Greek Foreign Minister called neighboring Turkey a “common denominator” of threats to stability in the region, including the use of migrants as leverage to exert geopolitical pressure
ATHENS, Greece – Greece’s foreign minister on Friday called his neighbor Turkey a “common denominator” of threats to stability in the region, including the use of migrants as leverage to exert geopolitical pressure.
Nikos Dendias accused Belarus of copying tactics Ankara used last year when a standoff at the Greek-Turkish land border was sparked by the arrival of thousands of migrants and asylum seekers .
“Unfortunately, the common denominator of many of the challenges we face in this region (…) is our neighbor Turkey,” Dendias said during a meeting in Athens with foreign ministers of France, Egypt and France. Cypriot, Jean-Yves Le Drian, Sameh. Shoukry and Nikos Christodoulides.
Greece and Turkey resumed high-level diplomatic talks in January for the first time in nearly five years in an attempt to ease tensions over long-standing border disputes in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean. But they still strongly disagree, and Greece has launched a multibillion-dollar military modernization program with major naval and air force orders from France and the United States.
Turkey maintains that it was unfairly excluded from access to Mediterranean mineral resources and denies helping migrants congregate at the Greek border last year.
Egypt and France have largely sided with Greece in the disputes.
.
ABC News