Left-wing political parties in Greece criticised conservative Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis for meeting on Wednesday with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the sidelines of the NATO Summit in Vilnius, Lithuania.
SYRIZA-PA
Even though Mitsotakis had proclaimed at the pre-electoral campaign period that he would raise interference issues concerning the Greek Muslim minority in Thrace during his meeting with Erdogan, said SYRIZA-Progressive Alliance, he instead "put on the suit of diplomacy and moderation."
In its statement, the main opposition party also raised questions relating to Greek-Turkish relations and Mitsotakis' remarks in his press conference after the completion of the Vilnius meeting.
Among them, Syriza accused Mitsotakis of shifting from the country's stance and referring to the maritime delimitation issue as geopolitical and of not taking a more active stance on the issue of the US F-16 jets sale to Türkiye instead of relying on Congress alone.
PASOK-KINAL
PASOK-KINAL leader Nikos Androulakis noted that the US decision to modernize 80 Turkish F-16s and sell 40 new such fighter jets to Türkiye "is not a positive development."
Androulakis also noted that EU-Turkish relations should not be defined by NATO but by European institutions alone, as Türkiye's EU accession is a utopian dream.
"The only solution is a special EU-Turkey relationship, that will be based on the upgrade of the customs union and will safeguard the respect to our sovereign rights with an automated framework of sanctions."
Communist Party of Greece (KKE)
The so-called 'restart of Greek-Turkish relations means little more than "the speeding-up of haggling under NATO supervision," noted the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) in its statement on Wednesday.
It also means setting in motion dangerous developments relating to the joint exploitation and management of the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean, to the benefit of energy and economic groups, it added.
All this "raises significant concerns about the sovereign rights of Greek islands and the country's sovereignty, and about the peace and prosperity between the two peoples," the party added.
