SYRIZA's new leader Stefanos Kasselakis

When SYRIZA came to power in Greece in 2015, it was hailed as a "beacon of hope" by almost everyone except the communists, and many in Turkey were also "swept up in its wind." However, its mask fell quickly.

During its 4-year term, SYRIZA implemented anti-people, pro-imperialist policies, and following its defeat in the 2019 elections, it handed over power to New Democracy. Alexis Tsipras, the leader of the party, which suffered a major loss of votes in the elections held in June of this year, resigned from the chairmanship.

SYRIZA has chosen its new leader: 35-year-old Stefanos Kasselakis, a former Goldman Sachs executive and current wealthy shipowner who has spent the last 21 years of his life in the US, where he emigrated at the age of 14...

Kasselakis, who is also a US citizen, has one notable characteristic, and his only known political activity until this year was volunteering for US President Joe Biden's 2008 election campaign.

Kasselakis, who was nominated in the June elections but failed to get elected as a member of parliament, visited Alexis Tsipras at his office in parliament after being elected as the new leader of SYRIZA and promised to be the "guardian of Tsipras's legacy." Kasselakis also pledged to maintain "unity" within the party.

Since he is not a member of parliament, Kasselakis cannot be the party's parliamentary group spokesperson; he appointed Yorgos Tsipras, Alexis Tsipras's cousin who stood by him during the leadership campaign, to this position.

Kasselakis, who advocates for "copying the US model" for SYRIZA to return to power and proposes an "umbrella party" from different ideological segments, is also facing reactions from within his own party.

'IT IS AS IF NETFLIX STEPPED IN AND TOOK OVER THE PARTY'

According to writer Dimitris Psarras, who spoke to The Guardian, many members of SYRIZA, which once consisted of an alliance of "Marxist-Leninists, former communists, ecologists, and social democrats," have been gripped by fear: "It is as if Netflix stepped in, took over the party, and is now turning it into a series."

According to Psarras, people have no idea what Kasselakis's politics are, or even if he has a program, and they are in a state of shock.

'FROM A ROCK BAND TO A LIGHT POP GROUP...'

SYRIZA MP Stelios Kouloglou also described Kasselakis's election as party leader as "the end of the leftist SYRIZA." Making the analogy that "SYRIZA has turned from a rock band into a light pop group," Kouloglou said the party base is "in total shock."

A rival to Mitsotakis: His English is better!

According to Kasselakis, his election as SYRIZA leader will be the "first step" to defeating Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, and he will do this with "better English, finance, and business knowledge."

The fact that he guarantees he will be even more pro-American than Mitsotakis might be attributed to his "inexperience" in politics. However, while boasting about his English, Kasselakis also faces the task of improving his Greek. Shortly before being elected SYRIZA leader, he made a statement regarding Northern Cyprus where he used the term "statelet" instead of the "pseudo-state" used by his party; he later stated he had made a mistake and attributed it to fatigue and a lack of familiarity with Greek terminology.

He realized his country's needs while traveling as a shipowner

In an article he wrote when he was nominated as a SYRIZA parliamentary candidate at Tsipras's invitation in June, he described his decision to enter politics in Greece as "a short break between two parts of my business career."

Writing that thanks to his career over the last 6 years as a shipping logistics company boss, he reconnected with the country he left at age 14 and shaped his views on the changes his country needs, Kasselakis had stated, "If the intention is to return to power, SYRIZA should copy the US formula as soon as possible, while also embracing the political center."

Among the promises of Kasselakis, who appeared on a TV broadcast with his American husband Tyler McBeth after his election, are the legalization of same-sex marriage, "significant" reductions in taxes paid by public and private sector employees, the separation of church and state, judicial reform, and granting citizenship to immigrant children born and raised in Greece.

Almost everyone in Turkey wanted to be SYRIZA

This is the port finally reached by SYRIZA, which set out as one of the "fake left" parties polished to keep the working masses within the system in the face of poverty and unemployment that deepened in Europe after the 2008 crisis...

In Turkey, for a time, almost everyone from the government to the opposition had become a "SYRIZA supporter."

The AKP, through its pro-government newspapers, claimed that SYRIZA came to power by taking them as an example, while MHP leader Bahçeli pointed to SYRIZA as an example for the HDP, saying, "They are not separatists."

The CHP congratulated SYRIZA by saying "those who promised hope won" and suggested that the CHP would win in the same way in the June 2015 elections.

The HDP leader of the time, Selahattin Demirtaş, said, "Just like Syriza and Podemos, we are marching to power," and celebrated SYRIZA's electoral success by calling them "My brother Tsipras."

Alper Taş, the general president of the ÖDP, which was SYRIZA's sister party in Turkey at the time, also said at a rally he attended in Athens, "We are with Syriza in the Party of the European Left. We came here saying 'may it be our turn.' We are here with the calculation that 'what is cooked in the neighbor's house will fall to us too.' There is a great festival of democracy tonight."

Almost all parties, from right to left, had entered a race to become "Turkey's SYRIZA."

The DSP and the Anadolu Party announced their merger with the words, "In this platform, every party will be represented by its own name. In a sense, we are envisioning the Syriza model in Greece. Our proposal is for the DSP and the Anadolu Party to lead this platform."

KEMAL OKUYAN HAD DRAWN ATTENTION

The Turkish left, under the influence of the wind blowing in Greece, accused the communists who warned of "false hope" of "not liking anything" and "sectarianism."

In January 2015, a debate broke out over the words of Kemal Okuyan, a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party at the time, on the "Ne Oluyor" program broadcast on CNNTürk, and almost everyone who participated in the program claimed that SYRIZA was "hope."

In that program, Okuyan had said, "There is a perception of a left-wing government in Greece right now, but on the other hand, as has happened many times in history, perhaps capitalism is trying to set up a left-looking government in order to get back on its feet; that is, the system that is responsible for all these disasters that have occurred."

Emphasizing that the left cannot achieve success with populist rhetoric without organizing among the laborers, Okuyan made a reference to Alexis Tsipras, who did not wear a tie, and Ufuk Uras, saying, "This business doesn't just happen by taking off your tie."

News Source: 12punto