Athens will host Greek Foreign Minister George Gerapetritis' meeting with his Turkish counterpart Hakan Fidan on Nov. 8. Media outlets reported on Tuesday that the two top diplomats are expected to discuss bilateral issues, including the demarcation of an exclusive economic zone.
Greece and Türkiye, NATO allies but historic foes, have been at odds for decades over matters ranging from airspace to maritime jurisdiction in the Eastern Mediterranean, energy resources and ethnically split Cyprus.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said last week he believed relations with Greece were improving and that the Gerapetritis-Fidan meeting aimed to solve issues such as maritime zones and airspace.
The foreign ministers have been tasked with exploring whether conditions were favorable to initiate talks on the demarcation of the continental shelf and economic zone, Gerapetritis said last month. An agreement on where their maritime zones begin and end is important for determining rights over possible gas reserves and power infrastructure schemes. A high-level cooperation council, at which the countries will assess progress, is expected to take place in Ankara in January.
Separately, the leaders of Greek and Turkish Cypriots were expected to meet informally with U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in New York on Tuesday.
Cyprus was split decades ago following a Turkish military operation after a brief Greek-inspired coup, preceded by years of sporadic violence. Reunification talks collapsed in mid-2017 and have been at a stalemate since. Türkiye and Greece act as guarantor states for both sides. They have an ethnic kinship.
Türkiye and Greece have, step by step, accomplished a "certain level of trust" with open channels of communication to prevent crises, according to Gerapetritis.
In the past 15 months since Erdoğan and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis decided to revive dialogue to put long-strained bilateral relations on a different trajectory, cooperation on migration, civil protection and a positive agenda has yielded tangible results, Gerapetritis told Greek daily Kathimerini last Sunday. “This climate confirms our desire to contribute to establishing a sense of calm and security in our neighborhood, which, let’s not forget, is caught in the middle of two wars,” Gerapetritis said.
Fidan and Gerapetritis were tasked by Erdoğan and Mitsotakis last month with exploring whether the conditions are in place to proceed with “a substantial discussion” on the delineation of continental shelves and the exclusive economic zone, top two issues that have troubled the neighbors in the Aegean Sea for decades. An agreement on where their maritime zones begin and end is important for determining rights over possible gas reserves and power infrastructure schemes.
Tensions have eased in recent years and both countries agreed last year to reboot their relations, pledging to keep open channels of communication and work on the issues that have kept them apart. According to Gerapetritis, the prerequisites are linked to the content of the discussion, “which may only concern the general principles that will be applied for the delimitation,” namely the full application of international law, as well as the timeline and form of dialogue. He claimed there could be a recourse to international arbitration, which would be “the end point of this process based on a memorandum of understanding.”
“I will have the opportunity to discuss these matters with the Turkish minister of foreign affairs during his visit to Athens, likely in November,” Gerapetritis said.
Türkiye and Greece came close to blows in 2020 when Athens sought to expand its territorial claim from 6 nautical miles to 12 nautical miles, coinciding with Türkiye's exploration of the seabed for energy reserves. At the time, Ankara deployed naval and air forces into the region, to which Athens responded by urging the EU to impose sanctions, but several members, including Spain, Hungary and Italy, opposed the idea. Greece argues the nautical extension is its sovereign and inalienable right, which Ankara wholly rejects. Gerapetritis said a convergence on the framework of delineation could encourage Erdoğan and Mitsotakis to order in-depth talks to begin at the high-level cooperation council meeting in Ankara in January. “If there is no confluence, we will strive to maintain the relatively good climate,” he noted.
Bilateral dialogue for resolving the maritime dispute has been largely frozen as neither side is willing to budge on their terms. Türkiye, which has the longest continental coastline in the Eastern Mediterranean, rejects the maritime boundary claims of Greece and the Greek Cypriot administration, arguing their excessive claims violate the sovereign rights of both Türkiye and the Turkish Cypriots in the region.
