The leaders of Greece and Turkey publicly aired their grievances in a tense news conference as a two-day visit to Athens by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan got off to a rocky start, The Associated Press reported.
Leaders of Turkey, Greece air grievances at tense conference
STEPANAKERT, DECEMBER 8, ARTSAKHPRESS:The Greek government had expressed hopes that the visit — the first to Greece by a Turkish president in 65 years — would help improve the often-frosty relations between the two neighbors. But from the outset, the discussions focused on disagreements.
On the eve of his visit, Erdogan rattled his Greek hosts by telling Greece's Skai television that the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne should be "updated." The treaty delineated modern Turkey's borders and outlines the status of the Muslim minority in Greece and the Greek minority in Turkey, among other issues.
In a visibly testy first meeting with Greek President Prokopis Pavlopoulos, the two engaged in a thinly-veiled verbal spat over the treaty and Greece's Muslim minority, which Erdogan is to visit Friday. The spat continued during Erdogan's appearance at an unusually candid joint news conference with Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras.
The two listed a series of grievances their countries have with each other, including religious and minority rights, the divided island of Cyprus and the case of ten Turkish servicemen who have applied for asylum in Greece following a Turkish government crackdown after a failed coup last year.
Erdogan and Tsipras also sparred over Cyprus, a Mediterranean island divided since a 1974 Turkish invasion into a Turkish-occupied north and an internationally recognized Greek Cypriot south. Another round of internationally-brokered peace talks to reunify the island failed earlier this year.
