Aegean dispute

The Athens meeting between Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, anticipated with cautious optimism by Greek media, has for the most part also made a positive impression on their Turkish counterparts.

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and visiting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan reiterated their commitment to "calm waters" in the Aegean and agreed on the need for a gradual transition to a next stage, where difficult bilateral differences can be discussed without the threat of a total collapse of Greece-Turkey relations.

Greece and Turkey agreed on Thursday to mend their ties by promoting good neighborly relations, keeping communication channels open and focusing on low-level issues, such as culture and economy.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan arrived in Athens on Thursday with a delegation of ministers for meetings with Greek counterparts that both countries hope can turn a new page in relations after years of friction.

Dimitris Kairidis, the Greek minister for migration, said late Tuesday that the number of migrants arriving on Greece's islands illegally had dropped by about 60% over the past two months thanks in large part to better coordination with Turkey's coast guard.

Both Greece and Turkey are looking beyond this week's meeting between Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis in Athens.

The stalemate in Washington on the issue of the approval for the modernization and sale of the F-16s is increasingly concerning Ankara, prompting skepticism about the future of US-Turkish relations.

Greek-Turkish relations are returning to the forefront having been shaped by the meeting between Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Vilnius and the decision to explore the possibility of referring the major dispute with Ankara, namely the delimitation of the continental shelf and EEZ, to the international court at The Hague.

US Senator Bob Menendez said on Wednesday he still had concerns about the sale of F-16 fighter jets to Turkey, and had not changed his hold on the sale of the aircraft.

There is "nothing new," Menendez, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told Reuters at the Capitol. "We continue to raise our concerns."

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's decision to tell reporters that in his meeting with Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on the sidelines of the NATO summit at Vilnius he brought up the demilitarization of Greece's eastern Aegean islands and Greek officials' subsequent denials are proof of how difficult it will be for Athens and Ankara to reach their stated goals to find common ground, r