destination of the refugees when entering Greece, or in mainland Greece, where shelters are located), because at that point the EU–Turkey agreement had been in effect for three years, blocking the border crossing and keeping millions of refugees and asylum seekers in Turkey – in other words, keeping the “problem” outside of Europe.
Following the general trend in most European societies, Greek society has not been friendly towards refugees and migrants. But what cannot be denied is that it has been remarkably supportive during the major refugee crisis in 2015. The findings of the survey by Dianeosis – the think tank of the Hellenic Federation of Enterprises and, as such, not ideologically neutral – are reflective of this trend, as presented below whenever needed. While this survey is not a full illustration of the complex attitudes of Greek society towards migration, it shows the market shift in public opinion on the topic – one that continues to this day.
While the exact reasons for the shift in public opinion remain somewhat unexamined, it can be assumed that the shift is largely the outcome of the intense anti-refugee and anti-migrant rhetoric employed by New Democracy, under the presidency of Kyriakos Mitsotakis. This incendiary rhetoric was part of its opposition strategy against the SYRIZA government, and has been utilized by the party in some ways going as far back as the Antonis Samaras years. Samaras was the first to officially work with the team of the far-right LAOS party, with three of its MPs later becoming members of New Democracy, under his presidency.
Under Mitsotakis, New Democracy was able to integrate this rhetoric as part of its law-and-order agenda and then use it in order to advance its rhetoric about anomie prevailing in Greece under the government of the left. It was also under his presidency that migration was turned into an issue of domestic politics: the migration and refugee crisis stopped being a world phenomenon but it was a Greek problem due to the open borders policy adopted by the left government. These developments allowed New Democracy to present itself as the guardian of law and order, and as the only political power capable of protecting the law and Greek citizens.
According to Makis Voridis (Hellenic Parliament 2018), migration has been one of the two major fields of politics for the right at the European level. These words are particularly insightful, as Voridis is one of the most prominent ministers of New Democracy and among those who shape its ideological agenda. This brief comparison illustrates that if we want to better understand the shifts in the attitudes in the society, the role of the state and the impact of the way it addresses issues should be at the centre of social and political research.
This article claims that this change has not come as a result of the objective conditions created by the refugee waves, as these waves were eliminated, but it is an outcome of the anti-migrant and anti-refugee rhetoric of the current government. Most notably, the opposition at the time party – and currently government party – was not alone in this: Greek media in the majority were actively participating in the cultivation of this shift of attitudes and sentiments in a two-fold manner: first, by promoting the campaigns and the rhetoric of New Democracy and, second, by advancing a relevant rhetoric through their programmes and by setting an agenda which promoted anti-refugee views (Fotopoulos and Kaimaklioti 2016; Megrelis 2017), changing the narrative media representation. This shift in the political and media agenda had an enormous impact both on the attitudes of the islanders and on public opinion resulting in a new political and social milieu in the country. This was capitalized on by New Democracy in the national elections on 7 July 2019, which became the first majority government in Greece since elections in 2009.
Given that New Democracy has continuously been in government since 2010, it is curious that its anti-refugee rhetoric and policies have not been scrutinized. Instead, much attention has been placed on the party Golden Dawn, which has not been in parliament since 2019, when it only gained about 2.99 per cent of the vote (the threshold for entering the Greek parliament is 3 per cent). This becomes stranger if we consider that the impact of Golden Dawn on the Greek political system and, especially, on its major conservative actor, that is, New Democracy, has not been examined – but only in very few cases (see, for example, Mareta 2020). Thus, to fully analyze the context behind Greek migration policy since 2010, it is not enough to merely examine the parliamentary presence of Golden Dawn.
A more practical use of research would be to examine the parties which have governed the country and have chosen these policies and rhetoric. The manner in which these policies are legitimized, via social panic and scare tactics, are worth additional research. Even though there is a strong trend in current Greek literature to focus exclusively on the far-right parties as the carriers of any right-wing policies – and politics, the fact that the latter are chosen and implemented by the government cannot be denied or overlooked. In this sense, this article does not aim to expand the ample Golden Dawn literature but rather – suggests that we turn our attention to the governing party, that is, the party that chooses, decides, plans and implements policies and is in charge of the state apparatus and, especially, of its coercive apparatuses.
The Evros incident (described later) was not the first time that New Democracy used such an anti-migrant and anti-refugee rhetoric. Even though examining the migration policy of the party ever since Greece became a reception country in early 1990 is beyond the scope of this article, a few only things should be added here especially concerning the previous 10 years.
