ANKARA — NATO neighbors Turkey and Greece have agreed to resume confidence-building talks that were frozen in 2022, the Turkish Defense Ministry announced Wednesday.
Turkish Defense Minister Yasar Guler and his Greek counterpart Nikos Dendias agreed on the move during a congratulatory phone conversation between the two over their new posts. “The two ministers agreed to the resumption of the confidence-building measures meetings and to discuss the details during NATO’s Vilnius summit [next week],” according to a Turkish readout of Wednesday's call.
The announcements are the culmination of a series of fence-mending steps between the two countries after the twin February earthquakes that killed more than 50,000 people in Turkey's southeast. Dendias, who served as the foreign minister under the previous Greek government until he was tapped as the new defense chief in the new Cabinet unveiled last week, became one of the first top diplomats to visit Turkey after the devastating earthquakes.
Dendias and Guler also agreed to keep channels of dialogue open, according to the Turkish readout.
