Athens wants better ties with Türkiye amid ongoing global challenges, Greek Foreign Minister George Gerapetritis said during an interview with SKAI FM radio Thursday.
"It is important to meet, to discuss, to decompress the crises, to organize our next steps without necessarily expecting that some lofty agreements will come,” Gerapetritis said.
The foreign minister was responding to a question on whether Greek premier Kyriakos Mitsotakis would move ahead with his working visit to the Turkish capital city of Ankara scheduled for May 13 after Türkiye’s recent decision to reopen Kariye – or Chora – Church in Istanbul as a mosque.
"It was a basic assumption from the beginning that our basic positions (of Greece and Türkiye) are not going to change ... What we seek through the Greek-Turkish approach is, first of all, to have a period of calmness,” he said.
According to Gerapetritis, a similar state of affairs is valid with regard to Greece’s plan to establish two marine parks, one in the Ionian Sea and another in the Aegean Sea, and Türkiye’s objections to it.
"We will never compromise about the matters which are essential and established for Greece’s interests. Correspondingly, the Turks also believe that they should stick to their basic positions,” he added.
"It is preferable to have a quiet neighborhood in an extremely difficult and unstable international environment than to have a finger on the trigger and wait all the time.”
When asked particularly about the Greek opposition’s criticism that Mitsotakis’ government is pursuing a policy of appeasement toward Türkiye, he said: "I want to emphasize that peace, prosperity, national security, national self-confidence do not go through cheap verbalizations, nor through dangerous maneuvers in the field."
"I think it is our duty for future generations to leave a legacy of peace in our wider region,” he concluded.
Mitsotakis will be paying a return visit to Türkiye on Monday months after President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan made a landmark trip to Athens last December when the sides signed a raft of trade, energy and education deals.
The two regional rivals are NATO allies but have been at odds for decades over a series of issues, including territorial claims in the Aegean and drilling rights in the Mediterranean, and have come to the brink of war three times in the last 50 years. A dispute over energy exploration rights in 2020 led to the two countries' warships facing off in the Mediterranean.
Tense ties have since improved significantly, even more after the February 2023 earthquakes that killed over 53,000 people in southeastern Türkiye.
But Mitsotakis’ announcement last week that Greece will create two marine parks for the protection of sea mammals and birds – one in the Ionian Sea in western Greece and one in the central Aegean – has caused concerns in Türkiye, with officials saying that Ankara considers it a “sabotage” of the normalization process.
In response, Mitsotakis argued that Türkiye had still maintained its “positions which are deeply problematic” for Greece.
The neighbors’ issues are longstanding and deep-rooted and neither side expects the process without turbulence, particularly in the Aegean, where Turkish and Greek jets often scuffled until recently.
In January 2023, Ankara and Athens reached respective deals with Washington for fighter jets, raising concerns about fresh skirmishes in the region.
Ankara has repeatedly warned its neighbor against entering an arms race with Türkiye, particularly on building a military presence on the disputed Aegean islands since the 1960s, in violation of postwar treaties.
Greece's purchase of F-35 fighter jets from the U.S. and the upping of defense budgets are meant to counter the protection of Turkish interests in the Eastern Mediterranean. Greece says it needs to defend the islands against a potential attack from Türkiye, but Turkish officials said continued militarization of the islands could lead to Ankara questioning their ownership.
Any normalization of relations would ease tensions in the Eastern Mediterranean and contribute to regional stability. Southern Mediterranean nations Libya and Egypt are also parties to the issue of continental shelves.
Speaking to Daily Sabah, an expert in international relations said Ankara and Athens would regardless focus on “positive messages” during Mitsotakis’ visit and discuss what role they could play in regional conflicts like the Russian-Ukrainian war, as well as Türkiye’s decision to halt trade with Israel amid the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