In 2012, two years after the outbreak of the severe economic and political crisis in Greece and after the fall of the Papandreou government, migration was a contentious issue for the coalition government of New Democracy under Samaras. Samaras had blamed the burgeoning unemployment crisis on migrants (tvxs.gr 2013), said that the children of migrants take away nursery school slots from native-born Greek children (Makris 2012) and had identified migrants with Islamic terrorism (TANEA Team 2015). He had also declared that one of the main projects of his government would be to reclaim the towns from the illegal migrants who had allegedly occupied them (Mani 2012), while during his government the head of the Greek Police encouraged officers to “make the life of the migrants non-viable” so that Greece would stop being an attractive destination for them (Demetis 2013).
In the following years, the Mitsotakis presidency not only built on this xenophobic rhetoric but also to enriched it with references to law and order. It also overtly framed migration as a national threat stressing the need to keep the borders closed and secure (Newsroom 2017, 2018). In this way, migrants and refugees have been re-portrayed as a multiple threat which has to be faced and neutralized: a threat to the national security and integrity, a threat to the Greek national identity, and a threat to law and order. The management of the Evros event offered the appropriate opportunity to test this rhetoric in a critical situation which could provide the necessary frame for the legitimization of the rhetoric.
The SYRIZA government tried to cultivate a different culture amidst the 2015 refugee crisis – the largest of such crises that Europe faced since World War II. These efforts neither lasted enough time to consolidate this culture nor was it applied unimpeded. Much has been written on this crisis and its poor management – but the way its impact has been used by the Greek government to advance a xenophobic rhetoric has not been in the spotlight of the relevant research. This has been based on the false argument that the SYRIZA government is in favour of open borders policies, which would render the country in a state of lawlessness and endanger law enforcement. Along with the rhetoric against the university asylum (Mareta 2019), migration offered the necessary background upon which the law-and-order politics was built.
Within this context, an attempt by immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers to enter Europe through the Greece–Turkey border along the Evros River took place during the last days of February 2020 and the first days of March 2020, just a few days before the COVID-19 pandemic broke out in Greece. This event was treated and characterized as an “invasion” by both the Greek government and Greek media, and, for the sake of brevity, this word will hereafter be used but always in quotation marks (“invasion”). This article does not examine if this event was the result of human trafficking, of any criminal activity of traffickers, and of their state-supported networks across the region but it focuses exclusively on its impact in Greece. Building on work which examines the pushback operations as state crime in Greece and interrogates their normalization (Koros 2021), this article examines how this normalization is articulated and attempted to be hegemonic. In what will follow, I will present how this “invasion” was constructed and how it can be interpreted through the theory of moral panic, after having first briefly presented the basic points of this theory related to the Greek case and the current debate around it. This article aims to connect the terrifying shipwreck in Pylos, Greece, in June 2023 with the border closing and deterrence politics applied by the Greek state. For the presentation of this event I use data from several Greek media, and statements by politicians as reported in them form the very first moments of the “invasion” in the spring of 2020 until October 2021, while a special attention has been paid to the rhetoric of the government justifying this specific management and in relation with domestic politics. The same approach is utilized when examining the shipwreck in Pylos.
Regarding the extensive use of media in the examination of the “invasion”, a few fundamental things should be clarified at this point. The Evros event was a top priority for the media-mainstream and alternative, traditional and online – throughout the whole period it lasted. This means that there is an abundance of reportages, videos, and hours of news covering the event. Including all of them in this article is not possible nor necessary. The material used in this article is appraised by two main criteria. The first concerns the actual coverage of the event. Alternative media have mainly been used, because they provide a critical point of view on the state’s action, while these media do not hide facts which is increasingly becoming a common practice of propaganda in Greece.
The second criterion is related to the way the government’s rhetoric and point of view is constructed and disseminated. Here the unusually close relationship between the Greek government with the majority of the country’s mainstream media outlets needs to be highlighted. This relationship has not been widely dealt with by Greek scholars and doing so here exceeds the scope of this article. But with this strong relationship between the two entities in mind, this article will use material from large media concerns, especially I Kathimerini.
I Kathimerini is the flagship of the conservative media and part of a media outlet which is very close to the government. This newspaper very often either advances the rhetoric of the governing party or contributes to developing its argumentation. Apart from this, I Kathimerini, both in its printed and in its online version, is perceived by many as a serious and legitimate media entity, which stays away from clickbait and scaremongering tactics. Moreover, it should be mentioned that I Kathimerini is a highly influential newspaper in conservative circles and in the formation of conservative thought in the country. Finally, as in several other cases, the way the news was presented was similar across all government-affiliated media in this case as well. Therefore, I Kathimerini was preferred over other media because all the reasons mentioned before make it an important political and media actor, even though it is not the most visited site or read newspaper. The role of the media in the creation and spreading of moral panics is well-known and does not need to be argued here. Ever since the 1970s and the seminal work by Stuart Hall et al. (1978), the crucial role the media plays in the spreading of moral panics has been widely publicized in academic research. Greece and the crisis at Evros is not an exception to this rule. What is even more striking in the Greek case about the role of media is the fact that there is a close and, thus, problematic relationship between the current government and the media outlet owners. Some aspects of this relationship have been recorded in independent media, emphasizing how journalism has turned into propaganda (Papachristoudi 2023). But this relationship has to be investigated thoroughly and in a more systematic way, as it has been done in other cases in other countries. This work is still largely missing in the Greek context.
