Greece and Turkey vow to repair ties after years of high tensions.

 

Prime Minster Kyriakos Mitsotakis of Greece and President Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey. Reuters. 

Greece and Turkey are vowing to repair ties after years of high tensions between the two nations. Reuters. The two countries have been historic foes and have had high tensions in recent years over water rights, border issues, energy resources and the ethnically divided status of Cyprus. Turkey also accused Greece of blocking a sale of F-16's. However, tensions began to thaw when Greece was one of the first nations to send support and help after a devastating earthquake hit Turkey in February. Prime Minster Mitsotakis of Greece and Tayyip Erdogan met with each other this week and released identical statements vowing more open communication and more frequent contact. The two countries are traditional foes but are also members of NATO. 

My Comment:

Just a quick post tonight since not too much is happening today that I saw. This story will probably not get too much attention but is fairly important. Turkey and Greece have been at each others throats since the fall of Byzantium during the siege of Constantinople. More recently there was the Greek Genocide and eventual population transfer that happened around World War I. In short, there is a lot of bad blood between the two countries. 

Relations between Turkey and Greece were always a major elephant in the room for the NATO alliance. Indeed, several times it seemed like the two allies would go to war. How that would work between two NATO allies would have been an interesting question, but it appears to be a moot one now. 

Speaking of NATO this is a win for them. Having two members of the alliance at each others throat is not exactly a picture of unity. Having Turkey and Greece getting along is a big deal as any conflict between the two countries could have broken the alliance. That seems less likely to happen now. 

That being said it is still possible that this warming of relations is only temporary. There is a ton of history of bad blood and some of the issues they are trying to deal with are extremely difficult to take care of. Cyprus alone is a huge thorn in each side and not one I see an easy solution too. 

Regardless, in the short term at least, this is probably a good thing. The last thing the world needs is a war between Turkey and Greece, given the impact it would have on trade and stability. I'm no fan of Erdogan and his government but I am a fan of diplomacy and I would hope that Greece and Turkey can settle their long standing disputes with it.