Michalis Charalambidis, was born and raised in Alexandroupoli. In his younger years, during a dictatorship, he escaped to Italy where he studied economics, political science and sociology, while at the same time he developed intense political activity in the context of the PAK abroad. He was a member of the editorial team of the founding declaration of PASOK within which he developed intense ideological and political activity as the head of the so-called “group of Italians” which was always critical of the looming course of “nationalization” and degeneration of the movement as well as anti-developmental choices and practices of his leadership.
His substantial criticism and proposals were reflected in a large number of books, articles, speeches and announcements as well as in proposed laws for the establishment of a new city in Thrace with the name of Romania and the recognition by the Greek parliament of the genocide of Pontic Hellenism. Michalis remained faithful and put into practice his beliefs and ideas for a substantial separation of state and party. Thus, he never claimed a parliamentary seat or a ministerial position, although he easily could have done so due to his closeness to Andreas Papandreou.
He remained active in party bodies but also in civil society movements in Greece and abroad, creating important currents of thought and political action in different fields. After leaving PASOK at the end of 1990, he founded the Democratic Regional Union with which he also participated in electoral contests. Already in the 90’s, in an impressive speech at a PASOK conference, he predicted, with great accuracy, the bankruptcy of Greece, at the same time harshly criticizing the waste of European and domestic resources by the PASOK governments.
His warnings about Turkey
At the same time, he warned of the dangers posed by Turkish neo-expansionism and the transformation of the country into a “Turkobaroque Greece, a poor, shrunken vilayet or German Lander” as he characteristically said. Unfortunately, it was confirmed and instead of the country going to Kyrenia, it was led to Imia and the Madrid Agreement (July 1997, Kostas Simitis), and continuing the descent until today, it was confronted with the Nazi-style Turkish theories of the “blue homeland” and the ” Friendship Pact of Athens” (December 2023, Kyriakos Mitsotakis).
Michalis Charalambidis proposed an intelligent, diplomatic and political approach to Turkish expansionism, characteristically saying that “there is no Cyprus problem, no Aegean or Thrace problem, there is only the Turkish problem which must be solved based on the principles and ideals that formed the foundations of European democracies” thus changing the parameters of understanding and analysis of this great problem for Greece-Cyprus and the peoples of the region.
He rightly believed that the post-Cold War era that had begun to emerge from 1989 created favorable conditions for a more active role of Hellenism not only in Europe, but also in the Mediterranean, Far East, Middle East and Central Asia, due to the presence there of historical Greek Orthodox or Greek speakers communities. Unfortunately the prisoners were deaf. Michalis’ thought was initially irrigated by different theoretical sources such as Marxian Latin American sociology, theories of regional state dependency and Max’s cultural sociology Weber. In his mature years he immersed himself in ancient Greek literature from which he was inspired essentially and not formally, producing a new indigenous political theory about Greece and its role in the world.
The legacy that M. Charalambidis leaves us
He elaborated and redeveloped proposals for the regional reconstruction of the Greek state, he aptly analyzed the cachexia of the Athenian-centric regionalist model of “development” and its cultural-economic and geopolitical consequences, he criticized provincial pseudo-modernization, he spoke about the recovery of productive memory and the development of the cities and countryside of our country (he called it agrophilia), for the development of transport infrastructure (e.g. trains, Egnatia road, ports), for the “globalizing” and moral role that Greece can play in the new century as a ” democratic third pole” I would say between the Northern European version of modernity on the one hand and the authoritarian models of the East and Islamic fundamentalism on the other, while he worked and highlighted the great importance of the process of liberating peoples from authoritarian regimes (e.g. Kurds, Latin Americans) .
Michalis Charalambidis with his ideas and political stance-action taught ethics, honesty, pure-rational patriotism, solidarity and empathy, healthy cosmopolitanism, but also a culture of political prediction, analysis and visioning. It belongs to all Greeks and to all peoples who love democracy and cooperation.
He leaves us a huge intellectual and political legacy but also a great patriotic responsibility to work to create a fresh, institutionally robust, rational Greece that will be an international pole of knowledge and innovation, freedom, law and development. A country-workshop for the production of words, thought, meanings and well-being. Farewell Michalis Charalambidis there “high as heaven” and know that the Romania of your ideas has already blossomed and will bring more…
Tags: Greece Charalambidis ominous today
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