Mitsotakis-Erdogan: Keeping the process on a positive track

On Wednesday Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis will meet Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, this time in New York, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly.

The two leaders, who are getting together just two months after their last meeting in Vilnius, at the NATO summit, are expected to build on the positive atmosphere that has prevailed during most of this year, despite some rhetoric outbursts by the Turkish leader during his campaign for the May elections.

The process, which included a recent substantive meeting between the two foreign ministers in Ankara, aims at cementing the foundations of the effort that began with the active involvement of the US and Germany.

The next steps: agreeing on the issues of territorial waters and airspace and referring the delimitation of the continental shelf and the resulting exclusive economic zone (EEZ) to the International Court of Justice at The Hague.

Athens has made clear that the sovereignty of its islands and raising claims around so-called gray zones, issues that Ankara keeps putting on the table, cannot be the subject of negotiations.

Mitsotakis and Erdogan will direct their diplomatic teams to continue the work, with the next act in the process being a meeting between the deputy foreign ministers in October.

There will also be a continuation of the so-called “positive agenda” promoting issues that can easily and in a relatively short period of time produce tangible benefits to both countries.

Another step that has been agreed to is the resumption of talks on the implementation of confidence building measures that are expected to take place in Ankara in November.

And after an intermission of seven years, there will be a High Level Cooperation Council in Thessaloniki, most likely in December.

In New York the two leaders will agree on extending the present moratorium in the Aegean, outlined in the Papoulias-Yilmaz memorandum of 1987, until the end of the year, thus avoiding any unnecessary frictions that could derail the effort.

Calm waters and no tension in the skies for an extended period are necessary preconditions for the whole effort to have any chance of succeeding.