Almost all material used in the examination of the media coverage is available on the internet. This is the case not only for transparency reasons, since the material is available to anyone who has access to the internet, but also because these sources can be further used by anyone who would like to use them for further research or for examining this material within a different theoretical framework or discipline. Since the primary goal of this article is to examine the rhetoric of the state and its implications, more conclusions can be drawn, if the material is looked at from a different scientific point of view.
Moral Panic in Theory and in Greece
For the Greek political milieu as outlined above, Cohen’s argument (Cohen 2011b: 242) seems to fit well: “the most important site [for moral panics] will be anything connected with immigration, migrants, multicultural absorption, refugees, border controls and asylum seekers. This object is more political, more edgy and more amenable to violence.” This has to do not only with the long history of similar reactions in Greece and the legitimized public hostility cultivated by Greek governments and political actors, as argued for Britain (Cohen 2011a: xxiii), but also with the fact that, as in Britain, “refugee and asylum issues are subsumed under the immigration debate which in turn is framed by the general categories of race, race relations and ethnicity” (Cohen 2011a: xxii). This is related to an increasing anxiety by Greeks with regard to the alienation of the country’s population and the incorporation of refugees and immigrants. In research conducted in February 2019, among other negative attitudes towards refugees and immigrants, the majority of the participants (57.6 per cent) replied that their presence is a hazard for alienation of their national identity (Dianeosis 2020: 24). Hence, when a year later the “invasion” took place, it was not at all difficult to incite a hostile reaction. As Cohen also argues (2011a: xxii), this attitude comes along with a “distinction between genuine refugees (still entitled to compassion) and bogus asylum seekers (no right, no call in compassion). But this distinction hides the more profound sense in which the once ‘morally untouchable category of the political refugee’ has become deconstructed.”
Regarding the question whether we have entered an era of permanent moral panic, as Martin argues (2015: 307), or if this idea is an oxymoron and must be rejected, as Cohen argues (2011a: xxxviii), this article adopts Cohen’s position not only because it might be early to judge historically such a transposition but also because it claims that it is not possible to talk about a permanent moral panic as it is not possible to talk about a permanent state of emergency: these situations are by default and by definition temporary and have to meet their end; a society or a power cannot operate forever upon an emergency or panic-stricken condition. If the central features of this moral panic last long, this might mean that we are faced with a shift of paradigm which has incorporated these central features. But still the system will have to find a way of operation away from the panic-stricken or exception state. This means that the moral panic era may indeed seem permanent to us, because it lasts for a long time, but it cannot be a permanent panic. On the other hand, this does not mean that when moral panics end the attitudes towards refugees after the episode of moral panic return to feelings of empathy or acceptance; especially in the Greek case – as in other cases – permanent hostile attitudes and xenophobia towards refugees rise, and in Greece they seem to become the new normal. Finally, the Greek case confirms the suggestion made by Martin (2015: 307) that “moral panics tend generally to spike when opportunities – such as those provided at election time – exist for the political elite to exclude and demonize certain groups. In the case of moral panics over asylum seekers and refugees, deep-seated anxieties, fears and concerns remain suspended until resurrected at suitably opportune moments.” These concerns are palpable in Greece and they characterize the attitudes towards those people with the exception of the first year (2015) of the ongoing refugee crisis, when half of the population helped somehow the refugees coming to and passing through Greece (Dianeosis 2016: 56). However, I suggest that these anxieties are not part of the permanent moral panics but the background upon which moral panics are built and expressed; or, adopting Cohen’s approach, we are faced not with a moral panic episode but with a long-term, slow, and growing moral panic (Cohen 2011a).
