Historic foes Greece and Turkey agree to turn page

STORY: Historical foes Greece and Turkey hope to usher in a new era of closer ties.

In a landmark visit of Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan to Greece on Thursday (December 7), they agreed to pursue good neighborly relations and work on obstacles that have kept them apart, especially in the Aegean sea.

By their acrimonious standards, Thursday's summit was a remarkable lovefest without precedence.

It went on longer than expected. Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis addressed Erdogan as "Dear Tayyip" and Erdogan said he expected to receive Mitsotakis in Ankara.

This was Erdogan on Thursday:

"We want to turn the Aegean into a sea of peace and cooperation. As Turkey-Greece, we want to set an example to the whole world with the mutual steps we will take. I am saying this openly: there is no problem between us that cannot be solved."

It was a far cry from his last visit in 2017, when both sides reeled off a litany of grievances stretching back to the crumbling days of the Ottoman Empire over a century ago.

Chilly relations thawed markedly after Greece swiftly dispatched aid in the wake of a devastating earthquake in Turkey in February.

The two neighbors, who went to the brink of war in the 1990s, have long been at odds over issues including where their continental shelves start and end, energy resources, flights over the Aegean Sea and the ethnically partitioned island of Cyprus.