Turkey-Greece crisis talks: An exercise in minimal expectations

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This handout picture taken and released on January 25, 2021, by the Turkish Foreign Ministry press office shows Greek diplomat Pavlos Apostolidis (2L), Turkish Deputy Foreign Minister Sedat Onal (2R), Turkish President's spokesman Ibrahim Kalin (3R) and their delegation meeting at Dolmabahce palace in Istanbul as talks resumed over Eastern Mediterranean dispute. (AFP/Turkish Foreign Ministry)
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Updated 03 February 2021
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Turkey-Greece crisis talks: An exercise in minimal expectations

  • Following a five-year pause, Greece and Turkey held a meeting in January to address their many disputes
  • In order to give diplomacy a chance, the US and the EU are unlikely to slap further sanctions on Turkey

WASHINGTON D.C.: After a tumultuous four years of Donald Trump’s rule, Joe Biden has entered the White House with a packed domestic agenda, not least the ongoing pandemic and its economic repercussions but also the gnawing issue of race relations. As such, one might expect Biden to place America’s foreign relations on the backburner, at least for the time being.

However, Biden has a strong track record on high-level diplomacy, chalking up several years of engagement with America’s friends and foes, projecting US national interests abroad. Now that he has assumed the highest office in the land, he has pledged to restore America’s image on the world stage.

Coincidentally, Biden’s tenure began just days before long-awaited talks between Greece and Turkey took place in Istanbul — the latest in the protracted territorial dispute which has long threatened the peace of the Mediterranean Sea.




A handout photo released by the Greek National Defence Ministry on August 26, 2020 shows ships of the Hellenic Navy taking part in a military exercise in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, on August 25, 2020. (AFP/Greek Defense Ministry/File Photo)

Delayed by several months, and following a relative easing of tensions, talks between Greece and Turkey are, on the surface at least, an exercise in minimal expectations. Exploratory talks resumed after a pause of five years, picking up where they left off in 2016.

Little progress toward normalizing relations was made between 2002 to 2016, during which time some 60 rounds of talks took place. There is little sign things will be any different this time around.

However, Biden is not Trump. He will need very little time getting up to speed on the dispute in the eastern Mediterranean and his active involvement in the State Department’s handling of the issue is beyond doubt.

Furthermore, Biden will end the Trump-era practice of direct diplomacy between the White House and Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, preferring instead to act through the standard institutional channels.

Greece has reason to feel optimistic about the US stance. Biden has on numerous occasions endorsed the Greek position on de-escalation, solving outstanding issues through dialogue and recourse to international law. He is also a supporter of the religious rights of the Greek minority in Turkey, and especially of the role of the patriarchate in Istanbul.

By any measure, Greek-US relations are at their peak, having been strengthened during the Trump years and made stronger through multiple agreements on trade and mutual defense.

FASTFACT

Greece-Turkey

* 11 Turkey’s rank in Global Firepower military strength.

* 29 Greece’s rank in Global Firepower military strength.

* $18.2b Turkey’s annual military budget.

* $7b Greece’s annual military budget.

Biden has also surrounded himself with seasoned diplomats and advisers who worked with him during his eight-year tenure as Barack Obama’s vice president, and whose concern for peace and stability in the region is echoed in Greek rhetoric and policy initiatives.

By contrast, a big question mark hangs over Washington’s Turkey file. Ankara’s flourishing relationship with Moscow and its purchase of the Russian S-400 missile defense system has led to US sanctions that Biden will be in no hurry to lift.

Turkey’s position in NATO has been weakened, leaving member states including France questioning its reliability. Indeed, Washington considers the presence of S-400s on Turkish soil as a threat to its F-35 fighter jets and to NATO defense systems in general.

This is not the only issue blighting the bilateral relationship. Ankara continues to complain about the perceived US role in the 2016 coup attempt and rejects US charges levelled against its state-owned Halkbank concerning its alleged role in helping Iran evade US sanctions.




Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (L) and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis (R) shake hands in front of the Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu (C) during a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the NATO summit at the Grove hotel in Watford, northeast of London. (AFP/Murat Cetinmuhurda/Turkish Presidential Press Service/File Photo)

More telling still is the view which emerged from talks between Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, and Bjoern Seibert, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s cabinet chief, who “agreed to work together on issues of mutual concern, including China and Turkey,” according to a White House statement.

Linking Turkey with China, the main US geopolitical adversary, is a blow to Erdogan’s hopes of a close relationship with the new Biden administration.

If the US chooses to get involved in the Greece-Turkey dispute, Athens rightly expects to reap the rewards. Yet it would be premature to assume the Biden administration will automatically apply pressure on Turkey.

Firstly, the exploratory talks are informal and require no mediation. Talking directly to one another, even if disagreements are substantial, is preferable to having external sponsors.

Secondly, Turkey is currently trying to recalibrate its relations with the West as well as countries closer to home, including the Gulf states and Israel. The US is likely to give Turkey the benefit of the doubt, at least in the initial stages of the new administration, and give it time to prove its willingness for constructive cooperation.

Thirdly, for all of Turkey’s recent acts of bravado, the country remains a potentially critical ally for the US in an intensely volatile region. Not only does Turkey possess NATO’s second largest army, it also has the strategic positioning to act as a brake on Russia’s ambitions in the Middle East, particularly in Syria.

By the time talks concluded on Jan 25, a few facts stood out.




Turkish President and leader of the Justice and Development (AK) Party Recep Tayyip Erdogan speaks during a parliamentary group meeting on January 27, 2021 at the Grand National Assembly of Turkey (GNAT) in Ankara. (AFP/File Photo)

Although the talks were intended to take place at a merely technical level, the Turkish delegation included Erdogan’s trusted advisor Ibrahim Kalin. The move was likely designed to underscore Turkey’s sincerity in bringing the talks to a successful conclusion, a message that its foreign minister communicated to EU officials the previous day.

Another interesting fact is that both sides followed standard practice by not revealing the content of their talks. This is largely a positive sign, since press leaks are usually aimed at shifting the blame onto the opposite side and undermining prospects for a positive result.

More encouraging still, Greece and Turkey have agreed to proceed with the next round of talks in March, this time in Athens.

Washington, just like Brussels, welcomed the talks and highlighted the importance of dialogue between the two sides. Confirming its attempt to adopt an equidistant approach, the US will continue to encourage both Athens and Ankara to resolve at least some of their disputes.

For Greece, these are limited and specific: the determination of the continental shelf in the Aegean Sea and the delimitation of the two countries’ respective Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ).

For Turkey, on the other hand, the list includes issues such as minority rights, the demilitarization of the Greek Dodecanese islands and the alignment of Greece’s sea borders on the Aegean (6 miles) with its airspace in the same region (10 miles).




Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has reason to be optimistic about the US stance during the Biden administration. (AFP/File Photo)

What is certain, save for any big surprises, is the US (and the EU) will refrain from further sanctions on Turkey.

Pre-existing problems pertaining to the Aegean dispute and the Cyprus issue, the primary bone of contention for many decades, have recently been compounded by zero-sum games on hydrocarbon exploration in the eastern Mediterranean, as well as the migrant and refugee crisis, fueled further by the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The fact that other states with interests in the region, such as Cyprus, Israel, France, Italy, Libya and Egypt, are now part of the larger Eastern Mediterranean dispute raises the stakes and pushes Greece and Turkey to adopt maximalist positions.

For all of Washington’s desire to see normalization, it is highly unlikely that concrete progress will be made in the coming months.

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Twitter: @dimitsar


Israeli ultra-orthodox party leaves Netanyahu’s government due to dispute over military conscription bill

Updated 10 sec ago
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Israeli ultra-orthodox party leaves Netanyahu’s government due to dispute over military conscription bill

TEL AVIV: Israel’s ultra-orthodox party Degel HaTorah said in a statement its Knesset members have resigned from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government due to a dispute over failure to draft a bill to exempt Yeshiva students from military service. 

