PM’s Ankara trip to go ahead as planned

Meeting with Erdogan not affected by his postponement of US visit, but Athens aware of risks

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ meeting with Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara on May 13 will not be affected by the postponement of the Turkish president’s visit to the US and the shadow it has cast on Turkish-American relations.

Erdogan’s meeting with the US president at the White House was scheduled for May 9 and was something he had sought since the beginning of Joe Biden’s term, three and a half years ago. Its postponement clearly reflects the problematic state of relations between Washington and Ankara, weighed further by the hostility towards Israel shown by Erdogan and his government.

Erdogan’s meeting with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh a week ago only empowered arguments by the Jewish lobby, which has long sought to undermine the prospect of a meeting with Biden. The postponement is not a development that is welcomed Athens as poor US-Turkish relations de facto mean problems in Greek-Turkish relations, mainly because of Washington’s reduced ability to talk to Ankara on issues that are also of Greek interest, even if indirectly.

Although the meetings between Mitsotakis and Erdogan so far in the last year have been flawless in terms of public statements, at this stage no one can rule out that the Turkish president will use the opportunity to make inflammatory references to Israel. While Mitsotakis has the necessary experience to deal with this eventuality, Athens wishes to maintain the current atmosphere of calm as far as possible.

There is not a single diplomat in Athens who is surprised by the way Erdogan and, on a second level, Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, have handled the situation in the Middle East.

The Palestinian issue is for Erdogan a way of promoting Turkey’s image as a leading power in the Muslim world, while also entrenching his party’s hard-line ideological core. The meeting with Haniyeh, therefore, came as no surprise to anyone in Athens, nor did Ankara’s clear tilt in favor of Tehran in the ominous Israel-Iran conflict of recent weeks.

In this broad sense, Greek-Turkish disputes are not at the top of Ankara’s priorities at the moment, as it has its attention focused on the East. However, as the case of the marine parks and the way Ankara reacted to the issue of Euro-Turkish contacts have demonstrated, the possibility of a deterioration in Greek-Turkish relations is always present.