Greek Foreign Minister Dora Bakoyannis is to sign an accord with Turkish counterpart Abdullah Gul establishing a crisis management hotline between the two countries’ air forces, the Greek Foreign Ministry said on Thursday.
”The agreement has been elaborated, now it is a matter of signing it,” Greek Foreign Ministry spokesperson George Koumoutsakos told a news conference in Athens of the accord, which will be signed during Bakoyannis’s visit to Istanbul on Saturday.
The hotline will connect the Greek and Turkish air-force operational headquarters, respectively at the central Greek city of Larissa and the western Turkish city of Eskisehir, Koumoutsakos said.
The measure was announced by the Turkish foreign minister on May 25, two days after a Greek pilot was killed in a mid-air crash between Greek and Turkish fighter planes over the Aegean Sea, with the aim of preventing similar incidents in future.
Described by Koumoutsakos as a step that will ”boost trust between the two countries”, the hotline is part of efforts initiated in April 2005 to end airspace violations, a long-standing and routine source of tension between the two neighbours and Nato allies.
Greece claims an airspace extending 16km beyond its coastline, but Turkey recognises only 10km, arguing that under international rules Greece’s airspace cannot go beyond the extent of its territorial waters.
On Wednesday, Athens said it was preparing to take the territorial demarcation dispute to the International Court of Justice, but Turkey contends that more issues need to be addressed.
They include the demilitarisation of Greek islands and the regulation of Turkish flights in the Athens Flight Information Region, the flight zone overseen by the Athens airport control tower.
Scheduled to meet Gul on the sidelines of a Greek-Turkish media conference in Istanbul, Bakoyannis is also expected the discuss Turkey’s European Union-accession process ahead of a June 15 to 16 EU summit in Brussels. — AFP
