Amid unconfirmed reports that he may meet President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in the United States, the Greek prime minister acknowledged Tuesday that relations with Türkiye have improved significantly since last year. Kyriakos Mitsotakis, like Erdoğan, is in Washington D.C. to attend a NATO summit.
Speaking at a public debate with former U.S. Ambassador Daniel Speckhard held at the Council on Foreign Relations, a Washington-based think tank, the Greek leader said that after three years of turbulent bilateral relations, things have improved between the two NATO allies.
Mitsotakis noted that while some fundamental Turkish positions regarding the Eastern Mediterranean remain unchanged amid the thaw in the relations, “We are cooperating better in addressing irregular migration. We reached an agreement that allows Turkish citizens to travel to (some) Aegean islands through a visa facilitation scheme. These are among the positive steps.”
After a long period of tensions marked by disputes over irregular migration, the Cyprus dispute, energy exploration and territorial sovereignty in the Aegean, Türkiye and Greece have been taking confidence-building steps for a fragile normalization of their relations, which moved into a new chapter with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s landmark visit to Athens in December. Erdoğan later received Mitsotakis in Türkiye.
During the visit, the sides announced a friendship declaration, visa facilitation for Turkish citizens for 10 Greek islands in the northern Aegean for up to seven days and the decreased flow of irregular migrants to Greece. While officials on both sides have expressed commitment to maintaining the positive climate, the issues are longstanding and deep-rooted, and neither side expects the process to be without turbulence, particularly in the Aegean where Turkish and Greek jets often scuffled until very recently.
Earlier in January, both Ankara and Athens reached respective deals with Washington for fighter jets, raising concerns of 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.
After their meeting in Ankara, Erdoğan stated that there were no “unsolvable” problems between the two countries, and the two leaders hailed the state of relations while pledging to further enhance bilateral ties. “We had a constructive and positive meeting and discussed problems in Türkiye-Greece relations. We will solve problems through dialogue,” Erdoğan said at a joint news conference with Mitsotakis back then. Erdoğan said that Ankara and Athens are committed to resolving issues via “cordial dialogue, good neighborly ties and international law” as outlined in last year’s Athens Declaration on Friendly Relations and Good-Neighborliness.
