Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu will meet with Greek counterpart Nikos Dendias

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu will end a three-day diplomatic mission to Greece today by discussing bilateral relations with Greek Minister of Foreign Affairs Nikos Dendias.

This meeting is part of a series of exploratory talks. It is an attempt to prepare for a future, more formal meeting between Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Greece’s Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.

Previous exploratory talks were held between 2002-2016, but such discussions faltered. They were restarted this year. Despite the attempted reset, discussions have thus far made minimal progress, as disagreement continues over what issues to raise in higher level talks. Today’s meeting may be an opportunity to prepare for a June 14 meeting between Erdogan and Mitsotakis at a NATO summit in Brussels.

With both foreign ministers having had a ‘war of words’ one month ago during a joint press conference, expect today’s discussion to prevent further escalation. However, no significant agreements will likely result from this meeting. The likelihood of Erdogan and Mitsotakis engaging in discussion during June’s NATO summit is high, as there have been few flare-ups between the two countries since the April meeting and Turkey and Greece’s defense ministry delegations met four times this month.

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