First visit to Turkey by new Greek Foreign Minister

First of May,
a day of flowers and struggles, smells and hopes,
of dance and song in the demonstration,
of raised fists and discreet glances of love,
a beautiful day made of battles and love affairs.

This was written by new Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias, in an SMS message to his friends on the first day of this month. 

But, far from being a month of sweet smelling flowers and love, May has been more of a month of struggles and (near) fist fights for the new government in Greece. Its first four months in power have been a tough period of negotiations with the country's creditors - the EU, the ECB and the IMF - on a new "cash against reform" deal, that so far has not borne any real fruit; this period has even been described as "one step forward, two steps back." 

There is little hope for a final deal in today's Eurogroup meeting. And even worse, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble warned of the possibility of a sudden default if the right steps were not taken. 

Against such a delicate political background, Kotzias begins his first official trip to Turkey today with a series of important meetings. After his customary visit to the Greek-Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew in Istanbul, he will be received by Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davuto?lu before proceeding to Ankara to have meetings with his counterpart, Mevlüt Çavu?o?lu, and Turkish Defense Minister ?smet Y?lmaz. 

In three months as the head of Greece's foreign policy, Kotzias has followed a frenetic schedule with visits from Peking, to Moscow, to Washington and to Brussels in an effort to apply a new, proactive "multidimensional foreign policy." 

With deep knowledge of the intricacies of Turkish-Greek relations since the time he...