Warming Winds From the Aegean
Peace is breaking out on the southern flank of NATO, with longtime Aegean Sea adversaries Greece and Turkey promising to enter a “new era” of friendly relations. Cooperation between the two countries, which came close to a war less than four years ago, is significant and may well hold the key to the resolution of territorial disputes in the Aegean and the reunification of Cyprus.
The latest eruption in the “outburst of solidarity” between the two took place in Ankara last Thursday when Greek Foreign Minister George Papandreou, on the first high-level Greek visit to Turkey in 37 years, signed a handful of agreements to build up trust between Athens and Ankara. Under a portrait of Kemal Ataturk, the father of modern Turkey, who chased the Greek army out of his country in 1923, the two governments even agreed to co-sponsor the 2008 European soccer championship. More accords will be signed next month when Turkish Foreign Minister Ismail Cem visits Athens.
Icy relations between Turkey and Greece showed the first significant signs of thawing last August when a devastating earthquake in Turkey triggered an outpouring of sympathy in Greece, and Turks later reciprocated when Greece was struck by an earthquake. A great deal of the credit goes to the courage of Papandreou, the son of a Greek prime minister who stoked hostility toward Ankara.
Turkey too is changing. It is improving its poor record on human rights and has been rewarded with growing clout in the Caspian Sea region and a much-prized invitation to eventually join the European Union.
The test of the new, improved relations between Greece and Turkey will come in the handling of their dispute over some uninhabited islands in the Aegean and over Cyprus, an island populated by a Greek majority and Turkish minority and split by a U.N.-guarded border since 1974.
The resolution of the Cyprus issue clearly rests in Athens and Ankara, whose leaders have the influence and power to solve this problem for the benefit of all in the eastern Mediterranean.
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