JOURNALIST: Now, I’d like to wrap up our interview by discussing our national issues. We will hold elections, but they will be preceded by elections in Türkiye. We are in a far better situation since the earthquakes and we are no longer experiencing the tension of the last two years.
What do you anticipate to occur following the Turkish and Greek elections?
N. DENDIAS: To be honest, we are experiencing something that is unique, just to let the Greek people know where we stand. There has been zero Turkish flight activity in the Aegean for months now. Zero. Nothing is flying over the Aegean. This hasn't happened in our country since '74.
Of course, this does not mean that we are naïve, that we are unaware of the set Turkish positions, and the set Turkish claims, or that we imagine that everything has been magically resolved.
What should we do? To the extent we can - and we are doing so – we must safeguard the favorable climate so that we hand it over to the government that will emerge from the elections in Greece – expressing, of course, the hope that we will win the elections - so that an attempt could be made to reconsider our sole dispute with Türkiye in this good climate.
If Türkiye has turned its current practice in the Aegean into a collective culture of addressing the Greek-Turkish dispute, then there’s hope of finding a solution.
If you asked me though, what the odds are, I’d answer not many. But it would really be a grave mistake not to explore this possibility.
April 22, 2023