President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Greek counterpart Kyriakos Mitsotakis held a rare in-person meeting on Wednesday and agreed to build on the "positive momentum" forged after this year’s deadly earthquakes in Türkiye.
Erdoğan and Mitsotakis held a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, which took place in a "good atmosphere," the Turkish Presidency's Directorate of Communications said hours later.
The two leaders agreed it is "to the benefit of both countries that the positive climate that emerged in bilateral relations in recent months has continuity and consistency," it added.
According to the directorate, the neighbors will activate multiple communication channels in the coming period and hold the next meeting of the High-Level Cooperation Council in Greece's Thessaloniki in the fall.
Erdoğan and Mitsotakis reportedly asked their foreign ministers who accompanied their meeting to guide the process and report on progress.
"The two leaders emphasized that they look forward to more frequent contact at all levels, toward building a climate of trust and the conditions that will lead to improving Türkiye-Greece relations," the statement said.
Mitsotakis echoed similar sentiments when he talked to the press a day earlier.
"I hope and look forward to building on this positive climate and making some important steps of progress," he said. "As I have said many times, we are not condemned to live in a constant climate of tension with Türkiye."
The two uneasy NATO allies have long feuded over maritime borders and energy exploration rights in disputed parts of the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean.
"We obviously have significant differences," said Mitsotakis.
"But we can agree ... on a road map so that we can resolve our most important geopolitical difference, the delimitation of maritime zones, namely exclusive economic zones and the continental shelf in the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean."
Türkiye has disputed areas of potential gas reserves claimed by Greece in parts of the Eastern Mediterranean. It’s also where Greece says it’s seeking to start a search for offshore oil and gas reserves. Türkiye claims much of where several sizable offshore natural gas deposits have been discovered.
Another key issue at the heart of Greek-Turkish tensions is the extent of the continental shelf – and by extension, Greek sovereign territory – of Greek islands near Türkiye’s coastline in the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean.
Türkiye, which has the longest continental coastline in the region, doesn’t recognize that Greek islands off its borders have a continental shelf and rejects maritime boundary claims of Greece.
Erdoğan had hosted a March 2022 meeting with Mitsotakis in Istanbul, but the relationship rapidly soured in the following months.
Erdoğan accused Greece of arming Aegean islands meant to remain demilitarized, whose status was settled in postwar treaties, and warned that Türkiye’s armed forces could "come overnight" and "do what is necessary."
Greece too often accuses NATO ally Türkiye of stepping up hostility in the Eastern Mediterranean over their outstanding conflicts, which also include overlapping claims over their airspace, the ethnically split island of Cyprus, irregular migration and the status of the Aegean islands.
Greece has been building a military presence on the Aegean islands since the 1960s in violation of both the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne and the Paris Treaty of 1947, which awarded the islands to Greece on condition that they are kept demilitarized.
At their last encounter in Prague in October, the pair had a verbal spat when Erdoğan reportedly said Athens was raising tension in the region with provocative actions.
Erdoğan at the time claimed that Mitsotakis had stormed out of the official dinner of an informal European summit.
But the rhetoric was toned down in February when Greece sent aid and rescue teams in the immediate wake of a massive earthquake that killed more than 50,000 people.
Greece’s then-foreign Minister Nikos Dendias was also the first European minister to visit Türkiye after the quake.
What is known in the two nations as "earthquake diplomacy" also came into play in 1999 when two deadly quakes struck Türkiye and Greece within a month of each other.
It brought about a thaw in relations just three years after the NATO allies had nearly gone to war over an uninhabited islet in the Aegean Sea.
Diplomacy traffic
Earlier on Wednesday, Erdoğan also met Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte for one-on-one talks.
On Tuesday, he spoke with U.S. President Joe Biden, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, French President Emmanuel Macron, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
Before he announced Ankara’s intention to send Sweden’s long-stalled NATO accession protocol to Parliament, Erdoğan held trilateral talks with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg and Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson.
NATO leaders were in Vilnius for two days to discuss the Ukraine war, Sweden’s NATO membership, and steps to strengthen the group’s defense and deterrence, among other issues.
Türkiye has been a NATO member for over 70 years and boasts its second-largest army.