Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Markos Bolaris meets with Turkish Ambassador Burak Özügergin

Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Markos Bolaris received, in the context of a courtesy meeting, the Turkish Ambassador to Greece, Mr. Burak Özügergin.

The possibilities that arise from exercising soft politics were discussed, especially with regard to issues of culture, art, religion, education, language, and tourism. Prospects that bring the peoples of the two sides into contact and, on a second level, create the prospects for further growth of the economy, commerce, entrepreneurship and, in this manner, create the trust required for essential issues of the hard core of politics to be resolved.

As an example of this, the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs referred to his initiative for cooperation between the Hellenic Institute of Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Studies with the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts in Istanbul for an illustrative exhibition of the manuscript: “The Story of Alexander,” a manuscript which is decorated with high-quality illuminations, inscriptions in Greek, and notes in the margin in old Ottoman Turkish script. This text, where language and cultures are recorded, constitutes a meeting point among peoples.

A second proposal by the Deputy Minister was the creation of a series of events by the aforementioned Institute, under the aegis of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, with the participation of an Italian Institute from Venice and a Turkish University in Istanbul which will highlight relations between the two cities.