Eades uses Cohen’s approach that “identifies two expressions of moral panic, one that comes to the forefront in a rapid form and then often dissipates and a second order that is long term, slow and conjecting” (Eades 2019: 87). These, he goes on to summarize, lead to the same process but in different ways. The second expression reflects paranoid nationalism, that is, “a dynamic that reveals itself under certain times and under certain pressures” (Eades 2019: 87). Even though Eades (2019) employs the term “paranoid nationalism” as introduced by Hage (2003) to refer to the reaction of the Australians against immigrants and asylum seekers, I would suggest that this approach would not be useful for the Greek case. Eades, following Hage, assumes that Australians transfer their own anxieties and uncertainties to asylum seekers conceiving them as potential threats to their national culture and Australian way of thinking. By that, he defines paranoid nationalism as a growing hostility towards these people which turns them into the Others and then undermines their rights, seeking to legitimize the slow and lurking moral panic (Eades 2019: 87–88). The marginalization of the Other and its legitimization through the undermining of their rights and their human substance are a sine qua non-feature of the ideological constitution of nationalism, and, as such, I would not consider it as a separate feature of nationalism under the version of paranoid nationalism. After all, the growing hostility Eades refers to is an integrated component of many contemporary societies under the influence of Islamophobia and racism. Hence, I suggest that this growing hostility can be sufficiently described as xenophobia (Rydgren 2003; Bernasconi 2014; Adam 2015), a term which can cover the current situation. Regarding Greece, it would suffice to mention that, even during the peak of the refugee crisis and before the EU–Turkey agreement in March 2016, a survey on the attitudes towards refugees and immigrants found that 29 per cent of the participants experienced negative feelings against refugees and asylum seekers and 59 per cent of the respondents had formed a positive attitude towards immigrants (Dianeosis 2016: 50 and 61). At the same time, a high percentage (55 per cent) replied that they would not like the refugees to settle permanently in Greece (Dianeosis 2016: 67), even though at that time, deportation caused a negative feeling (54 per cent) (Dianeosis 2016: 65). Although there is no party exclusively oriented against Islamization in Greece, as PEGIDA is, for example, in Germany (Adam 2015), xenophobia and Islamophobia were central pillars of Golden Dawn, the well-known neo-Nazi party, which has almost dissolved, and of the National Party Greeks, the new party founded by Elias Kassidiaris after he left Golden Dawn. Moreover, xenophobia and Islamophobia are incorporated in the Greek political system with relevant views expressed and defended by various political actors and by members of the governing party. Especially with regard to the Greek case, the nation is approached in terms of perennialism and the Greek Orthodox religion, excluding in this way non-native and non-Orthodox persons from belonging to the contemporary Greek nation or state. Hence, I would assume that, because Greek nationalism already has the function of marginalization as defined by Hage and Eades, using paranoid nationalism is not applicable in the Greek case, and in this article the reaction and the rhetoric against the “invasion” will be approached with the moral panic theory as already outlined above.
However, this “invasion” is not the first time that Greece has been faced with moral panic in its recent past. Here I will focus on the episode just six days before the elections in 2012, when a contemporary witch hunt took place against 27 women, drug users, and HIV positive, who were accused of being sex workers (Dama 2013). 1 Those women were arrested and charged in a joint operation organized by the Minister of Health Andreas Loverdos, the Minister of Civil Protection Michalis Chrisochoidis, 2 the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, the district attorney, and the police. The charge was that they deliberately infected their clients with HIV, while being well aware of their status and nevertheless continuing to work without taking any protective measures. Even though it was revealed that these women were only drug users and not sex workers (even the young Russian woman who was a sex trafficking victim and forced to work in a brothel could be considered as a sex worker), Minister Loverdos claimed that they were a threat to the Greek family: Greek paterfamilias visit brothels and they bring the virus into their homes (To Vima 2012). He used a 1940 law – at that time there was a military dictatorship in the country – and with the help of the police, forced those women to undergo medical examination without their consent (Kostopoulos 2014). Furthermore, he stated that he was right to say that AIDS was on the rise in the country and that part of this problem was due to illegal immigration and undeclared prostitution (To Vima 2012). Nevertheless, very few of those women were immigrants, and only the sex trafficking victim mentioned above was arrested in a brothel; the rest of them were arrested while walking in the street (Dama 2013). After having their photos and personal data published, after being interrogated, and being imprisoned, these women were finally declared innocent in 2016. In the meantime, two of them had died due to health problems, one had died by suicide, and several of their children and family members had to face social hostility, critique, and isolation. If this moral panic was a “minor, transient episode, leaving little trace behind” (Garland 2008: 13), it might be difficult to judge, as no focused relevant research has been done. The only available research results are those provided by the World Value Survey conducted in 2017, where we see that Greeks would not want as neighbours drug addicts (70 per cent), alcoholics (57.4 per cent), and persons who have AIDS (35.1 per cent) (World Values Survey 2017: 31). In any case, this was an episode of moral panic which not only had the features of moral panics as described by Goode and Ben Yehuda (2009: 11) and summarized by Garland as the following: (i) concern (some reported conduct or event sparks anxiety); (ii) hostility (the perpetrators are portrayed as folk devils); (iii) consensus (the negative social reaction is broad and unified); (iv) disproportionality (the extent of the conduct, or the threat it poses, are exaggerated); (v) volatility (the media’s reporting and the associated panic emerge suddenly, but can dissipate quickly too) (Garland 2008: 11; italics by the author), but it also had the two additional characteristics that Garland attributes to them: the moral dimension of the social reaction and the idea that the deviant conduct in question is somehow symptomatic. This specific episode, which included references to the increase of HIV infection rates – actually a result of the deterioration of public health due to austerity policies in Greece during the memoranda era 3 – and to the fact that these women were a threat to the Greek family, was an efficient training of the Greek society as to how to react to moral panics. In any case, this was a short-lived (Garland 2008: 13) moral panic confirming Cohen’s argument (2011a: xxxvii) that “successful moral panics owe their appeal to their ability to find points of resonance with wider anxieties”. Garland distinguishes moral panics into different forms which have varying effects. According to this categorization, there are “minor, transient episodes, leaving little trace behind them…Others are major, fateful developments which transform masses of lives and whole social landscapes…There can also be isolated outbreaks or short-lived panics or form part of a series, each episode building on the other”. Garland further says that moral panics “can be spontaneous, grass-roots events, unselfconsciously driven by local actors and anxieties…or can be deliberately engineered for commercial or political gain”.