 


More than 100 migrants freed in Libya after being held captive by gang, officials say

Updated 21 min 41 sec ago
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More than 100 migrants freed in Libya after being held captive by gang, officials say

  • As of December 2024, around 825,000 migrants from 47 countries were recorded in Libya, according to UN data released in May

BENGHAZI: More than 100 migrants, including five women, have been freed from captivity after being held for ransom by a gang in eastern Libya, the country’s attorney general said on Monday.
“A criminal group involved in organizing the smuggling of migrants, depriving them of their freedom, trafficking them, and torturing them to force their families to pay ransoms for their release,” a statement from the attorney general said.
Libya has become a transit route for migrants fleeing conflict and poverty to Europe via the dangerous route across the desert and over the Mediterranean following the toppling of Muammar Qaddafi in a NATO-backed uprising in 2011.
Many migrants desperate to make the crossing have fallen into the hands of traffickers. The freed migrants had been held in Ajdabiya, some 160 km (100 miles) from Libya’s second city Benghazi.
Five suspected traffickers from Libya, Sudan and Egypt, have been arrested, officials said.
The attorney general and Ajdabiya security directorate posted pictures of the migrants on their Facebook pages which they said had been retrieved from the suspects’ mobile phones.
They showed migrants with hands and legs cuffed with signs that they had been beaten.
In February, at least 28 bodies were recovered from a mass grave in the desert north of Kufra city. Officials said a gang had subjected the migrants to torture and inhumane treatment.
That followed another 19 bodies being found in a mass grave in the Jikharra area, also in southeastern Libya, a security directorate said, blaming a known smuggling network.
As of December 2024, around 825,000 migrants from 47 countries were recorded in Libya, according to UN data released in May.
Last week, the EU migration commissioner and ministers from Italy, Malta and Greece met with the internationally recognized prime minister of the national unity government, Abdulhamid Dbeibah, and discussed the migration crisis. 

 


Mediators working to bridge gaps in faltering Gaza truce talks

Updated 46 min 1 sec ago
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Mediators working to bridge gaps in faltering Gaza truce talks

  • Hamas’s top negotiator, Khalil Al-Hayya, and the leadership of Hamas and Islamic Jihad held a “consultative meeting” in Doha on Sunday evening to “coordinate visions and positions,” a Palestinian source with knowledge of the talks told AFP
  • US President Donald Trump said he was still hopeful of securing a truce deal, telling reporters on Sunday night: “We are talking and hopefully we’re going to get that straightened out over the next week”

GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories: Stuttering Gaza ceasefire talks entered a second week on Monday, with meditators seeking to close the gap between Israel and Hamas, as more than 20 people were killed across the Palestinian territory.
The indirect negotiations in Qatar appear deadlocked after both sides blamed the other for blocking a deal for the release of hostages and a 60-day ceasefire after 21 months of fighting.
An official with knowledge of the talks said they were “ongoing” in Doha on Monday, telling AFP: “Discussions are currently focused on the proposed maps for the deployment of Israeli forces within Gaza.”
“Mediators are actively exploring innovative mechanisms to bridge the remaining gaps and maintain momentum in the negotiations,” the source added on condition of anonymity.
Hamas accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — who wants to see the Palestinian militant group destroyed — of being the main obstacle.
“Netanyahu is skilled at sabotaging one round of negotiations after another, and is unwilling to reach any agreement,” the group wrote on Telegram.
In Gaza, the civil defense agency said at least 22 people were killed Monday in the latest Israeli strikes in and around Gaza City and in Khan Yunis in the south.
An Israeli military statement said troops had destroyed “buildings and terrorist infrastructure” used by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad militants in Gaza City’s Shujaiya and Zeitun areas.
The Al-Quds Brigades — the armed wing of Islamic Jihad, which has fought alongside Hamas — released footage on Monday that it said showed its fighters firing missiles at an Israeli army command and control center near Shujaiya.
The military later on Monday said three soldiers — aged 19, 20 and 21 — “fell during combat in the northern Gaza Strip” and died in hospital on Monday. Another from the same battalion was severely injured.

