[LINK] Two links on the foreign relations of Greece under Syriza

[rfmcdonald]

CBC's Nil Köksal observes in "Turkey hoping for better relations with Greece after Syriza victory" that Turkey is waiting to see what will come of the new Greek government.

If political victories were cups of sugar, there are those in Turkey who might love to borrow some from its neighbour Greece.

On social media and in certain left-leaning circles, some Turks were wishing the far left Syriza Party's win in Greece might signal a bigger shift in the region, to encompass Turkey as well.

"Wishful thinking," says Dimitrios Triantaphyllou, director of the Centre of International Studies at Kadir Has University in Istanbul. "There is no correlation, the context is different," he says.

[. . .]

"We respect the decision of the Greek people," Foreign Affairs Minister Mevlüt Cavusoglu said today, adding he has met in the past with Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras.

"We'd like the meetings to continue to decrease the tension in the Aegean… We'd like the Cyprus negotiations to resume."

Meanwhile, The Guardian's Ian Traynor notes speculation inside the European Union that Greece might try to veto further sanctions against Russia for the war in Ukraine.

European governments are to push for tighter sanctions against the Kremlin and against Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine on Thursday.

But the new leftwing Greek government of Alexis Tsipras is likely to use the emergency meeting of foreign ministers in Brussels to pick its first fight with the rest of Europe.

The meeting was called at short notice by Federica Mogherini, the EU’s foreign policy coordinator, who has been forced to back down from a position calling for a relaxation of pressure on Moscow, as a result of last week’s shelling by separatists of the town of Mariupol that killed 30 civilians.

[. . .]

The Greeks complained bitterly on Tuesday that they were not consulted on the statement blaming Russia for Mariupol and calling for stiffer sanctions. This was untrue. Mogherini spoke to Tsipras by telephone.

Before coming to office on Sunday, Tsipras’s Syriza movement was a regular critic of the EU sanctions against Russia.