The recent earthquakes in Türkiye and the train crash in Greece have brought the two people together and created a particular atmosphere, Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias said Thursday at a news conference with his Greek Cypriot counterpart Constantinos Kombos in Athens.
“While it’s still too early to reach a conclusion about whether this atmosphere can be preserved on a political level, we must still consider it for the normalization of ties,” Dendias told reporters.
Pointing out his close contact with Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu in the wake of the earthquake and the train disasters, Dendias said: “I believe this will positively affect efforts to resolve the Cyprus issue, as well.”
“The basic parameter to find a mutually acceptable solution to the Cyprus crisis is Türkiye’s stance,” he argued.
For his part, Kombos said the Greek Cypriot administration aimed for a solution based on a politically equal federation with two zones and two peoples in line with the U.N. Security Council resolutions and that it would not accept a two-state solution.
The island is a prickly issue among a myriad of other disputes the neighbors have, including mineral rights to airspace and demilitarized islands in the Aegean.
Also on Thursday, Defense Minister Hulusi Akar discussed the catastrophic earthquakes in Türkiye's southeast last month in a “constructive and positive" phone call with his Greek counterpart Nikolaos Panagiotopoulos.
Panagiotopoulos reiterated his condolences for the earthquakes, the National Defense Ministry said in a statement. Akar, in return, thanked Panagiotopoulos for his condolence message and the solidarity of Greece.
The two ministers agreed to develop an agenda based on healthy relations between the neighboring countries.
On Feb. 6, the magnitude 7.7 and 7.6 quakes struck 11 provinces – Adana, Adıyaman, Diyarbakır, Elazığ, Hatay, Gaziantep, Kahramanmaraş, Kilis, Malatya, Osmaniye and Şanlıurfa. Over 13.5 million people in Türkiye have been affected by the devastating quakes and many others in northern Syria.
Condolences have poured in from around the world, expressing solidarity with Türkiye, with many countries sending rescue teams and aid, including Greece.
"Greece was one of the first countries to offer aid to Türkiye while Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis was among the first leaders who called President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to convey condolences and support for the Turkish state and nation.
Another sign of warming relations between the Turkish and Greek people came from a group of Greek rescuers on Thursday.
Weeks after returning from operations to save earthquake victims in the disaster zone, the group recalled the “sincere support of the Turkish people and authorities."
"I, as a senior rescuer and an engineer, want to emphasize that I never witnessed such a devastating disaster," said Konstantinos Nikas, a member of Greece's elite EMAK rescue unit, which saved at least five people in the southernmost Hatay province, one of the worst-hit cities on Feb. 6.
Turkish authorities in the area, including the military, police, fire department and the local population, embraced the team from Greece, providing any kind of support they needed, Nikas said.
"Locals shared everything they had with us. They served us homemade dishes, hot tea and desserts," he recounted. "I now have so many beautiful and heart-warming memories with me from Türkiye."
Reiterating that his team, like other foreign and Turkish rescue units, had to work under very difficult circumstances for long hours, he remarked that the effort was both "physiologically and emotionally demanding."
"Rescue work is much more than breaking the stones, removing the rubble, and pulling survivors out," Nikas said.
The struggle was well worth it, though, he said, for every life that they saved from the debris of collapsed buildings after what can often be many hours of exertion.
Nikas also emphasized that natural disasters are "bigger than states," making close cooperation between nations even more crucial in dealing with them.
One of his teammates, Panagiotis Giannopoulos, struck a similar note, saying: "We can't do everything on our own. There are often situations that require us to ask for help from our neighbors."
Emphasizing that humanity will always have to cope with natural disasters, Giannopoulos said they mobilized to assist the disaster response effort soon after the earthquakes occurred. Turkish and Greek authorities responded swiftly and efficiently, allowing EMAK to be the first foreign rescue team on the ground in the Turkish disaster zone.
Giannopoulos also underscored the role of the international disaster response mechanism, including the European Civil Protection Mechanism, in which both Türkiye and Greece are members, adding that the earthquake response served as further proof of its importance and functionality.
