Athens and Ankara ‘need to talk,’ says Greek PM

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Thursday stressed the need for open lines of communication between Athens and Ankara, after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan insisted earlier this week that he has severed all ties with the Greek premier.

“We need to meet, we need to talk and we need to deal with the situation in a civilized manner, in the framework of international law,” Mitsotakis said in comments to the press at the NATO summit in Madrid, which Erdogan is also attending.

Mitsotakis also commented that at no time during all the different discussions that have taken place during the ongoing summit “did Turkey raise any issue whatsoever that concerned the presentation of its own arguments against Greece.”

This, he said, “indicates something about how well these arguments can stand up in an international setting like that of NATO, or whether they are ultimately directed at a domestic audience.”