Talks between Greece and Turkey today on the MOUs in the shadow of the challenges for the marine parks

A meeting of delegations from Greece and Turkey, on Confidence Building Measures (CBM), will be held in Athens on Monday, April 22, at the Ministry of National Defense.

The two delegations will be led by Ambassador Theoharis Lalakos and Deputy Foreign Minister Burak Aktsapar, respectively. Senior and senior officers of the Armed Forces of the two countries will also participate.

Before the April 22 meeting, two exchanges of visits by Commanders of military units took place, within the framework of the MoUs, which had been agreed upon during the Ankara meeting.

Specifically:

On 16-17/04, the Greek Commander of the 3rd Mechanized Infantry Brigade based in Kavyli Evros paid a visit to the Turkish 54th Mechanized Infantry Brigade based in Edirne.

On 18-19/04, the Turkish Commander of the 4th Mechanized Infantry Brigade based in Kessani, paid a visit to the Greek 31st Mechanized Infantry Brigade based in Feres.

It is recalled that the previous meeting on Confidence Building Measures was held on November 13, 2023 in Ankara.

The meeting on the MOUs in Athens is taking place in the wake of the provocative announcements made by Ankara about the marine parks, which essentially brought back the issue of gray zones in the Aegean.

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, commenting from Brussels on Turkey’s reaction to the marine parks in the Aegean, spoke of a “completely unjustified” attitude and reiterated Athens’ intention to exercise its sovereign rights in the Aegean based on International Law and its Law Sea.

“We will proceed with the creation of the parks, as we committed at the recent conference in Athens,” he said characteristically.

Speaking at the 9th international conference “Our Ocean Conference”, the Greek Prime Minister had announced that two additional parks would be created, increasing the size of marine protected areas in the country by 80% and covering approximately 1/3 of Greece’s territorial marine waters.

He hastened to emphasize that a surveillance system, with unmanned aircraft, satellites and artificial intelligence, will be used to effectively patrol the protected areas.

From Brussels, the prime minister had also announced that his visit to Turkey and the new appointment with Recep Tayyip Erdogan was scheduled for May 13.