US President Donald Trump said he was still hopeful of securing a truce deal, telling reporters on Sunday night: “We are talking and hopefully we’re going to get that straightened out over the next week.”
Hamas’s top negotiator, Khalil Al-Hayya, and the leadership of Hamas and Islamic Jihad held a “consultative meeting” in Doha on Sunday evening to “coordinate visions and positions,” a Palestinian source with knowledge of the talks told AFP.
“Egyptian, Qatari and American mediators continue their efforts that make Israel present a modified withdrawal map that would be acceptable,” they added.
On Saturday, the same source said Hamas rejected Israeli proposals to keep troops in more than 40 percent of Gaza, as well as plans to move Palestinians into an enclave on the border with Egypt.
A senior Israeli political official countered by accusing Hamas of inflexibility and trying to deliberately scupper the talks by “clinging to positions that prevent the mediators from advancing an agreement.”

Netanyahu has said he would be ready to enter talks for a more lasting ceasefire once a deal for a temporary truce is agreed, but only when Hamas lays down its arms.
He is under pressure to wrap up the war, with military casualties rising and with public frustration mounting at both the continued captivity of the hostages taken on October 7 and a perceived lack of progress in the conflict.
Politically, Netanyahu’s fragile governing coalition is holding, for now, but he denies being beholden to a minority of far-right ministers in prolonging an increasingly unpopular conflict.
He also faces a backlash over the feasibility, cost and ethics of a plan to build a so-called “humanitarian city” from scratch in southern Gaza to house Palestinians if and when a ceasefire takes hold.
Israel’s security establishment is reported to be unhappy with the plan, which the UN agency for Palestinian refugees and Israel’s former prime minister Ehud Olmert have described as a “concentration camp.”
“If they (Palestinians) will be deported there into the new ‘humanitarian city’, then you can say that this is part of an ethnic cleansing,” Olmert was quoted as saying by The Guardian newspaper late on Sunday.
Hamas’s attack on Israel in 2023 resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
A total of 251 hostages were taken that day, of whom 49 are still being held, including 27 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel’s military reprisals have killed 58,386 Palestinians, mostly civilians, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.

 


Paramilitary attack kills 48 in central Sudan village: war monitor

Updated 15 July 2025
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Paramilitary attack kills 48 in central Sudan village: war monitor

  • Over 4 million refugees have fled Sudan’s more than two-year civil war to seven neighboring countries where shelter conditions are widely viewed as inadequate due to chronic funding shortages

PORT SUDAN: Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) killed 48 civilians in an attack on a village in the center of the war-torn country, a monitoring group reported Monday.
The Emergency Lawyers, a group that has documented atrocities throughout the two-year conflict between the regular army and the RSF, reported civilians were killed en masse Sunday when paramilitary fighters stormed the village of Um Garfa in North Kordofan state, razing houses and looting property.
 

 


Two drones fell in Khurmala oilfield in Iraqi Kurdistan, counter-terrorism service says

Updated 15 July 2025
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Two drones fell in Khurmala oilfield in Iraqi Kurdistan, counter-terrorism service says

  • An investigation into the incident was launched in coordination with security forces in Kurdistan

BAGHDAD: Two drones fell in the Khurmala oilfield in Iraqi Kurdistan, the Iraqi Kurdistan’s counter-terrorism service said in a statement on Monday.
Khurmala oilfield is located near the Iraqi Kurdish city of Irbil.
The Iraqi Security Media Cell, an official body responsible for disseminating security information, said in a statement that no casualties were reported and only material damage was recorded.
An investigation into the incident was launched in coordination with security forces in Kurdistan, it added.