Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis during the NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, July 11, 2023. INTS KALNINS / REUTERS
The two neighbors and members of NATO have long been fighting over maritime borders and energy exploration rights in parts of the Aegean Sea.
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who is to meet with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the sidelines of the NATO summit on Wednesday July 12, assured that he wanted to carry out “significant progressin view of a rapprochement with its neighbor and rival.
“I hope and look forward to building on this positive climate and making significant progress“Said Kyriakos Mitsotakis before this meeting which comes after strong tensions followed by a warming of bilateral relations following the devastating earthquake in Turkey at the beginning of February. “We obviously have important differences“, underlined the head of the conservative government.
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Climate of tensions
“But we can agree (…) on a roadmap so that we can resolve our biggest geopolitical dispute, the delimitation of maritime zones, exclusive economic zones and the continental shelf in the Aegean Sea and the Eastern Mediterranean“, he insisted. “We are not doomed to live in a perpetual climate of tension with Turkey“, according to him.
The two neighbors and NATO members have long been in dispute over maritime borders and energy exploration rights in parts of the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean. When they last met in October in Prague, Kyriakos Mitsotakis had left the official dinner of an informal European summit during Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s speech, according to the latter.
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The Turkish leader had accused Greece of “to occupythe Aegean islands whose status was settled in post-war treaties and had warned that the Turkish armed forces could “come overnight” And “do what is necessary“. But tensions eased in February when Greece sent aid and rescue teams following a massive earthquake that killed more than 50,000 people in southern Turkey. The Greek Foreign Minister at the time, Nikos Dendias, was the first European minister to visit Turkey after the earthquake.
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