Regarding their causation, Garland says that, according to the relevant research literature, the causes are generally correlated with a loose set of causal conditions which facilitate them – among them the existence of a sensationalist mass media or of an outsider group suitable for portrayal as “folk devils”. Finally, regarding the causes which precipitate them, Garland stresses the literature suggestion “that these have to do with transitions in the social, economic and moral order of the society” (2008a: 13–14). Examining the Greek case in the next section, we will see how these suggestions are confirmed.
Confronting an Invasion
The “invasion” started on 29 February 2020, when the first reports about refugees and immigrants reaching the borderline of Greece and Turkey became known. We cannot know whether these persons were refugees or migrants or neither, as they were never allowed to enter the country and apply for asylum, even though almost all of the Greek media called them migrants within this transposition discussed above. The Greek government reacted by reinforcing the police in the area and by sending the message that no one would be allowed to enter the country without the necessary documents, and that thousands of unfortunate people were used by Turkey for its own purposes. PM Mitsotakis visited the borders and, talking with the police and the army forces, stated that
[n]o one will pass the borders illegally. Let’s send a message from here, from Evros. Greece is not going to be blackmailed by anyone who wants to use helpless people to serve their own goals. What is happening is of very big importance. I am glad to see that the moral is very high. We wholly trust you and we are sure that you are going to do exactly what must be done. Nothing less. (I Efimerida ton Syntakton 2020a)
Moreover, the Minister of Citizen Protection Chrysochoidis stated that “Greece has borders. Europe has borders. And we the Greeks keep our borders” (I Efimerida ton Syntakton 2020c). From the very beginning, the Greek government opted for turning the issue, on the one hand, into a security and defence issue and into a point of clash of Greece with its perennial enemy, Turkey, and on the other hand, into a topic of domestic politics. The deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Miltiadis Varvitsiotis also stated that “contrary to what happened in the past, we will not tolerate illegal entries. We secure our borders. We will not allow that Greece is turned into a ‘warehouse of souls’” (I Efimerida ton Syntakton 2020b). “Warehouse of souls” is an expression used in Greece to describe this reality, that is, the fact that people enter Greece in order to travel later to another European country, but they remain in Greece, because they have no way to leave, as, since 2016, European countries do not accept them. It could indeed be claimed that they are turned into “holding pens”, while they are in Greece, but the question of why this happens remains – and it is beyond the scope of this article to answer it. Using this expression, Minister Varvitsiotis first targets the previous government of SYRIZA, which New Democracy both as government and as opposition has been accusing that it adopted an “open border” policy in the management of the refugee crisis and turned the country into a place where refugees and immigrants can come to freely but can’t leave. According to the mainstream rhetoric refugees and asylum seekers are trapped in Greece, where they do not wish to remain, and where they can’t be integrated, jeopardizing social cohesion. Hence, this rhetoric, apart from becoming gradually a right-wing rhetoric, argues that the solution is that they are kept outside of the country at any cost. The management of the “invasion” at the Greek–Turkish borderline was one of the first applications in practice of this rhetoric and policy.
From the very first days, the “invasion” was turned into a conflict first between Turkey and Greece and then between Turkey and the EU. The media reported that Turkey charted buses for immigrants to travel to the border (Skai 2020c, 2020a; To Vima 2020), and enter illegally into Greece with the help of Turkish tanks, which tried to demolish the fence built on the borderline by Greece (I Kathimerini, 2020m). Moreover, there were media reports that tear gas and other chemicals were directed by the Turkish forces against the Greek police and army that defended the Greek and European borders (I Kathimerini 2020n, 2020k, 2020f, 2020m, 2020j). Those reports incited nationalist reactions among Greeks, and led to official statements of support to the armed forces. The President of Democracy, Katerina Sakellaropoulou, visited the military and security forces at the outpost in Kastanies, Evros, and stated that “with faith, decisiveness, and consistency we can overcome any challenge and every danger” (I Kathimerini 2020d). Archbishop Ieronymos also visited Evros to express his pride for the security forces and their work, as well as his compassion for the immigrants who, having survived wars, were now being mocked and humiliated (by Turkey); but “we in Greece can do no more” for them (I Kathimerini 2020c). Advancing the rhetoric of the government about “invasion” by immigrants agitated by Turkey, the President of the Greek Parliament and New Democracy MP claimed, in a letter sent to the Council of Europe, that the issue was no longer a refugee issue, but Greece was facing an asymmetric threat (Bourdaras 2021). Finally, in a highly symbolic gesture, the President of the European Commission, Ursula Von Der Layer, the President of the European Parliament, David Sassoli, and the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, visited the area and inspected the situation in a helicopter, sending the message that the EU supported and trusted Greece in safeguarding the borders.
