NICOSIA, CYPRUS - The leaders of Greece and Cyprus sought on Friday to de-escalate tensions with neighboring Turkey amid increasingly hostile rhetoric from Turkey's president, insisting that such talk was best countered through "calm and balanced resolve".
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis described the approach as the most appropriate approach to de-escalate tensions while keeping channels of communication with Turkey open.
“Defending Greece and Cyprus against any revisionist tendencies is international law, our strong alliances and membership in the European family, and with calm determination and composure, we will always confront any rhetoric that goes beyond appropriate diplomatic boundaries,” Mitsotakis said during a meeting. With Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades.
"I suspect that this approach is ultimately the right one and that we will soon return to calmer waters, always keeping open channels of communication that should never be closed in my view, even under the most difficult circumstances."
Turkey and Greece have a long history of disagreements over a range of issues, including mineral exploration in the eastern Mediterranean and competing claims in the Aegean.
The two countries are also at odds over ethnically divided Cyprus, which Turkey does not recognize as a state. It lays claim to much of the island nation's offshore economic zone where natural gas deposits have been discovered.
Cyprus was divided in 1974 when Turkey invaded after a coup d'état with the aim of uniting with Greece. Only Turkey recognizes the Turkish Cypriot declaration of independence in the northern third of the island.
Greek-Turkish tensions escalated last week when Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned Greece to demilitarize its islands in the Aegean Sea, saying he was "not joking". He spoke during Turkish military exercises near the islands, including an amphibious landing scenario.
The government in Ankara says Athens has established a military presence on the Aegean islands in violation of 20th-century treaties that ceded the islands to Greece after a long period of Turkish occupation — or, in the case of Rhodes and Kos, by Italy.
Greece responds that the islands need defenses given the threats of war from Turkey, which has the second largest army in NATO and has a large landing fleet on the Aegean coast.
State Department spokesman Ned Price on Thursday urged NATO allies to resolve differences diplomatically and "avoid any rhetoric that could increase tensions."
The Greek and Turkish defense ministers met on the sidelines of the NATO meeting Thursday in an attempt to discuss matters.