After New York, London and Brussels, it is Istanbul's turn to be the venue for the new one-on-one between Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Although Athens has not yet confirmed the meeting, Turkish media have identified it as taking place at the presidential palace in Istanbul, where Mr. Erdogan will host a lunch for Mr. The fact that the Prime Minister has already scheduled a trip to attend the Divine Liturgy for Orthodoxy Sunday at the Patriarchal Church of Fanari, the chances of another direct contact are very high.
Besides, the Greek Prime Minister has repeatedly supported the position that summits with the leadership of the neighbouring country "should not be news."
The Greek Prime Minister has repeatedly supported the position that summits with the leadership of the neighbouring country "should not be news."
Besides, the Greek Prime Minister has repeatedly supported the position that summits with the leadership of the neighbouring country "should not be news. Moreover, even during periods of heightened Turkish provocativeness in the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean, he has insisted that the door of dialogue between Athens and Ankara must remain open.
In this light, Mitsotakis responded last Tuesday in Parliament when the leader of the official opposition hinted at this. "Mr Tsipras, I personally never closed the door to dialogue with Turkey," the prime minister said. "Despite Turkey's tension and provocative rhetoric, the framework for bilateral contacts in terms of both political negotiations and confidence-building measures and exploratory contacts is open," he added.
"Belief in the power of arguments"
After subsequently stating that he was "ready at any time" for a meeting with Erdogan, the prime minister argued that the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine justified such a contact. Because, he said, there are issues that should be discussed that "relate to the southeastern wing of NATO and the way we perceive the new challenges that the Ukrainian crisis has created."
"So I am not opposed to such a prospect. Nor is the country closing the door to dialogue," Kyriakos Mitsotakis had underlined, sending the message, however, that Athens is under no illusions about the revisionist strategy prevailing on the eastern side of the Aegean.
"We always approach this debate with faith in the strength of our arguments and now I believe with the additional precedent of how important alliances are at a time when we may be facing powers that advocate revisionism," the prime minister said. To conclude: "I think everyone today has realised that revisionism in practice can have huge costs."
What the three previous meetings
Kyriakos Mitsotakis, from the first moment he assumed the responsibility of governing, was blatantly in favour of direct contact with the Ankara leadership. His first meeting with the Turkish president took place before three months after his election and was in September 2019 on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York. Although it was an exploratory meeting, the atmosphere was good, but this was not confirmed afterwards.
Two months later, in November 2019, the illegal Turkish-Turkish memorandum was concluded, which set a new fire in Greek-Turkish relations. Nevertheless, Athens did not close the door to dialogue and the following month (December 2019) Mitsotakis and Erdogan had their second meeting in London at the NATO Summit. This time the mood of the meeting was heavy and the period that followed became even heavier when in early March 2020 the hybrid war against Greece in Evros was launched with the instrumentalization of refugees and migrants who were at the forefront of the effort to dismantle the borders.
The third and final face-to-face between the two men took place in June 2021 at the NATO summit in Brussels, and came in the shadow of yet another flare-up in Greek-Turkish relations created by the illegal exits of Oruc Reis in the Aegean that had put the issue of sanctions against Ankara on the European table.
Source: protothema.gr
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