Greece wants better relations with Türkiye in face of difficult global challenges: Foreign minister

Greece wants better relations with Türkiye in the face of difficult global challenges, the Greek foreign minister said on Thursday.

Speaking to SKAI FM radio, George Gerapetritis said: "It is important to meet, to discuss, to decompress the crises, to organize our next steps, without necessarily expecting that some lofty agreements will come," when asked whether the working visit to Turkish capital city of Ankara by the Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis would take place after Türkiye's recent decision to reopen Chora Church in Istanbul as a mosque.

"It was a basic assumption from the beginning that our basic positions (of Greece and Türkiye) are not going to change … What we seek through the Greek-Turkish approach is, first of all, to have a period of calmness," he said.

According to Gerapetritis, a similar state of affairs is valid with regard to Greece's plan to establish two marine parks, one in the Ionian Sea and another in the Aegean Sea, and Türkiye's reaction to it.

"We will never compromise about the matters which are essential and established for Greece's interests. Correspondingly, the Turks also believe that they should stick to their basic positions," he added.

Gerapetritis said: "It is preferable to have a quiet neighborhood in an extremely difficult and unstable international environment than to have a finger on the trigger and wait all the time."

When asked particularly about the opposition's criticism that the government is pursuing a policy of appeasement toward Türkiye, he said: "I want to emphasize that peace, prosperity, national security, national self-confidence do not go through cheap verbalizations, nor through dangerous maneuvers in the field.

"I think it is our duty for future generations to leave a legacy of peace in our wider region," he concluded.