By all accounts, the age of emotional or ranting diplomacy is over.

Our era requires one to maintain balances, seriousness, planning, and of course to defend one’s red lines.

High-pitched rhetoric that breeds great expectations and dramatic disappointments is not needed.

What is needed is a coordinated foreign policy.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu’s visit to Greece is a good opportunity to update and internalise that viewpoint.

His visit to Thrace yesterday highlights the thorns in bilateral relations, but it also projects the prospects we can have as a country.

With a step-by-step approach, with clear dividing lines with neighbouring Turkey, and with the constant reminder that Greece is a Western country that is a regional pole of stability, we can achieve results.

In this new multi-polar and fluid world – with a global public health crisis, a leadership change in the US, and the problematic Turkish domestic socio-political scene – we must consider Greek-Turkish relations over the long term.

Diplomacy is not grandstanding. It is a multi-faceted nexus of policies that determines – in combination with deterrence and readiness – the country’s character and existence, its image and position in the world.

It is an expression of government policy that lies at the core of the PM’s politics.

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