Athens, December 03: Greece and Turkey must overcome the differences which have bound them and made them “slaves”, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said in an interview published Thursday.
The longstanding hostility between them was pointless, harmful to both and “a waste of time and energy,” he told the daily Ta Nea.
“We must liberate ourselves from this misunderstanding, we must stop wasting energy and money in an arms race and in confrontations.”
Davutoglu gave the interview following talks Wednesday in Athens with Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou on the sidelines of a meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
He said they had analysed all the questions that Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan had raised in a letter addressed to Papandreou following a meeting between the two in Istanbul in October.
“I am extremely satisfied with the Greek reaction,” he said. “Mr Papandreou is a man of vision, as is Mr Erdogan, and I was impressed to see that their visions on Greek-Turkish relations coincide on many points.”
Davutoglu predicted that over the next five or six years these relations could make “spectacular progress”, given the political will of the leadership on both sides.
A European summit later this month will have to decide how to react to Ankara’s refusal to open Turkish ports and airports to shipping and planes from the rest of Cyprus.
—Agencies