Turkey, Greece take strides in Ankara meeting as aid diplomacy continues

ANKARA — Aegean frenemies Turkey and Greece seem determined to ride the momentum of post-disaster diplomacy as the deputy foreign ministers of Greece and Turkey met in Ankara Wednesday to discuss ways to improve cooperation in bilateral ties. 

The Turkish Foreign Ministry said Burak Akcapar and his Greek counterpart Konstantinos Fragkogiannis discussed ways to improve ties on some 25 files including energy, trade and societal relations, and further cooperation. The discussion were in Ankara, at the fourth meeting of the “Positive Agenda” initiative.

The parties also agreed on "a framework for finalization of agreements that could be signed at the next high-level meeting," said the ministry.

The meeting came on the heels of an announcement earlier this week that Athens and Ankara would support each others’ bids on various international platforms. 

Speaking after his meeting with Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu on the margins of the 2023 International Donors Conference convened in Brussels this week in support of post-earthquake efforts in Turkey and Syria, Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias said Athens would support Ankara's bid for the general secretariat of the International Maritime Organization and that Ankara would back Greece's bid to become a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council for 2025-2026 period.

The two countries set up the “Positive Agenda” initiative in April 2021, but they have been unable to achieve any concrete progress due to a series of issues over conflicting territorial claims in the eastern Mediterranean and several other disagreements. 

Yet, the post-disaster diplomacy in the wake of the twin earthquakes that struck southeastern Turkey and northern Syria on Feb. 6 and killed more than 55,000 people has brought an unexpected respite from mutual hostilities.

Greece’s prompt action to help relief efforts in Turkey has spurred a flurry of diplomatic overtures between Athens and Ankara. The two countries’ leaders and senior government officials held conversations, exchanging pleasantries after a long hiatus. 

Following the Feb. 28 train crash in northern Greece, Ankara extradited a Greek convict to his country. Dimitris Nalbantis, the father of the conductor of the passenger train that collided with a freight train, was released from a Turkish prison and returned to Greece at the request of Athens. 

Ankara’s exploration activities in the conflicted waters of the eastern Mediterranean, Athens’s armament of Aegean islands that have non-military status under international treaties and a maritime delimitation agreement that Turkey signed with Libya’s Tripoli government in 2019 unleashed a series of crises in the ties over the past years, raising concerns over a bigger escalation between the two NATO allies as both countries are heading for elections.