This handling of the situation by the government, the President of Democracy, and the head of the Church was the crucial point that, apart from turning the “invasion” into a national issue and conflict with Turkey, also turned it into a lethal danger for Greece which could jeopardize its existence. The fact that all political players, and more specifically those of the highest rank in the state hierarchy, visited the border following the unrest sent the message that something serious was going on, a severe menace. This in turn implied that we were all under threat and the only way to face this menace was to unite and obey the orders of the army, of the police, and of the security forces without challenging them or contemplating the correctness, effectiveness, or compliance with humanitarian standards and principles.
Within this context, every critique or question regarding the handling of the “invasion” was treated as treason. From the first moment such a critique was uttered, the government’s spokesperson, Stelios Petsas, characterized as the “Trojan Horse” in the service of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (Skai 2020b), a kind of “fifth column” (Miesak Rohde 2014; Ruiz 2014; Loeffel 2015) that operated in the country against its interests. This argument was furthered by the Greek media, which claimed that citizens have the right to take arms and defend the borders, and that those who defend the “invaders’” rights are enemies of their homeland and must be treated as such (Moumtzis 2020). This approach comprised one pillar of the communication management of the “invasion” by the government. The second pillar had to do with treating all news that did not comply with the government’s view as fake news. This was the case, for example, when there were reports that one immigrant was shot dead by the Greek forces operating in the area. When this became first known, the spokesperson rebutted it (Athens Voice 2020); and when the opposition insisted on it, it was accused of spreading Erdogan’s fake news (in.gr 2020). Moreover, the spokesperson continued to rebut news of more deaths as fake news (Ta Nea 2020a), even when they were confirmed by independent research and foreign media (Forensic Architecture 2020a, 2020b; Ta Nea 2020b).
As a result, the way the “invasion” was handled enhanced the feeling of threat and justified the use of violence and deterrence. And it did something more: it justified the dehumanization of the immigrants and refugees trying to enter the EU. These people could not be seen as refugees nor be treated as people in need with human and legal rights. They had to be pushed back to Turkey so that the menace would be eliminated. This contributed crucially to the shift of public opinion and of the stance of the Greek society towards refugees and immigrants in general. A survey conducted at the time found that 83 per cent of the respondents were worried about the event in Evros (93 per cent among voters of New Democracy); 76 per cent agreed that the government reacted in the right way by closing the borders; 46 per cent said that the closed pre-removal detention centres on islands in the Aegean Sea was a move towards the right direction in the management of the refugee crisis, while 46 per cent said exactly the opposite (I Kathimerini 202l).
So, we see that the process of deconstruction for the once morally untouchable category of the political refugee is confirmed in the Greek case. The once tolerant and supportive Greek society, which welcomed thousands of refugees while facing itself a major crisis in 2015, had now turned into an openly xenophobic and intolerant society. This is not a sudden or unexpected reaction but the result of a steady and consistent shift in the dominant rhetoric on refugees employed both by New Democracy – as opposition and as government – and by the mainstream media in the country. The rhetoric espoused on the occasion of the “invasion” in Evros helped this shift become legitimized, and resulted in refugees being first enemies, pending proof that they are in need of protection. Hence, refugees and asylum seekers are deprived of their human nature, they are dehumanized, and this way pushing them back regardless of their safety can be easily accepted. Pushbacks have been the official refugee policy in Greece with several cases reported either in the sea or with forced returnees from the Greek islands to Turkey (Lighthouse Reports 2021; Pagoudis 2021a). The PM justified these pushbacks politically by saying that Greece is not going to apologize for securing its borders, which is its obligation (Aggelidis 2021; Pagoudis 2021b), the government has prohibited civil servants from giving evidence to courts about pushbacks (The Press Project 2021), and pushbacks continue, even though Ylva Johansson, EU Commissioner for Home Affairs, has asked for an official investigation and report on them by Greece (Kyriakidi 2021).
