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Greek PM Mitsotakis: 'We will not go to war with Turkiye'

January 20, 2023 at 5:05 pm

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis in Brussels on May 30, 2022 [Dursun Aydemir – Anadolu Agency]

Greek Prime Minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, stated at the World Economic Forum in Davos that Greece and Turkiye will not go to war and that the two countries can make efforts to reduce tensions in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean.

“We will not go to war with Turkiye,” Mitsotakis told CNN journalist, Fareed Zakaria, at an event on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos.

He emphasised that “we should be able to sit down with Turkiye as reasonable adults and discuss the issue of the continental shelf and sea zones in the Aegean. We did it successfully with Italy and Egypt, [and] with Albania,” he said.

Turkiye and Greece have some flashpoints, including Turkiye’s demands for demilitarisation of the Aegean islands and the search for natural gas reserves in the Mediterranean, with Turkiye ready to explore in an area purportedly under Libyan jurisdiction.

Last week, Greek Foreign Minister, Nikos Dendias, sent a letter to EU top diplomat, Josep Borrell, asking him to take action against Turkiye’s illegal fishing activities in Greek waters.

READ: Using NATO membership as leverage, Turkiye is giving the EU a taste of its own medicine