Polls, Trade Union Document Spell Trouble For PASOK

July 19 -- Greece's ruling PASOK party, troubled by internal infighting, saw its poll ratings continue to drop. The daily Ta Nea and the television station Antenna both released polls showing PASOK lagging behind New Democracy by as much as eight points.

In elections fifteen months ago, PASOK won a fresh popular mandate, only to fall prey to bickering and infighting among party and cabinet members. Striking National Medical Service doctors, a chronically slumping Athens stock exchange, rising inflation and Greece's first reported case of Mad Cow disease haven't helped.

The Simitis government has also angered the church by deciding to issue new ID cards that do not list religious affiliation, and the left wing of the party opposes plans to privatize state industries and reform social security.

Simitis, a reformist who has steered the party away from the populist socialism of PASOK founder Andreas Papandreou, managed to gain trade union support during previous party congresses -- an accomplishment that enabled him to override the party's hardliners. But in a move that could signal impending disaster for Simitis, party trade unionists on July 18th released a document sharply critical of the government's policies, charging that PASOK was now at odds with "the people's desires and hopes."

The declining fortunes of Simitis have focused renewed attention on Foreign Minister George Papandreou, son of the PASOK founder and the man many consider most likely to succeed Simitis as party leader. Papandreou has firmly supported economic reform and a globalization-era foreign policy, but his status as son of the widely revered Andreas Papandreou ensures him allegiance from nostalgic left-wingers.

Genoa Braces for Protests

Approximately three thousand Greeks are arriving in Italy to join protests against the G8 summit in Genoa, and a survey taken by Ta Nea found that much of the rest of Greece feels ready to join them. Anti-globalization sentiment runs strong in Greece, as the poll found; almost sixty percent of respondents had negative perceptions of globalization or doubted that it would be good for Greece.  One in three Greeks surveyed expressed a willingness to go to Genoa and protest.

Italian police, meanwhile, have closed Genoa airport and sealed off most the city center, creating a security zone designed to protect summit proceedings from disruption. Protesters, who embrace a variety of environmental and social causes, have vowed to breach the security zone.

Clerides Warns Against Rift Over Greek-Turkish Rapprochment

Speaking at a ceremony marking 1974 events that culminated in the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, Cypriot President Glafco Clerides sought to defuse criticism of Greece by Cypriots angry over rapprochment.  He warned that public sentiment should not be allowed to create a rift between Cyprus and Greece.

Several prominent Cypriot politicians, including the chairman of Clerides' own party, have taken issue with Greek gestures of friendship towards Turkey, such as the recent twinning of Greek and Turkish villages.

Two villages -- Gera, on the Greek island of Mytilene, and Altinoluk on the Turkish mainland -- were twinned in a ceremony attended by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholemew I.

Any dispute between Greece and Cyprus would be a very costly mistake, Clerides said during commemorations of the 1974 coup against Archbishop Makarios.

On July 15, 1974, the commander of Greece's military junta ordered the overthrow of the Cypriot leader. National Guard tanks attacked the presidential mansion, but Makarios escaped. In a scene out of a thriller, his nephew drove him away in a car lent by a passerby. Taken to a radio station, Makarios broadcast an address informing Cypriots that he had survived the assassination attempt.

Five days later, Turkey occupied the northern third of the island.

Virginity Regulations Spark Outcry in Turkey

High school girls who want to be nurses must be virgins, according to regulations introduced in Turkey by Health Minister Osman Durmus. The regulations allow state nursing schools to subject students to gynecological tests if suspected of having sex, and provide for the expulsion of non-virgins. Forced virginity tests, once common in Turkey, were banned in 1999 after a group of girls attempted suicide, swallowing rat poison and throwing themselves into a well, rather than take the test. They were then forced to take the test in their hospital beds.

The Turkish nurses' association president vowed to fight the ruling, and a liberal newspaper inquired whether the health minister also planned to check the virginity of male nurses. Durmus is a member of a far-right party with a power base in rural areas.

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