Greek Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis arrived in Turkey yesterday for the first official visit by a Greek premier in nearly half a century.
The visit caps a recent thaw in relations between the two NATO countries, though they are still at odds over the divided island of Cyprus as well as airspace and sea boundaries in the Aegean sea. Longtime foes, they have come close to war three times over those issues since 1974.
Karamanlis is scheduled to meet Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and President Abdullah Gul before traveling to Istanbul to meet Patriarch Bartholomew I, the spiritual leader of the world's Orthodox Christians, and give a speech at a business forum.
The last Greek prime minister to visit Turkey was Karamanlis' uncle, Constantine Karamanlis, in May 1959.
Greece and Turkey have improved ties through a series of confidence-building measures over the last decade, and recently agreed to expand military ties with high-level visits, joint missions in NATO and overseas peacekeeping duties.
In November, Karamanlis and Erdogan inaugurated a pipeline project to transport natural gas between the two countries and eventually link Caspian Sea gas supplies to the rest of western Europe.
The sides were expected to discuss disputes, although no new agreements were expected during this visit, Turkish officials said. Talks were likely to center on Turkey's troubled efforts to join the European Union.
Athens supports EU membership for Turkey in principle, but wants Turkey to recognize Greek-speaking Cyprus and allow planes and ships from that territory to use Turkish ports and airports.
Cyprus has been split since 1974 into a Turkish-occupied north and a Greek Cypriot south. Talks between the Greek- and Turkish-Cypriots have been frozen, and no significant progress has been made for decades on reunifying the island.
Source: China Daily/Agencies
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