Beware of Greeks bearing unpolitics: explaining the populist SYRIZA-ANEL government's role during the 2015 bailout negotiations

In January 2015, Greece witnessed a political earthquake with the election of the populist anti-austerity/EU bailout coalition of the left-wing party SYRIZA and the far-right party ANEL. It is argued that during January-June 2015, the SYRIZA-ANEL coalition engaged in a protracted process of renegotiation of Greece’s bailout terms that were agreed between previous Greek governments and the so-called Troika (European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund) adopting a behaviour ruled by "unpolitics" as it immediately rejected formal and informal rules of decision making by obstructing negotiations between Greece and the Troika, obfuscating Greece’s main demands and conditions for a successful renegotiation along with engaging in a public discursive attack against Greece’s creditors. Moreover, the SYRIZA-ANEL government rejected traditional means of compromise as, in an unprecedented fashion, key Greek government figures threatened other European countries with an unprecedented wave of migration during the Syrian refugee crisis with Greek authorities allowing and even facilitating the mass movement of third nationals via Greek territory towards northern Europe. When the Troika presented Greece its final bailout offer in June 2015, Greece rejected it with a referendum in which Greek Premier Tsipras accused creditors of aiming to humiliate Greeks with unbearable demands. This period of "unpolitics" ended almost immediately after the referendum when, in a sudden and unexpected volte-face, Tsipras interpreted the referendum result as a call for compromise with the Troika and accepted the previously intolerable bailout deal as the only option to avoid Greece's departure from the Eurozone.