At the same time, it became difficult, if not almost impossible, for asylum seekers to prove that they deserve protection. During the “invasion”, the Minister of Migration and Asylum promulgated a law that no asylum petitions by people who entered the country on those days would be accepted and examined but they would be rejected a priori. He defended this decision as one sending a strong message to those who illegally entered the country that the government would not treat them as refugees (I Kathimerini 2020i). However, it is often impossible for refugees to enter a country legally, and, if this were the criterion for recognizing refugees, no one would have ever been accorded the status of refugee. Based on human rights law, each asylum application is examined individually, and the decision is made according to the specific circumstances each person faces. Depriving people of the right to apply for asylum in this way can be viewed as a collective punishment that alludes to the dark ages in human history. Furthermore, the suppression of the asylum procedures means that the rule of law is suspended, which is never an innocent process. Any calamity that leads to it paves the way for more violations without any constitutional guarantee about their end.
Returning to the legal management of the “invaders”, the fact that people entering Greece during that period were not treated as people in need of protection but were accused of entering illegally meant that they were criminally prosecuted. There is not a lot of information on these cases, but there have been reports of persons who should have been granted refugee status but had instead been imprisoned and deported confirming the management of the refugee crisis as a penal and criminal issue (Papadopoulos 2021).
Greece is not the first state to apply such an exception from the rule of law. Before it, the Australian government excised certain territories from the migration zone suspending the right of asylum seekers to apply for it (McKenzie and Hasmath 2013: 418). Suspending the right to asylum application was until recently something unthinkable. It became possible due to the anxiety and the horror cultivated in relation to these “invading” people and, in both cases, moral panic provided the necessary context to legitimize this practice, which at least in the Greek case was not temporary, but it has become routine. As a permanent practice in the asylum policy of the Greek state, it reflects the shift in the central political scene pursued by the government of New Democracy, representing a clearly xenophobic and racist way of doing politics, which provokes the most humble and reactionary reflexes of a society.
During the “invasion”, newspapers, among them, of course, I Kathimerini (2020h, 2020b, 2020a, 2020g, 2020e), with recurring articles, kept informing about the number of illegal immigrants deterred from entering Greece in excruciating detail. This intended to create the impression that the government had absolute control of the situation and knew at any moment the exact number of the “invaders”. Given the chaotic conditions of those days, the accuracy of those numbers is highly unlikely; however, it was important to send the message that the government was ready and able to face every threat.
As a result, these people were not treated as human beings but were perceived as a problem that could be broken down into numbers and statistics, and consequently requiring a solution in managerial terms. This process of dehumanization (Martin 2015) not only entails the right of the state not to inform the public about the fate of the asylum seekers but it also allows it to be inconsistent with the humanitarian protocols and procedures. The “invaders” are terrifying statistical data that have to be fixed in such a way that they will no longer cause terror; they are not humans in need. Moreover, as the days of the “invasion” coincided with the first days of the COVID-19 pandemic in Greece, this rhetoric about “invasion” was again used in the following months, and this time it was an “invasion” of immigrants infected with COVID-19 (Nedos 2020).
After that crisis, the threat of another “invasion” of immigrants organized by Turkey was used to justify and legitimize the border fence built on the shores of the Evros River, the natural border between Greece and Turkey. This border fence, which was started during the previous government of New Democracy under Samaras, is presented as a guarantee of the security of the country and the EU. After the incident in 2020, its construction is portrayed as a national necessity, almost existential and absolutely urgent for the country. Indicative of the national gravity put upon this fence is that the President of Democracy visited it and was photographed in front of it with army and police executives. This provoked a comparison between Sakellaropoulou and the former US President Donald Trump (news247.gr 2021), who had also inspected the border wall between the US and Mexico, and a major part of his highly criticized immigration policy as populist and for inciting racial violence and discrimination (Demata 2017; Román and Sagás 2020). In the Greek case, as is briefly examined in the next section, it has already led to the deadliest shipwreck in the Mediterranean Sea.
When Deterrence Politics Leads to Deadly Shipwrecks
In the early morning hours of 14 June, a shipping boat overloaded with more than 750 people was overturned and sunk near Pylos, Greece, in the deepest point of the Mediterranean Sea. 104 people were rescued, 82 people were found drowned, and how many people were pulled down to the bottom of the sea along with the boat is still unknown (Newsroom 2023). What exactly happened in this shipwreck is still a blur, but the testimonies of the rescued and information which the Hellenic Coastguard has unwillingly provided illustrate that the boat was in danger. The Hellenic Coast Guard did little to save these people, eventually tying the boat with a rope to their ship leading the boat to overturn.
The Hellenic Coast Guard’s response to the shipwreck is under investigation by national and international authorities. Their narrative of the tragedy has been incoherent and widely scrutinized (The Press Project 2023a). These discrepancies have served as evidence for, at the very least, inappropriate action by the Hellenic Coastguard, while BBC and Greek independent media have also cast doubt on this narrative (The Press Project 2023b). Another aspect of this shipwreck worth noting is the wider context – that these incidents have increased as the other legitimate paths of migration have closed. Some months before the deadliest shipwreck in the Mediterranean Sea near Pylos, another shipwreck happened in Kythira, a small Greek island, leading to ten dead and ten missing (Psaraki 2023).
