AP reports from Athens that the first official visit by a Turkish president to Greece for six decades got off to a tense start Thursday, with Recep Tayyip Erdogan repeating comments that have alarmed his Greek hosts about the need to “update” the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne that delineated the borders of modern Turkey, among other issues.
Erdogan’s first meeting was with Greek President Prokopis Pavlopoulos, and the televised discussions between the two men, usually reserved for formalities before closed-door talks, were apparently awkward.
The two presidents engaged in a thinly-veiled verbal spat over the Muslim minority in northeastern Greece and the treaty. Erdogan’s two-day visit to Greece will include a trip to northeastern Greece Friday to meet with the community, which Greece recognizes only as a religious minority. The status of the community, which Turkey considers to be a Turkish minority, was also determined by the Treaty of Lausanne.
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Photo Source: Wikimedia Commons Copyright: NASA License: CC-BY-SA
Source: ELENA BECATOROS, Associated Press
