Productive procrastination

Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Recep Tayyip Erdogan "instructed their foreign ministers to examine whether conditions are suitable for discussions to begin on the delineation of the continental shelf and the exclusive economic zone," Foreign Minister George Gerapetritis said, following the two leaders' meeting. In other words, the two ministers will discuss whether talks can begin which might lead to some form of agreement for their countries to submit the issue to the International Court. This does not mean that any discussion that starts will lead to The Hague. And there, too, we don't know where proceedings will go. There is also the likelihood that the two ministers will determine that conditions right now are not "suitable." In short, we are now before the beginning of the beginning of a possible negotiation. To underline - without saying so overtly - that this situation is useful...