'Turkey ready to revive dialogue channels with Greece'

Sibel Morrow

ANKARA (AA) - Turkey is ready to revive all dialogue channels with Greece including the exploratory talks, the Foreign Ministry said on Friday.

"As our President [Recep Tayyip Erdogan] proposed in meetings with Greek Prime Minister [Kyriakos] Mitsotakis in New York and London, our country is ready to revive all channels of dialogue, including the exploration negotiations with Greece, and even to open a new channel of dialogue for the Eastern Mediterranean,” spokesman Hami Aksoy said in a statement.

Aksoy’s remarks came as a response to a question on the disarmed status of the Aegean islands.

In 1974, following a coup aiming at Cyprus’s annexation by Greece, Ankara had to intervene as a guarantor power. In 1983, the TRNC was founded.

The decades since have seen several attempts to resolve the Cyprus dispute, all ending in failure.

The latest one, held with the participation of the guarantor countries -- Turkey, Greece, and the U.K. -- came to an end without any progress in 2017 in Switzerland.