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Yesterday, Turkey accused Greece of evading dialogue and lying after its prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said that Turkey should stop its “threats”, before holding talks under the auspices of NATO to reduce tension in the eastern Mediterranean.
“This shows the true face of Greece … It does not want dialogue,” said Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu during a press conference in Ankara.
On Thursday, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced that Greek and Turkish officials “agreed to engage in technical talks at NATO headquarters to establish a mechanism to prevent any military conflict and reduce the possibility of accidents in the eastern Mediterranean. “.
But Athens denied that it agreed to hold technical talks that in no way include dialogue with Turkey.
Greece’s Foreign Ministry said: “The published information claiming that Greece and Turkey have agreed to hold what it called” technical talks “to reduce the escalation of tension in the eastern Mediterranean does not match the truth.
Greek government spokesman Stelios Petsas said the Stoltenberg initiative “is far from being described as an agreement to restart dialogue.”
The Greek Foreign Ministry emphasized that “the reduction will not occur unless all Turkish ships withdraw from the Greek continental shelf.”
“Let’s put the threats aside to make room for the initiation of contacts,” Mitsotakis said in Athens during his meeting with a senior Chinese Communist Party official.
In Ankara, Cavusoglu said, Greece had already accepted the proposal in its presentation. He added that Greece “denied (statements) to the Secretary General, but it is not the Secretary General of NATO (NATO) who is lying here, but Greece.”
Greek media reported that Stoltenberg delivered a “one-page document” presenting his ideas to the military representatives of Greece and Turkey “during a 5-minute meeting” and the document was forwarded to Athens for study.
On Friday, the president of the European Council, Charles Michel, spoke of the possibility of organizing a “multi-party conference on the Eastern Mediterranean” with the participation of Ankara, to try to ease the tension. He said: “We raised this idea informally with some European colleagues and external colleagues. With Turkey as well … I will not say that there is a clear ‘yes’, but there is no negative reaction to that. The reaction was rather: Which ones? Are the methods? Can they be the participants? What will the objectives be? ”
This conference, he said, could include “all countries participating in the various discussions on maritime borders” in the Mediterranean.
The level of tension has increased dramatically in the context of Turkish exploration activities, which Greece and Cyprus consider to violate their sovereignty.
On August 10, Turkey sent the seismic survey ship “Uruj President” and warships to the disputed waters between Cyprus and the Greek islands of Kastelorizo and Crete, as part of a mission that was extended three times.
Greece responded by conducting naval military exercises alongside several European Union countries to the United Arab Emirates, close to smaller exercises that Turkey conducted between Cyprus and Crete last week.
Mitsotakis said Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias would later report to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in New York on “the illegal activities (of Turkey).”
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has repeatedly criticized Greece and France, saying their leaders are “greedy and incompetent” because they challenged Turkey’s energy exploration in the eastern Mediterranean.
Mitsotakis said Turkey is “undermining” international law and endangering regional security “by trying to” alter “geography.
Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades condemned Turkey’s “aggressiveness” and called for talks to resolve the dispute over maritime borders and gas exploration rights, warning that growing tension in the Mediterranean threatens to destabilize the entire region.
He said in an interview with “Agence France-Presse”: “There is aggression, with the intention of really controlling the entire region. Therefore, we are witnessing increasing tension and the resulting situation is very explosive and raises concern.”
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