JOURNALIST: Tell us about your first visit to Turkey.
D. AVRAMOPOULOS: This is my first visit to Turkey in the capacity of Foreign Minister, and I am here for the purpose of participating in the Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC) Conference. And, as I said earlier, I would not neglect to visit and pay my respects to His All Holiness Patriarch Bartholomew.
It is well known that Greece, in spite of the crisis, continues to be an important, dynamic factor in its wider geopolitical region, always underscoring its central, consistent and stabilizing role. So, we support these cooperation initiatives.
Beyond that, we want to maintain good neighbourly relations with neighbouring Turkey. Soon, and following Greek Prime Minister Samaras’s recent communication with Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan, we will move to once again upgrade our relations, always within a framework of mutual respect.
At the same time, our homeland is struggling to find its orientation and its pace again within the European Union. the European Council is coming up, and, of course, our country is moving ahead with confidence and conviction, taking on responsibilities and commitments that it will honour, having as its top priority the strengthening of social cohesion, the remedying of injustices that have unfortunately been present until now, and the shaping of an environment of development and progress.
The Greece of optimism is coming. The Greece of progress is rising in a spirit of unity, which right now more than ever is a vital element in and prerequisite for our success.
JOURNALIST: You will be meeting with your Turkish counterpart tomorrow. Do you have a specific agenda?
D. AVRAMOPOULOS: This is a meeting within the framework of a multilateral Conference. We won’t be holding talks – that’s not on the programme. But we will certainly reaffirm – I would like to believe – our mutual will to move ahead, cultivating good neighbourly relations that will enable us to open a new chapter in the relations between the two countries.
But that is not why I’m here. I’m here to participate in the Conference. But after the recent developments in the country, within the framework of our foreign policy, we will certainly move in the direction shared by all the governments of Greece for years now, opening the road for deepening and strengthening of cooperation.
But always, as I said earlier, in the framework of an environment, conditions and terms of mutual respect.
JOURNALIST: Thank you.
June 25, 2012