Greece Offers Opportunity for Turkey If Drilling Dispute Fixed
By
-
Drilling off Cyprus is the latest irritant in relations
-
Greece Foreign Minister comments in interview in Washington
Greece’s foreign minister said his country could work together
with Turkey to exploit natural resources while urging Ankara to settle
its dispute with the European Union over offshore drilling in the
Mediterranean.
Nikolaos
Dendias said in an interview in Washington that there are a wide range
of issues where Greece could cooperate with Turkey. Those opportunities
are currently held up by a disagreement over Turkey’s drilling
operations in the waters off of Cyprus.
“We have to help our societies create growth, create
prosperity, create stability in the region and also really at the end of
the day become friends again,’’ Dendias said. "There are thousands of
synergies from tourism to exploitation of natural resources. You name
it, it’s there.”
Turkey’s already strained relationship with the EU has frayed
further since President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government vowed to go
ahead with energy exploration in the eastern Mediterranean in a growing
dispute with EU member Cyprus. EU foreign ministers -- including Dendias
-- agreed on Monday to freeze most high-level contacts with Turkey and
to cut the flow of funds to the country, while holding back for now on
sanctions that could target Turkish companies involved in offshore
drilling in the region.
“For us, it is not a question of the amount of penalties,”
the 59-year-old lawyer and former defense minister said in the interview
at his nation’s embassy on Wednesday. “It is to make Turkey understand
that that is not the way forward either for us or for them or for Cyprus
or for the stability in the region.”
Pompeo, Bolton
Dendias
met with Secretary of State Michael Pompeo and National Security
Adviser John Bolton during his trip to Washington. His visit came
shortly after Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis named him to the
government following this month’s national elections.
Seeing “eye-to-eye” with the Trump administration “is very, very important for us,” Dendias said.
He also said the new Greek government is going to “honor any
agreement” that was signed by previous administrations, including the
so-called Prespes accord which could be made “even better with common
understanding” between the two countries.
Under that agreement,
Greece’s neighbor changed its name to Republic of North Macedonia in
exchange for the Greece ending opposition to its bid to join the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Union.
Economic Growth
The
Greek government must ensure it can attract the investment it
desperately needs and create jobs as the country digs itself out of a
financial crisis that has lasted more than a decade and took a toll on
living standards. Although Mitsotakis inherited an economy on the mend
and a stock market that’s soaring, they are rebounding from shrunken
bases.
“The country suffers from under-investment,” Dendias said.
“We need more than a 100 billion of investments” to help boost current
growth, which is “not sufficient at all,” he said.
Dendias also
expressed concern that Turkey may “not abide by the rules” of its
agreement with the EU by letting economic migrants “pass through Turkey”
from the Middle East and other regions. He also criticized some
European nations for not doing enough to participate in “all the
problems of relocation and resettlement” of refugees.
“You cannot really be seen as a place where all the economic
migrants of Africa, all the economic migrants of Asia, could come to,”
he said. “We are very small, very vulnerable and just getting out of a
crisis. Again, let’s be honest, very few of our European friends are
helping.”
