Greece seeking Türkiye restart as leaders meet

The Greek prime minister held a rare meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Wednesday, with the two countries seeking to build on a rapprochement forged after this year's deadly earthquake.

"I hope and look forward to building on this positive climate and make some important steps of progress," Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said to reporters Tuesday on the sidelines of a NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania.

"As I have said many times, we are not condemned to live in a constant climate of tension with Türkiye."

"We obviously have significant differences," said Mitsotakis.

"But we can agree...on a roadmap so that we can resolve our most important geopolitical difference, the delimitation of maritime zones, namely exclusive economic zones and the continental shelf in the Aegean and the eastern Mediterranean."

Erdoğan had hosted a March 2022 meeting with Mitsotakis in Istanbul.

Greece's then-foreign minister Nikos Dendias was also the first European minister to visit Türkiye after the quake.