Dora Bakoyannis

Dora Bakoyannis was the first woman to be mayor of Athens and the first to be Greek foreign minister, and her political life began when the November 17 group shot her husband dead in front of their home. She is the daughter of Konstantinos Mitsotakis, prime minister in the early 1990s, and the sister of Kyriakos Mitsotakis, prime minister from 2019 - a family that has been in Greek politics since the nineteenth century. Her husband Pavlos Bakoyannis was a journalist and New Democracy deputy assassinated in 1989 by the far-left terrorist organisation that operated in Greece for twenty-seven years without a single member being caught until 2002. She was elected to his seat the following year. As mayor of Athens from 2003 she oversaw the city through the 2004 Olympics, and as foreign minister from 2006 to 2009 she handled the name dispute with what was then the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and the Turkish relationship. She was expelled from New Democracy in 2010 for voting in favour of the first bailout memorandum against the party line, founded her own party, and was readmitted in 2012. She has been mayor of Chania in Crete since 2023 in her own right, having declined to stand for parliament again. She supported the Prespa agreement that settled the Macedonian name question in 2018, and abstained rather than vote against it. Her son Kostas Bakoyannis became mayor of Athens in 2019, so mother and son have both held the office. She was elected to the European Parliament in 2004 but did not take the seat. She has been in continuous elected office since 1990.

• Lived: 1954 CE – ?
• Nationality: Greek
• Roles: politician