President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will in the coming days visit Turkey's sometimes uneasy NATO ally Greece, a top official said Thursday, the first visit by a Turkish head of state to its neighbour in 65 years.
Erdogan had himself, as prime minister, visited Greece in 2004 and 2010 but the trip will be the first by a Turkish president since Celal Bayer went to the country in 1952.
Turkey and Greece have a history of uneasy relations dating back to the creation of the modern Turkish Republic out of the ruins of the Ottoman Empire.
But Erdogan's Islamic-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP), which came to power in 2002, has sought a more pragmatic relationship with Athens based on trade and tourism rather than nationalism.
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