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| - The largely symbolic role of Greece's president will from Wednesday be taken by senior judge Ekaterini Sakellaropoulou, the first ever woman in the post. Presidents confirm governments and laws and technically have the power to declare war, but only in conjunction with the government. Much of their five-year terms are spent on ceremonial trips both abroad and around the country. Occasionally however, some have left their mark with choice words or by being mired in controversy. Mild-mannered Prokopis Pavlopoulos, the outgoing president, raised eyebrows in December 2017 in a terse sit-down with Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan as the latter began a visit to Athens. Ahead of the trip, Erdogan had infuriated the Greeks by saying that airspace and territorial borders between the two neighbours and NATO allies could be "improved". Pavlopoulos broke with practise by bluntly telling Erdogan on live television that Athens had no intention of revising the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, a defining document in Greek-Turkish relations. "This treaty is non-negotiable for us... it requires no revision nor update," he said. Then-prime minister Alexis Tsipras would later joke to Erdogan that another nine countries would have to be chased down to revise the Treaty of Lausanne, including Japan. The issue of Greek-Turkish maritime borders came up in 1999 during an official visit to Athens by Bill Clinton, when he was US president. At the state dinner, Greece's then president Costis Stefanopoulos told Clinton that Turkey's "aggressive" stance in the Aegean was encouraged by international apathy. "We all have a fundamental interest in defending legality," Stefanopoulos said. "By not taking a stand, I fear (the international community) is inadvertently bolstering baseless claims and aggressive behaviour," he added. Stefanopoulos spoke up again the following year, this time defending the right of an Albania-born star pupil to carry the Greek flag at his school parade. "Any child who is part of Greek education and excels... has the right to bear the Greek flag," he said at the time. In October 2012, Greece was in the grip of a spiralling debt crisis and unpopular pay cuts. Demonstrators blocked a national parade in Thessaloniki and chanted 'traitor' at 83-year-old President Karolos Papoulias. Before walking out of the parade in disgust, Papoulias spoke to media and gave the hecklers a piece of his mind. "We fought for Greece. I was a resistance fighter at 15, fighting against Nazism and the Germans," said Papoulias, whose father was a senior army officer who had also fought for Greece. "And they call me traitor? They should be ashamed." Christos Sartzetakis was a daring magistrate in the 1960s, his work immortalised in Costa-Gavras' award-winning political thriller 1969 'Z'. But as president in 1987 he made the mistake of picking a fight with prominent comedian Harry Klynn. Klynn put out a comedy record poking fun at Sartzetakis after the president was photographed wearing a large cross during a monastery visit. Sartzetakis promptly sued and tried to ban the record -- making it an instant classic. His lawsuit also failed. jph/chv/jj
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