Greece’s former Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the front-runner in national elections on June 25, said on Tuesday that if he wins, he will try to meet President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan at next month's NATO summit in the Lithuanian city of Vilnius.
"If I am the prime minister, I will seek at the NATO summit to reformulate the roadmap we (Türkiye and Greece) will follow in the coming months," he said in an interview with public broadcaster ERT.
Mitsotakis said that Greece only recognizes one outstanding issue with Türkiye that could be submitted to the International Court of Justice in The Hague for resolution – that of the delimitation of maritime zones.
As to the country's ongoing rearmament programs, he said: "Greece is obliged to boost its armed forces because we have the largest and geopolitically unpredictable neighbor next to us."
"We managed to change the balance in terms of the strength of the armed forces," he added.
Türkiye has disputed areas of potential gas reserves claimed by Greece in parts of the Eastern Mediterranean. In 2020, the two countries held competing naval exercises in the area that sent tensions soaring.
Türkiye, which has the longest continental coastline in the region, has rejected maritime boundary claims of Greece and the Greek Cypriot administration, stressing that these exaggerated claims violate the sovereign rights of both Türkiye and Turkish Cypriots.
In November 2019, Türkiye and Libya signed a maritime delimitation deal that provided a legal framework to prevent any fait accompli by regional states. Accordingly, attempts by the Greek government to appropriate huge parts of Libya's continental shelf, when a political crisis hit the North African country in 2011, were averted.
The agreement also confirmed that Türkiye and Libya are maritime neighbors.
In response, Egypt and Greece signed an agreement in August 2020, designating an EEZ in the Eastern Mediterranean between themselves. Maritime zones give rights to states over natural resources and the Eastern Mediterranean, largely unexplored, is thought to be rich in natural gas.
In April, Athens announced it would welcome new members of an association of nations in the region who cooperate on natural gas development, excluding Türkiye.
Ex-Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias claimed there was one “obvious condition” for participation in the forum, “Respect for international law and respect for the international maritime law.”
Greece often accuses neighbor and NATO ally Türkiye of stepping up hostility in the East Mediterranean over their outstanding conflicts, which also include overlapping claims over their continental shelves, airspace, the ethnically split island of Cyprus, irregular migration and more pressingly, 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.
Despite saying that it has no intention of entering an arms race with its neighbor, Greece has been carrying out an ambitious rearmament program, signing big-ticket arms deals, including for drones from Israel and Rafael jets from France.
Athens approached the U.S. for upgrades to its F-16 fleet, as well as the potential purchase of at least 20 F-35 stealth aircraft, and Berlin for an update to its Leopard 2 tank fleet and purchases of Lynx armored vehicles.
Mitsotakis also lobbied to block the Biden administration’s proposed F-16 fighter jet sales to Türkiye based on the claim that such a sale could create additional instability in the Aegean, a move that drew Ankara’s wrath for “involving third parties in our dispute.”
The country’s burgeoning arms program is designed to counter the protection of Turkish interests in the Eastern Mediterranean. Türkiye has often warned against such moves, offering instead to resolve their disputes through dialogue.
However, despite their long-standing issues, two neighbors, located on seismic fault lines, also have a tradition of helping each other in times of natural disasters.
When two catastrophic earthquakes shook southern Türkiye and left over 52,000 dead, Greece was among the first countries to convey its condolences and offer aid, which Türkiye reciprocated after the train incident that claimed 57 lives near the northern Greek town of Tempi on Feb. 28.
Diplomatic contact has flourished as well, with the tragedy prompting the first contact between Mitsotakis and Erdoğan in months and a series of meetings between senior officials who promised to shelve disputes that have caused repeated rounds of tension and even heightened risks of war over decades.
Both sides have since called for “bolder steps” to mend fractions on a new level and expressed hope for a “fresh start” between their countries after the May elections, particularly after presidential and parliamentary polls in Türkiye in which Erdoğan and his government secured another five-year term.
Polls released this week showed Mitsotakis’ conservative New Democracy party leading its nearest rival, the leftist Syriza party, by around 20 points.
Since the May 28 runoff victory, Erdoğan has been reconstructing his Cabinet with key changes, including assigning top figures like ex-spymaster Hakan Fidan as Foreign Minister and Akif Çağatay Kılıç as his new chief adviser on security and foreign policy.
On Tuesday, Greek Foreign Minister Vassilis Kaskarelis also congratulated Fidan on his appointment in a phone call where they also discussed irregular migration.
