Turkish, Greek FMs discuss roadmap for co-operation amid NATO meeting

Foreign Minister Giorgos Gerapetritis has met with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan on the sidelines of the meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels.

The meeting "discussed regional and international issues, a roadmap for bilateral cooperation and preparations for Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis' upcoming visit to Ankara in May, the Greek TV channel ERT-news reported, citing diplomatic sources.

Mitsotakis' visit will be in response to Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan's December 7 visit to Athens, which the Greek prime minister said was another step in building good relations between the two countries.

Greece and Türkiye signed a declaration of friendship and good neighbourliness on December 7 during a meeting between Erdogan and Mitsotakis. At a joint press conference with the Turkish leader, Mitsotakis then emphasized that the parties “signed a declaration 100 years after the Treaty of Lausanne,” which in 1923 legally formalized the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and secured Turkish territory within its modern borders.

According to Mitsotakis, the signed declaration will allow Greece and Türkiye to further expand the agenda of dialogue, economic cooperation and strengthen mutual trust, and also, when the conditions are ripe, to begin resolving the only dispute - the delimitation of the continental shelf and exclusive economic zones in the Aegean Sea and the Eastern Mediterranean, which can be submitted to an international court for consideration.