President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Thursday arrived in Greece to open a new chapter and pursue the positive momentum between the two neighbors after years of tension, according to Daily Sabah.
Erdoğan and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis are co-chairing the fifth meeting of the Türkiye-Greece High Level Cooperation Council to review all aspects of bilateral relations and to address steps to improve cooperation, according to Türkiye's Directorate of Communications.
Regional and international developments will be on the agenda of discussions.
Upon arrival, the president met with his Greek counterpart, Katerina Sakellaropoulou, who expressed hope for relations to develop on “a firm ground, which would help both sides.”
"I believe that the Türkiye-Greece strategic cooperation meeting will lead to a new era" in relations, Erdoğan replied, adding that "we need to be optimistic, and this optimism will be fruitful in the future."
Without naming the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Gaza, Sakellaropoulou acknowledged “differences of approach to various issues” but, she said, “working together with this awareness will take regional peace and prosperity a step further.”
In an interview with the Greek daily Kathimerini a day before his visit, Erdoğan said he was seeking a "new chapter" in relations on the basis of "win-win" principles.
To Sakellaropoulou, he added, the aim is to boost bilateral trade volume from $5.5B to $10B.
Moreover, Greek Migration Minister Dimitris Kairidis this week said the two countries' coastguards had been cooperating smoothly on migration in past months.
He did not rule out an agreement with Ankara to station a Turkish officer on the Greek island of Lesbos, and a Greek officer at the western Turkish port of Izmir.
Türkiye and Greece have often locked horns over several issues, including competing claims to jurisdiction in the Eastern Mediterranean, overlapping claims over their continental shelves, maritime boundaries, airspace, energy, the ethnically split island of Cyprus, the status of the islands in the Aegean Sea and migrants.
