Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides (l) and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis (r) hold a joint press conference after a trilateral meeting at the Citadel of David Hotel, in Jerusalem, on Monday. [Abir Sultan/Pool Photo via AP]
Turkey has reacted negatively to last week’s trilateral meeting between Israel, Greece and Cyprus in Jerusalem, which it perceived as an explicitly anti-Turkish alignment.
The prime ministers of Greece and Israel, Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Benjamin Netanyahu, respectively, and Cyprus President Nikos Christodoulides, reaffirmed their commitment to deepening their cooperation across several sectors, including security.
Netanyahu did take aim at Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s revisionist declarations (their mutual distrust and personal animosity is well established), stating that those who dream of reviving empires of the past should simply forget it.
But the leaders of Greece and Cyprus were more reserved in their comments. Actually, it is worth noting that just a few weeks ago the latter had gone so far as to express his willingness to work for an improved EU-Turkey relationship during Cyprus’ rotating presidency of the European Union, which begins on January 1.
As the atmosphere on the Greece-Turkey front was further marred recently by Ankara’s exclusion from the EU’s SAFE program, Athens and Nicosia are trying to strike a balance between expanding their regional alliances, especially with Israel, as well as Egypt, while maintaining the calm waters that have developed in the Aegean over the past three years, and maintaining the prospects for a solution to the Cyprus issue.
The immediate consequence of the latest developments has been a dent in the recent positive trajectory and the first violations of Greece’s airspace by Turkish jets in nearly three years.
Greece views its deepening strategic cooperation with Israel as crucial to the region’s security architecture. At the same time, it has repeatedly made clear that it is not aimed at any third party.
With all these developments taking place, and Washington’s power broker role in the Middle East, from Gaza to Syria, as well as in the Eastern Mediterranean, including potentially acting as a facilitator between Athens and Ankara, the interest in Netanyahu’s meeting with Donald Trump on Monday in Mar-a-Lago was not confined to the bilateral US-Israeli relationship, but acquired multifaceted significance for many in the region.