Greek prime minister begins visit to Turkey aimed at 'full normalization'

[Arthur Gordon Pym]

Greek prime minister begins visit to Turkey aimed at 'full normalization'

By Agence France Presse (AFP)

Thursday, January 24, 2008

ANKARA: Greek Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis arrived in the Turkish capital Wednesday for a landmark visit, the first to Turkey by a Greek premier in five decades, in an effort to capitalize on recent diplomatic thaws and bring the former foes closer together. Karamanlis, accompanied by Foreign Minister Dora Bakoyannis, was to hold talks later in the day with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Even though the two leaders have a warm personal relationship - Karamanlis attended the wedding of Erdogan's daughter in 2004 - territorial disputes in the Aegean Sea and the enduring Cyprus conflict continue to cast a shadow on the nation's improved bilateral ties over the past decade.

A tense face-off between Greek and Turkish patrol boats near a disputed islet in the Aegean had marred the visit of then-Greek Foreign Minister Petros Molyviatis in 2005.

Karamanlis has said his government has "neither excessive optimism nor pessimism" over the visit.

"We are seeking the gradual restoration of mutual trust. We are working for the full normalization of Greek-Turkish relations, which, of course, also presupposes a resolution of the Cyprus issue," he said last week.

The Greek leader was to hold talks also with President Abdullah Gul on Thursday and travel on to Istanbul for meetings with the head of the Orthodox Church and Turkish business people on Friday.

The traditional hostility between the two NATO allies received a boost from an unprecedented outpouring of solidarity after deadly earthquakes hit both countries in 1999, which also paved the way for improvement in political ties.

Since January 2002, diplomats have been holding regular closed-door talks over the territorial disputes, but no progress is publicly known.Mutual accusations of territorial violations, meanwhile, continue on an almost daily basis.

At the core of the dispute is Greece's claim of a 16-kilometer airspace around its borders. Turkey recognizes only 10 kilometers, arguing that under international law, Greece's airspace cannot go beyond the extent of its territorial waters.

In 2005, a Greek pilot was killed when fighter jets from the two countries crashed during a mock dogfight over the Aegean. The two governments handled the incident calmly and set up a hotline between their militaries to improve communication and prevent further accidents.

Greece is also bitter over properties confiscated from Turkey's tiny Greek minority, the closure of an Orthodox seminary and Ankara's refusal to endorse Istanbul-based Patriarch Bartholomew I as the spiritual leader of the world's Orthodox Christians.

Athens continues to back the ethnic Greek majority in Cyprus, while Ankara is the only capital to recognize the state declared by the Turkish minority in the island's Northern third.

Cyprus and Greece are both members of the EU. And Greece, in a sign of good will, has actively supported Turkey's beleaguered efforts to join the European bloc.

In November, Karamanlis and Erdogan inaugurated a pipeline to carry gas from Azerbaijan to Greece via Turkey, hailed as a symbol of a new era of economic cooperation. - AFP

[source]

[Ioannis]

Karamanlis pays tribute to Atatürk

Before departing for İstanbul yesterday, Karamanlis paid tribute to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who founded the modern Turkish Republic and once drove Greek armies into the sea. Karamanlis laid a wreath at Atatürk's tomb in the Ankara mausoleum but did not visit its museum, which celebrates Turkey's crushing military victory over Greece in 1922 with models, pictures, memorabilia and recordings of martial music.

Karamanlis is the first Greek leader to pay an official visit to Ankara since his uncle came in 1959 and it caps a decade of steadily improving economic and political ties between the two rivals, which are also NATO allies.

"Kemal Atatürk and [then-Greek leader] Eleftherios Venizelos had the political courage, will and vision not to allow the conflicts and tragedies of the past to become an obstacle to ... building a better future of peace and cooperation to the benefit of the two peoples," Karamanlis wrote in the visitors' book. After the wars accompanying the collapse of the old Ottoman Empire and the 1923 declaration of the establishment of the Turkish Republic, Atatürk and Venizelos successfully restored cordial bilateral ties. Atatürk, revered by Turks as the "Great Leader," died in 1938.

While in Ankara, Karamanlis chose not to visit the Turkish Parliament, which in 1995 adopted a declaration stipulating a Greek attempt to extend Greece's territorial waters to 12 miles be regarded as a "casus belli," or a reason to declare war.

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