Erdoğan in Athens: now friends again?
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan travelled to Greece for talks on Thursday. Only a year ago Ankara and Athens were threatening each other with war, but now there are signs of a rapprochement and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Erdoğan have signed a joint declaration for "friendly relations and good neighbourliness". The commentary columns discuss what comes next.
First step towards a win-win situation
Words must now be followed by deeds, Sabah urges:
“It would be good if Mitsotakis came to Ankara in a few months’ time to keep this atmosphere alive and implement the agreements signed in many areas — from tourism to education — and build trust between the two countries. The Athens Declaration is an important document in which both sides express their willingness to act constructively. It should not simply remain on paper. Turkey and Greece have tested the limits of tensions in recent years. If they now adhere to the Athens Declaration, a new chapter can be opened on the basis of ‘good neighbourly relations’.”
A hopeful new beginning
The outlook for the meeting between Turkish President Erdoğan and Greek Prime Minister Mitsotakis is positive, writes Greece correspondent Gerd Höhler in the Frankfurter Rundschau:
“They are putting difficult problems such as the decades-old dispute over sovereign rights and economic zones in the eastern Mediterranean on the back burner for now and concentrating on issues where rapprochement is possible: cultural exchange, cooperation in science, students from the two countries coming together. All these things have long existed between European states. For the ‘hereditary enemies’ Greece and Turkey, however, these are significant steps. They could build trust.”
Concessions needed on both sides
News website Protagon puts the euphoria into perspective:
“It’s true that in the period immediately after Nea Dimokratia’s double election victory, perhaps excessive optimism was cultivated regarding a potential settlement of the Greek-Turkish legal dispute over the delimitation of the continental shelf and the Exclusive Economic Zone. ... Either bilaterally or through an appeal to the International Court of Justice in The Hague. This would indeed mean taking several steps backwards for the Greek side. But Turkey would also have to take some of its major, unreasonable demands off the table. Such as the Turkish-Libyan Memorandum of Understanding, for example.”
