Keep calm

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s recent comments confirm fears that diplomatic niceties are not enough to smooth the path of Greek-Turkish relations. They confirm that Greece basically does not have someone to talk to on the other side, a person with which it can build a relationship of trust in the conventional manner.

Our usual advice is for Greece to keep a calm and collected stance, and this is still the case. This, however, also means political parties avoiding confrontation over especially sensitive issues, such as the circumstances leading to the arrest by Turkey of two Greek soldiers on the Evros border last year, which was discussed at the committee level in Parliament yesterday.

There are plenty of areas over which Greece’s political parties can exercise their opposition. Relations with Turkey is not one of them.