We sat down with Middle East Eye journalist and author Sean Mathews on UNAPOLOGETIC to ask a question that unsettles a lot of assumptions: do Greeks actually have more in common with Arabs and Turks than they do with the rest of Europe?
Mathews is the author of The New Byzantines: The Rise of Greece and Return of the Near East, and his answer draws on years of reporting from Istanbul, Cairo and occupied Jerusalem.
He argues that Greece's "Western" identity is a relatively recent import, imposed from outside, and that the country's deeper roots, culturally, religiously and geopolitically, lie in the wider Middle East.
The episode traces how the Greek revolution, the population exchange with Turkey, and the collapse of cosmopolitan cities like Alexandria all shaped the identity Greece wears today. We also get into the present: Greece's fast-deepening, and increasingly fraught, alliance with Israel, and what that could mean for Turkey, NATO and the wider region.
UNAPOLOGETIC is hosted by Ashfaaq Carim.