A disruptive dynamic

Turkey's projection of military might in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Aegean Sea and its months-long provocations against the sovereign rights of Greece and the Republic of Cyprus led both to the restart of exploratory talks between Athens and Ankara and to the "five-plus-United Nations" meeting between the leaders of the two Cypriot communities and the guarantor powers - Greece, Turkey and the United Kingdom - at the level of foreign ministers.

That's what Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu essentially claimed Monday and, in a sense, he is not totally wrong. Both Ankara and Nicosia would prefer, at this juncture, to deal with other, especially pressing and crucial, issues, except this is by definition impossible.

The exploratory Greek-Turkish talks will simply give our European partners the opportunity to upgrade European Union relations with Ankara,...