Greek-Turkish Relations Show Signs of Positive Momentum

Greek and Turkish leaders have agreed to resume talks and confidence-building measures, signalling a move towards a “positive climate” in historically strained relations.

On the sidelines of a NATO summit in Lithuania’s capital, Vilnius, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan met for the first time after both leaders were re-elected in the past year.

The two leaders’ offices released identical but separate statements, noting that the two sides agreed to “build on the positive momentum and activate multiple channels of communication between the two countries in the coming period”.

Cabinet ministers from the two countries are due to meet in Thessaloniki after the summer to further the talks. Mitsotakis was keen to emphasise that the problems between the two countries have “not been magically resolved” but that the meeting “confirmed [his] intention and that of President Erdogan to reset Greek-Turkish relations”.

This sentiment was echoed by Erdogan who declared that the meeting had “opened a new page in bilateral relations”. The two countries have been at odds for decades over several issues, including energy resources, overflights above the Aegean Sea and ethnically split Cyprus.

Last year, Erdogan abruptly halted bilateral talks in a dispute over airspace violations and accused Mitsotakis of pressuring the United States to block the sale of F-16 fighter jets to Ankara.

However, the two countries have been able to overcome their differences in the past, most notably in 1999 when two deadly earthquakes struck Turkey and Greece within a month of each other.

At the time, the two countries sent rescue teams to each other’s nations, easing tensions over the Aegean Sea. More recently, relations between the two countries improved when Greece became one of the first to send rescue workers to Turkey after devastating earthquakes in February, showing that Greece’s “strategic benefit” lies in having Turkey be at peace with the West, the EU and the US.

Mitsotakis acknowledged that the earthquake cooperation “brought many changes in the psychology” of Greek-Turkish relations. This “earthquake diplomacy” has proved to be a successful tool for the two countries to reset their relations in the past, and with the current positive momentum, the two countries could be headed for a similar outcome.