Greek FM due in Ankara on April 14: Çavuşoğlu

ANKARA

Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias will come to Ankara for talks on April 14 after a long period of tension between the two countries over the eastern Mediterranean, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu has said.

Çavuşoğlu announced the scheduled visit by his Greek counterpart during a press conference with visiting Kazakh Foreign Minister Mokhtar Tileuberdi on March 17 in the Turkish capital.

Talks between Çavuşoğlu and Dendias may be followed with a meeting between President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, he underlined. “After Dendias’ visit, I am also planning to visit Athens at an appropriate time,” he added.

The Turkish minister’s announcement came on the same day Turkish and Greek senior diplomats held political consultations in Athens, a day after the 62nd round of exploratory talks.

“Of course, all the problems between us cannot be resolved during just one meeting,” Çavuşoğlu said, recalling that the exploratory talks were resumed after a five-year hiatus.

Turkey hosted the 61st round of talks in Istanbul late January. The Turkish-Greek mechanism aims to find a common ground for the resolution of the problems stemming from the Aegean Sea in 2004. It’s now called the consultative talks.

“Turkey has displayed its stance in a clear way both in the field and at the table. We want a fair sharing [of hydrocarbon reserves] in the eastern Mediterranean,” he stated. Turkey has proposed an international conference for the eastern Mediterranean but is yet to get a response from the EU, he stressed.

Turkey will continue to remain in dialogue with all the parties, including Greece, the minister suggested.

Turkey and Greece were at odds in 2020 due to overlapping claims of the continental shelf in the Mediterranean Sea. The tension was de-escalated after Germany’s intervention as the term president of the EU. Turkey had withdrawn its research vessel from the contested waters in late November 2020 and the EU had agreed to outline a positive agenda on ties with Turkey.

The ties between Ankara and Brussels will witness a new evaluation at an EU Council Summit on March 25 and 26 along with an assessment on the current situation in the region.