Ankara confirms Erdogan's journey to Athens

ankara - For the first time in 65 years a Turkish head of state visits neighboring Greece. The press service of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan confirmed that on Saturday, according to the Turkish newspaper Hürriyet.

Erdogan visits Greece on 7 and 8 December. Among other things, he consulted with his Greek counterpart Prokopis Pavlopoulos about the relationship between the two countries. According to sources in Athens there is also a meeting with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on the program.

Celal Bayar was in 1952 the last Turkish head of state to visit Greece. Turkey and Greece are both members of NATO, but there are often tensions between neighboring countries, including over sovereignty over Cyprus and some islands in the Aegean Sea.

At the start of this year, the tensions rose again, because Greece refused to hand eight Turkish soldiers to Turkey. They had turned to Greece during an attempted coup d'état in Turkey.