Editorial: A coordinated foreign policy

By all accounts, the age of emotional or ranting diplomacy is over.

Our era requires one to maintain balances, seriousness, planning, and of course to defend one’s red lines.

High-pitched rhetoric that breeds great expectations and dramatic disappointments is not needed.

What is needed is a coordinated foreign policy.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu’s visit to Greece is a good opportunity to update and internalise that viewpoint.

His visit to Thrace yesterday highlights the thorns in bilateral relations, but it also projects the prospects we can have as a country.

With a step-by-step approach, with clear dividing lines with neighbouring Turkey, and with the constant reminder that Greece is a Western country that is a regional pole of stability, we can achieve results.

In this new multi-polar and fluid world – with a global public health crisis, a leadership change in the US, and the problematic Turkish domestic socio-political scene – we must consider Greek-Turkish relations over the long term.

Diplomacy is not grandstanding. It is a multi-faceted nexus of policies that determines – in combination with deterrence and readiness – the country’s character and existence, its image and position in the world.

It is an expression of government policy that lies at the core of the PM’s politics.