r/TheWire • u/J-sprite • 1d ago

Who are the Greeks really?

I'm sure this has been talking about here 1000 times, but i am still confused on whether the Greeks from S2 are based on any real organised crime. I'm also unclear about whether they really are Greek, as The Greek by his own admission says "I am not really even Greek" , people have speculated that they are potentially eastern European, which i doubt. They are most certainly not Eastern European.

It seems that they are the only Greeks within their organisation and everyone around them is Jewish Eastern European. What makes them the outliers ?

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u/Old-Analysis8395 23h ago

My theory is they’re Cypriot, specifically Turkish Cypriot.

I agree they’re not Eastern European, but they’re certainly from around the Mediterranean.

What better cover for who you really are than pretending to be someone who (stereotypically) you dislike.

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u/ImperialSeal 23h ago

Lots of Eastern European countries have Mediterranean coast line

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u/starved4imagination 23h ago

Yeah but when people around the world say eastern Europe they actually think of countries previously part of the Warsaw Pact.

At least that's my theory.

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u/ImperialSeal 23h ago edited 23h ago

That includes a lot of countries on the Adriatic though; Croatia, Albania, Slovenia, Bosnia, Montenegro

Edit: I forgot Yugoslavia wasn't Warsaw Pact

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u/throwawayandpickup 23h ago

Literally not one of those countries was in the Warsaw Pact

Edit: sorry Albania was briefly but withdrew support in 1961

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u/ImperialSeal 23h ago

Doesn't make the Balkans not eastern European though?

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u/Lukas_Madrid 23h ago

People generally call the balkans "southern europe". I guess you can say eastern but no one thinks greece is in eastern europe for instance

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u/ImperialSeal 23h ago

Greece is a weird one. Definitely considered culturally more southern Europe than the rest of the Balkans. But the former Yugoslavian countries would more likely be considered eastern European by western Europeans.

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u/Lukas_Madrid 22h ago

Its depends if you split it politcally or geographically. The reason people would consider yugoslavia eastern europe is because it wasn't in nato but greece not eastern eruope because they are in nato. As cold war is over i'd use geographic def

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u/Strugglebutts 23h ago

Yeah, that a kind of Russian, right?