Turkey “has everything to gain from getting closer to Greece, Europe and the West,” outgoing Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on Sunday in an interview with the newspaper Kathimerini, as the whole of Greece scrutinises the elections in the neighbouring country.
“We are open to dialogue to build a positive agenda that will be of interest to all of us in the areas of trade, culture and the environment,” added Prime Minister Mitsotakis, who is running for re-election in Greece’s parliamentary elections next Sunday.
“But we are not naive,” he stressed. "(…) For a real improvement in our relationship, Turkey must agree to resolve our differences on the basis of international law and the law of the sea,” added the outgoing Prime Minister.
On Wednesday. during a televised debate, he had castigated Turkey’s “blue homeland” strategy, which consists of laying claim to energy resources in the eastern Mediterranean.
In the summer of 2020, the dispatch of a Turkish hydrocarbon exploration vessel near the Greek islands had created serious tensions between the two neighbours.
Last year, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had also accused Greece, Turkey’s Nato ally, of “occupying” islands in the Aegean whose status had been established in treaties after the Second World War, warning that the Turkish army could “come during the night” and “do the necessary”.
After months of heightened tensions, the violent earthquake that ravaged southeastern Turkey and neighbouring Syria on 6 February has brought Athens and Ankara closer together.
Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on Sunday that he was “open to dialogue with the leader elected by Turkish citizens, whoever that may be.”
Mr Erdogan’s main opponent, Kemal Kiliçdaroglu, a Social Democratic candidate backed by a broad coalition, also assured Kathimerini that he wanted the “Aegean Sea to become a zone of peace.”
“We want our relations with Greece to develop in a friendly way,” he added.
All the Greek media have their eyes riveted on the election in Turkey. For private TV station Skai, the elections "are the most crucial ones” in decades.
According to the centre-right newspaper Ta Nea, “the change at the head of the state does not necessarily mean strategic changes, but there is a chance to renew dialogue”.
In the columns of the weekly To Vima, Ino Afentouli, director of the Institute of International Relations at Athens’ Panteion University, considers that “a new chapter is opening in Greek-Turkish relations” in “a more friendly climate.”
