Greek premier in bid to boost ties with Turkey
GREEK Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras voiced hope that a closed Orthodox Christian seminary he was visiting in Turkey yesterday would be reopened as part of efforts to boost ties long strained by disputes over territory, energy and Cyprus.
Crowds welcomed Tsipras as he arrived on Heybeliada, an island south of Istanbul, to visit the Halki theological school that was closed by the Turkish state in 1971 and has remained a source of contention between the long-time rivals.
“I want to believe that the day is approaching when these rooms will be filled again with the laughter of happy students,” he said in a speech, saying the seminary’s reopening would send a “message of friendship, understanding and brotherhood”.
“There are issues between our governments and our countries that only dialogue can resolve,” he said, flanked by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the spiritual head of Orthodox Christians worldwide and who is based in Istanbul. Tsipras is the first serving Greek prime minister to visit the Halki seminary.
Turkey, which is overwhelmingly Muslim, has given no public indication that it is planning to reopen the Christian seminary and has resisted years of pressure from the EU, which it aspires to join, to do so.
On Tuesday, Tsipras met Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara, where the Turkish president said he expected more co-operation from Athens in the repatriation of eight soldiers who fled to Greece following an attempted coup in 2016.
Tsipras told their joint news conference that Greece did not welcome putschists, but that the case of the eight soldiers was judiciary.
He said both countries had agreed to de-escalate tensions in the Aegean Sea and proceed with confidence-building measures. Erdogan’s spokesperson Ibrahim Kalin joined Tsipras yesterday in Istanbul on a tour of Hagia Sophia, which was the foremost cathedral in Christendom for 900 years and then – after the city fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453 – one of Islam’s greatest mosques for another 500 years. It has been a museum since 1935.
In late 2017, Erdogan made the first visit to Greece by a Turkish president in 65 years, but the trip was marred by verbal sparring over various historical grievances.
Erdogan complained about discrimination against Muslims in northern Greece, while Turkey’s military presence in ethnically split Cyprus and diverging interpretations of an international treaty defining their borders also fuelled tensions.
Cyprus has been divided since a
amatter
for
the Turkish invasion in 1974 triggered by a brief Greek-inspired coup. UN-led peace talks between the Greek and Turkish sides collapsed in 2017.
Nato members Greece and Turkey were nearly drawn into a military clash in 1996 over an uninhabited Aegean islet.
On Tuesday, Turkey updated a list of former military officers wanted for their alleged role in the 2016 putsch to include the eight officers granted asylum in Greece, and offered a bounty of 4 million Turkish lira (R10.3m) for each of them.
Meanwhile, Nato members yesterdaysigned an accord with Macedonia allowing the tiny ex-Yugoslav republic to become the 30th member of the US-led alliance after a deal with Greece ended a 27-year-old dispute over its name.
Macedonia’s Foreign Minister Nikola Dimitrov hailed the moment as showing that the country “will never walk alone” once in the alliance. THE SON of Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro is facing accusations of money laundering in connection with at least two luxury flats he purchased in Rio de Janeiro, according to prosecutors and a local news report published yesterday.
Flavio Bolsonaro, a newly inaugurated federal senator, has been dogged by corruption allegations that are sullying the squeaky clean image his father used to ride to an easy presidential election last year.
Flavio has refused to meet prosecutors for questioning and repeatedly dodges journalists’ questions on the allegations against him.
He said in a written statement that the latest accusations against him were baseless and would be tossed out.
Brazil’s Supreme Court earlier this month rejected an appeal by Flavio to halt a probe into numerous suspicious cash payments made into the account of his former driver, Fabricio Queiroz.
Flavio, his father and Queiroz have all said they are innocent of any crime.
The scandal arose after the Council for Financial Activities Control (COAF) identified 48 suspicious deposits worth a total of 100 000 reais (R365 779) deposited in a single month in 2007 into Flavio’s bank account.
COAF also found 7 million reais in suspicious transactions in accounts belonging to Queiroz.