Kyriakos Mitsotakis travels to Ankara tomorrow afternoon, where at 6:30 PM he will attend a dinner with the leaders of NATO’s 32 member states, followed the next morning — Wednesday — by the North Atlantic Alliance Summit.
Read more: NATO Summit: What will determine Mitsotakis’ stance toward Turkey — The Trump puzzle and Erdogan — What Ioakimidis and diplomatic sources tell parapolitika.gr
No meeting between Mitsotakis and Erdogan has been scheduled on the sidelines of the NATO Summit, nor does one appear likely based on current information. However, should such a meeting take place, the Prime Minister made clear — in an interview with Liberal — that what he would tell the Turkish President is: “that Greece can and wants to address the one major outstanding issue it has with Turkey, which is the delimitation of maritime zones in the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean, once all other issues are taken off the table — issues which I am in no way willing to discuss. And that yes, if this matter is resolved, Greece can simultaneously become a ‘bridge’ between Turkey and Europe, and vice versa. But if it is not resolved, there will always be obstacles to EU-Turkey relations, because vital issues affecting the security and sovereignty of two European Union member states — Greece and Cyprus — will continue to be at stake.”
Mitsotakis will travel to the Turkish capital accompanied by Foreign Minister Giorgos Gerapetritis, Defence Minister Nikos Dendias, and Deputy Foreign Minister Alexandra Papadopoulou. There is also an open possibility that US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth may stop in Athens on his way from Washington to Ankara — before the Summit — further cementing the close defence and security relationship between the two countries.
In the days leading up to the Summit, the Greek Prime Minister held phone calls with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun — during which the importance of implementing the Israel-Lebanon framework agreement was underscored — as well as with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.
Kyriakos Mitsotakis sends clear message to Erdogan on armed forces: “We won’t ask anyone’s permission to strengthen them”
On the subject of Greek-Turkish relations, Kyriakos Mitsotakis delivered a clear message to Tayyip Erdogan in the same interview: “We will not ask anyone’s permission to strengthen our armed forces, just as Turkey does not ask Greece what it intends to do with its own — it is absolutely obvious that Turkey, too, has the right to arm itself. In the same way, I insist that channels of communication must remain open. Crises must be managed and defused at the outset, and wherever we can find opportunities to make our relationship functional, we should seize them,” he stated.
Regarding the United States, the Prime Minister stressed that “these relations go far beyond, I believe, any current administrations.” On Israel, he noted that “over the past 15 years there has been a shared understanding that this is a relationship with great strategic depth. It is not a relationship defined by external factors — it stands on its own terms.”
As a meeting between Donald Trump and Tayyip Erdogan is expected on the sidelines of the Summit, attention is turning to the White House’s appetite to move forward with the sale of F-35s to Turkey — a move opposed by Congress — as well as the prospect of equipping Turkey’s domestically produced KAAN fighter jets with American-made engines.
As Deutsche Welle reports from Jerusalem, Donald Trump’s recent statement that Turkey will be “very happy” about a gift it is set to receive has clearly unsettled Israelis. While the Netanyahu government has not issued any official comment, local media are intensely discussing the possibility that Turkey could bolster its arsenal with American F-35s. The key question being raised in Israeli publications is whether Trump will ultimately succeed in persuading Congress to lift its objections to selling F-35s to Turkey.
