“A step towards a quieter summer”. This is the main outcome of the meeting between the Prime Minister of Greece, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, and the President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, according to Greek government sources.
The meeting took place “in a cordial environment”, lasted 50 minutes and the two parties agreed that the 2020 summer tensions should not be repeated.
The two leaders met on the sidelines of the NATO Summit, in Brussels.
As NATO meets in Brussels, minds turn inevitably to the future. If we are to contribute to stability, we must take action in the present, by strengthening multilateral institutions like NATO. Our societies want leaders to step up, to act. We must not let them down. #BrusselsForum pic.twitter.com/dm5XN3ZBxp
— Prime Minister GR (@PrimeministerGR) June 14, 2021
Mitsotakis and Erdogan also discussed the migrant/refugee crisis. The Greek government asked from Turkey to accept back the 1.450 migrants whose asylum request has been rejected. K. Mitsotakis said Greece is ready to cooperate with Turkey to deal with the massive migrant/refugee flows as long as tensions like the one that rattled the Greek- Turkish border in Evros in March 2020 are not repeated.
Cumhurbaşkanı @RTErdogan, Belçika’nın başkenti Brüksel’de gerçekleştirilen NATO Liderler Zirvesi ana oturumuna katıldı. pic.twitter.com/pMJE1jdYTQ
— T.C. Cumhurbaşkanlığı (@tcbestepe) June 14, 2021
K. Mitsotakis and T. Erdogan agreed that they disagree on a number of issues, prominent among them the delimitation of maritime zones in the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean.
