A smiling Turkish president and Greek prime minister shook hands after an hour-and-a-half-long meeting at the Maximos Mansion in Athens. It was an unusual sight. Seven years and numerous tensions after his last visit, Recep Tayyip Erdogan returned to the Greek capital on Thursday, December 7 to sign a "declaration of friendship and good neighborly relations" with Kyriakos Mitsotakis. The day before, in a lengthy interview with the center-right daily Kathimerini, Ankara's strongman had called on his "friend Kyriakos" to open a "new chapter" after years of turbulence with his neighbor. "If differences are tackled through dialogue and common ground is found, it's for the benefit of all," he even insisted.
Such words were unimaginable just a year ago. In May 2022, the Turkish president claimed that Mitsotakis "no longer existed for him," accusing him of having tried to convince the US Congress to block the sale of F-16 aircraft to Turkey. Five months later, Erdogan denounced the militarization of the Greek Aegean islands and issued a clear threat to Greece: "We could suddenly arrive one night," the same words broadcast on Turkish radio at the time of the military intervention in Cyprus in 1974.
Since 2020, this virulent rhetoric has been accompanied by increased instances of Turkish fighter jets conducting overflights of Greek territory as well as other acts of provocation. In February and March 2020, Turkey had tried to put pressure on Greece and the European Union, by encouraging the passage of migrants via the Evros land border. Then, in the summer of 2020, Turkey sent its seismic survey vessel Oruç-Reis, escorted by warships, to probe the seabed of an area it disputes with Greece, in search of hydrocarbons.
However, several factors have reshuffled the cards between these two historic rivals, although they remain NATO allies. Firstly, the terrible earthquake that struck southern Turkey on February 6 brought Athens and Ankara closer together. The two countries pledged their solidarity in the event of a natural disaster.
Later in the spring, both Turkey and Greece re-elected their conservative and nationalist coalitions, naturally toning down patriotic fervor in their respective countries. Then there's the changing regional dynamic. As late as 2022, Ankara felt encircled by an emerging Greek-Cypriot-Israeli-Egyptian alliance in the eastern Mediterranean, backed by Washington.
Today, the Turkish government is in a better position vis-à-vis Athens. The country feels less isolated in the region, and its relations with the United States seem to be on the mend, thanks to the green light given by Erdogan to Sweden's inclusion in the Atlantic Alliance. As part of these negotiations, which are still ongoing, Ankara has received White House approval for the sale of dozens of F-16s (the vote is in the hands of the US Congress), while Athens for its part will receive fifth-generation F-35 fighter jets.
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