Turkish Foreign Minister Davutoglu on visit to Athens
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu was in Athens on Friday for talks with his Greek counterpart, Evangelos Venizelos, and with Prime Minister Antonis Samaras that were expected to focus on bilateral ties and the forthcoming resumption of negotiations on the Cyprus problem.
Davutoglu met with Venizelos in the morning and the two men were to give a joint press conference to the media.
Apart from bilateral affairs and Cyprus, the talks, were also expected to touch on the content and timing of the third Greek-Turkish High-Level Cooperation Council.
Davutoglu’s visit to Athens follows one by Venizelos to Ankara in July.
In comments made on the eve of his visit to Athens, Davutoglu described the mass killings of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey nearly a century ago as “an expulsion.” “The expulsion of the Armenians in 1915 was inhuman, and Turkey never supported this initiative,” he said. Some 20 countries worldwide, including Greece, recognize the mass killings as genocide.