Another aspect of the Pylos shipwreck is related to the fact that, unsurprisingly, the actions of the Hellenic Coastguard were defended by Mitsotakis, despite the fact that the shipwreck occurred while there was a caretaker government in Greece – the country was in the between of two elections. Mitsotakis, when asked by the BBC, said that he believes that “we feel that we have a right to intercept boats at sea and, at the same time, to encourage these boats to return to the coasts from where they left”. He also said that “it is difficult to do a lot about an overcrowded boat. We asked the boat whether they wanted assistance, and they refused any assistance, they wanted to get to Italy and, at the end of the day, we should hold these smugglers accountable, not the Coastguard that is trying to do its job”. He went on claiming that “it is important to point the finger at the smugglers because at the end of the day they are responsible for offering the people what many desperate people think is actually a safe passage and they end up upon this boat and they realize this is actually a very, very dangerous trip” (Kenigsberg 2023).
What is evident here is how the phenomenon of migration is presented as a matter of illegal movement and smuggling. Additionally, it is attempted due to the closing of border entry, leaving aspiring migrants with little choice but to follow deadly routes in order to arrive in Europe. Putting all the blame on smugglers turns the death of hundreds of people into an issue of illegal activity and in an indirect way into the dead people’s fault themselves for taking such a “dangerous trip”. This in turn obscures the state’s responsibility for protecting people’s lives, and the Coastguard’s job is only to keep them out of the country and not save them when in danger.
Having first built a consent that refugees are “invaders”, a rhetorical pathway is created that validates dangerous routes and deadly shipwrecks – framing these hazards as essential elements of the new migration policy of closing the borders for humanitarian reasons. One final aspect is related to the fact that the reactions towards such tragedies are now marginal and weaker. This might be considered as the first short-term effect of the moral panic spread due to the Evros event. Dehumanization seems to have been, at this stage at least, consolidated as the way refugees and migrants are seen in Greece.
The moral panic of the Evros “invasion”, the indifference of a large part of Greek society towards the shipwreck in Pylos, and the widespread defence of the politics of closed borders at all costs, can be connected not to blame Greek society but as evidence of how effective moral panic can be for shifting attitudes in politics. Given the fact that previous moral panic episodes have caused permanent shifts in attitudes, it is possible that the moral panic of the “invasion” has crucially contributed to the escalation of xenophobic attitudes into openly racist attitudes.
The shift in the public’s attitudes towards migration is evident in the absence of mass protests after the Pylos shipwreck. While not associating it with the moral panic of the Thatcher era, Emily Gray, Maria Grasso, and Stephen Farrall (2020) associate this era with the restructuring of the British economy and society and the themes encompassed by Thatcherism, among them law and order. They also associate this era with a harder right-wing and authoritarian generation than the one that proceeded. In the short run, it could be claimed that something similar has happened in Greece with the moral panic of the Evros event, resulting in a marginalizing public reaction to the Pylos shipwreck. It remains to be seen if this will be the result in the long run.
Conclusion
The event at the Greek–Turkish border during February and March 2020 was a turning point in the management of the refugee crisis in Greece and in the perception of who is and who is not a refugee. As this paper has shown, the prevailing narrative and the portrayal of the situation as an “invasion” organized by Turkey aimed at challenging the national and territorial integrity and sovereignty of Greece, paved the way for every move of the state can be accepted by the society. In this, the role of moral panic was crucial, as it formed the necessary landscape in which the event would be interpreted as an “invasion”, and its deterrence would justify the suspension of every provision of the rule of law and of the international law regarding refugees.
Furthermore, the moral panic context created in those days helped legitimize the shift in refugee policy pursued by the government. According to this shift, the people entering Europe via Greece are no longer refugees but immigrants, and Greece has no moral or legal obligation to protect them. The moral panic of the “invasion” contributed critically to constructing consent to the new policy within the Greek society and allowed the hardening of both the anti-refugee and anti-migrant policies and discourse. The prevalence of this anti-refugee and anti-migrant spirit has very specific consequences, such as the repeated pushbacks or the forced returns of asylum seekers to Turkey by the Greek Navy. The alignment of the majority of the media with the government, which was examined in this article, was decisive for the construction of this consent and continues to be decisive for the silence with which pushbacks and forced returns are currently dealt with. It is also examined how this context has paved the way for more deadly shipwrecks. Additionally, this article illustrates how these developments have neutralized any resistance against such events and actions. So, it seems that in the Greek case, moral panic was a useful tool for implementing major changes in the mentality and in the policies regarding refugees and asylum seekers, turning the Greek society from a welcoming into an unwelcoming society indifferent towards their lives, in a way that nowadays seems difficult to reverse. But again, this remains to be confirmed or refuted in the near future, even though the absence of reactions to the Pylos shipwreck seems to confirm the power of moral panic to legitimize state actions and even state crimes.