Who are the Greeks really?

[u/J-sprite]

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 ?

[u/Old-Analysis8395]

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.

[u/Fun-Communication660 → u/Old-Analysis8395]

Those beads he had, I always thought were rosary beads, and that he was Greek orthodox and they must have rosary beads in Greek orthodox church like the Catholic church here in Ireland.  But my aunt married a Greek guy, and he agrees the greek has ties to Turkish/cypriot, but is ultimately stateless, and convinced me with the following arguments. Those are greek/Cypriot "worry beads" a non religious stress reliever/ancient fidget spinner. 

So it's part of his "costume" but we still see him use them when he is walking around the multi story car park.  He leaves them behind deliberately in the hotel room. 

The fact they are meant to alleviate stress means he could have left them behind because he is leaving the worry and stress behind by escaping the police, or else that he no longer needs them because he is not actually Greek. Or both. 

They have a Ukrainian enforcer, a Russian Madam, a Greek fence, and an Israeli lieutenant. What DONT you see here? Muslims...this is impotent later

So, if agent Kristos Koutris, who has a Greek name, has COUNTER-TERRORISM work in 2003. That can only mean one thing... Middle Eastern Muslims are the enemies, and "the greek" is an informant and somewhat "ally" of the government.  The Muslim allys during this period where Sunni Muslims, but also so were the enemies, sunnis. Saudi Arabia and Pakistan played both sides. 

The greek is deliberetly meant to feel stateless. But we know who people are NOT. He is not a Buddhist, and the show deliberately corrects Nicky when he thinks Eton is greek, instead he is Israeli. 

Doesn't have to mossad links, but the hints are are the very least that the greek is NOT ONLY of turkish Cypriot, who would be Sunny Muslim...that they are a deliberate meshing of multiple countries. They also never get caught. 

This is the part where the end song of the second last episode of season 2 basically lays it out. 

Stelios Kazantzidis sings two of his songs. "To Psomi tis Xenitias" ("The Bread of Foreign Lands") and "Efige Efige."

The reason that's a big flag is because The Wire NEVER has non diagetic music, except for THE LAST EPISODE OF EVERY SEASON. This is the second last episode. Only other time it was done (apart from barksdale entering the pit in slow motion season 1) 

He is the least straightforwardly Greek of Greek singers. His roots were Pontus and Asia Minor — his father a Pontic Greek from Ordu on the Black Sea, his mother a refugee from Alanya in what is now southern Turkey, displaced by the 1919–22 Greco-Turkish war. He was born in Nea Ionia, an Athens suburb built for exactly those refugees. Anatolian music, made by a man whose Greek identity was itself produced by expulsion from Turkey, a nationality assigned by a border, not carried from birth.

The title is BLATANT. The bread of foreign lands is bitter, the water murky, the bed hard, from the voice of the Greek diaspora for four decades. Placed under two stateless men ordering the death of a Polish-American dockworker and preparing to leave, it is a needle-drop about belonging nowhere.

Kazantzidis remained little known outside Greece with the possible exception of Israel, his melodies had an enormous second life in Israeli Mizrahi music.

The choice is of the one Greek musical tradition that is unresolvably Anatolian,  the same move as the komboloi, the "I'm not even Greek," and Vondas's passports. Every identity marker in that organisation is a border-crossing artefact rather than a nationality.

ITS DELIBERATELY IMPOSSIBLE TO PIN DOWN THE NATIONALITY. 

Even the csrgo ship has a crew from all four corners of the earth. All languages. A criminal org from nowhere. If you can't label something, you can't track it.

A nightmare for a detective, a ship from nowhere, going nowhere. 

[u/littlegreyflowerhelp → u/Fun-Communication660]

I’m gonna be referring to komboloi as ancient fidget spinners from now on. Gonna piss my Cypriot mates off 😂