Erdogan ready to meet Greek PM

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis speaks during a press conference on state defence, economy programme at the Thessaloniki Helexpo Forum on September 13, 2020. [SAKIS MITROLIDIS/AFP via Getty Images]

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that Turkey has no problem with meeting with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.

In a press release after Friday prayers, Erdogan said: “We have no problem in meeting the Greek Prime Minister, but the most important question is what are we going to discuss and in which context we will be meeting?”

The Turkish president stressed that the withdrawal of the Oruc Reis exploration vessel to the port of Antalya is “a well thought step”.

He confirmed that the vessel would sail again in the Eastern Mediterranean waters after the end of maintenance work.

On Turkey’s relations with Cairo, Erdogan said: “Holding intelligence talks with Egypt is a different matter. It is possible, but we regret the agreement they made with Greece.”

In August, Egypt announced that it had signed a bilateral agreement with Greece on the “delimitation of maritime jurisdictions” between the two countries.

What’s the motive behind the Turkish rapprochement with Egypt?

Unless otherwise stated in the article above, this work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. If the image(s) bear our credit, this license also applies to them. What does that mean? For other permissions, please contact us.