New Democracy MP defends Navy cadets over nationalist slogans, downplays incident
New Democracy MP Thanos Plevris has downplayed the significance of an incident involving cadets from the Navy’s non-commissioned officers’ school who chanted nationalist slogans during Tuesday’s Independence Day parade.
The cadets shouted slogans against Turkiye, including one declaring that “Cyprus is Greek.”
The incident prompted a backlash from Ankara, leading Greek authorities to launch an investigation. The government condemned the incident, with a source telling Kathimerini, “You do not show your strength with slogans.”
“In combat services, as part of their training – regardless of what any ministry says – these individuals are prepared to die for their country. As part of this preparation, slogans are used. Obviously, these are not statements a politician would make or ones that would be expressed in times of peace,” Plevris, a former health minister, said on Skai TV on Wednesday.
He added that the event occurred on Greece’s Independence Day, marking the start of the war of liberation from Ottoman rule, so “some rhetorical excess can be justified.”
“These are the kind of sailors I want on a Belharra frigate – not ones singing ‘The Bees Go Buzzing’ and ‘My Little Pony,’” he remarked at another point in the interview. “We’re not going to punish them over a slogan,” he added, while also criticizing Turkiye for its expansionist Blue Homeland doctrine and its ongoing occupation of northern Cyprus.
“Let’s not lose our minds over a slogan,” he said.
Plevris joined the ruling New Democracy party in 2012 after previously serving as an MP for a small populist right-wing party.
Kathimerini
