Blinken Urges Greece, Turkiye to ‘Resolve Longstanding Differences’ in Aegean, Cyprus

As tempers have continued to flare between NATO allies Turkiye and Greece, Washington’s top diplomat has stepped in to try and encourage a resolution amid attempts to shore up the alliance's support for Ukraine.

"It is in the interest of both Greece and Turkiye to find ways to resolve longstanding differences, to do it through dialogue, through diplomacy - and in the meantime to not take any unilateral actions or use any charged rhetoric that would only make things more difficult and more challenging," Blinken told reporters in Athens on Tuesday.

"I do believe that there is an interest and an intent in both countries to find ways to resolve longstanding differences, to find ways to make this part of the world that they share an area of cooperation not of conflict," he added.

His comments came after separate meetings with both Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias on Tuesday and Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu a day prior in Ankara.

Greece was among the first countries to send rescue workers and material aid after eastern Turkiye was hit with a series of devastating earthquakes earlier this month. Rescuers have worked to pull survivors from the rubble and shipments have arrived containing tents, beds and blankets to support the hundreds of thousands of people left homeless.

"It is our duty to help our fellow humans who are suffering and we will continue to do so," Dendias said at the conference alongside Blinken.

"If through the communication between both societies the climate of our relations improves, this of course has political consequences. But I repeat: Greece is not seeking trade-offs from the Turkish side via the aid it is providing the earthquake victims."

The latest estimates for those killed by the 7.8-magnitude and 7.7-magnitude earthquakes that struck a few hours apart on February 6 is 41,156 in Turkiye and 5,801 in Syria. The stronger quake was the strongest to strike Turkiye in more than 80 years and one of the strongest to ever hit the Levant, being felt as far away as Egypt.

Blinken’s visit to Athens was also met by protesters furious over NATO’s proxy support for Ukraine in the nearly yearlong conflict with Russia. They shouted slogans of “Americans are murderers of peoples” and “give money for education, not for NATO slaughterhouses,” and demanded Greece end its participation in the conflict.

“The purpose of the meeting will be to strengthen the participation of Greece in the imperialist war in Ukraine by sending weapons and using the bases located in our country. This is how the 4th US-Greece Strategic Dialogue 'opens',” protesters told Sputnik Greece about Blinken’s visit.

Relations between Turkiye and Greece have never been particularly healthy since Greek revolutionaries secured the country’s independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1830. The two countries fought numerous wars in the 19th and early 20th centuries, including the emergent Turkish National Movement that fought the victorious Entente Powers (which included Greece) and laid the foundations for the modern Turkish state. A population transfer followed in 1923, with 1.2 million Orthodox Christians being deported from Turkiye and 400,000 Muslims being deported from Greece.

More recently, Turkiye invaded Cyprus in 1974 after the Greek military dictatorship attempted to orchestrate a coup in Nicosia and annex the island, and propped up a de facto state of Northern Cyprus for Turkish Cypriots. Tensions over this situation have continued, and Athens and Ankara have quarreled over numerous other issues as well, including control over gas reserves in the Mediterranean and delineations of water and air rights in the Aegean Sea. Despite being NATO allies, there have been several hostile engagements between their militaries, resulting in aircraft being shot down.