By Penelope Galliou

With the aim but also with the hope of maintaining the good climate between Athens and Ankara, start again today in the Turkish capital the discussions between Greece and Turkey on Confidence Building Measures (MOE). A restart, which was agreed upon during the meeting of the Greek Prime Minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, with the Turkish President, Tayyip Erdogan, in Vilnius, Lithuania, last July and is a pivotal axis of the attempted rapprochement of the two countries.

The resumption of discussions is indeed marked by a differentiation, as the head of the Greek delegation will for the first time be a political figure, Ambassador Theocharis Lalakos, and not some uniformed officer, which demonstrates the attempt to change the page anda “demilitarize” bilateral contacts, giving way to more political and diplomatic fields.

The Confidence Building Measures (CBM) are a particularly important link in the chain of bilateral contacts between Athens and Ankara, alongside the positive agenda that continues to be at the center of the diplomatic discussions of the two sides, with a final – in the first phase – date on December 7, when the Mitsotakis-Erdogan summit will take place in Thessaloniki.

The climate prevailing on the Greek side is cautious optimism and does not share the concerns about a possible deterioration of Greek-Turkish relations, due to the new flare-up in the Middle East. In Athens, besides the will, there is also the belief that the new conflict in Israel and the fluidity it causes in our wider “neighborhood”, will not negatively affect Greek-Turkish relations. In other words, it is estimated, from diplomatic and governmental sources, that the Turkish side also has reasons to walk on a tightrope in terms of its relations with the West, but at the same time it will not choose at the given stage to rekindle yet another front, the “Greco-Turkish ».

However, the ongoing war in the Middle East continues and maintains a general climate of concern in the region, when Tayyip Erdogan seems perhaps more distant from the West than ever. An uncertainty that is not shared by the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Alexandra Papadopoulou, who in a recent statement rejected these “voices of concern” considering that these conditions will positively affect the Greek-Turkish dialogue. “I am of the opposite opinion, that it will affect him positively. Because both Turkey and Greece, regardless of the different approaches, the different goals, the different worldviews they may have, have a common interest: They cannot live in an area that is exploding.”