Al-Jazeera correspondent quoted Turkish military sources as saying that Ankara and Athens will resume technical meetings at the military level next week, after they agreed last Monday to hold exploratory talks to resolve their dispute over their maritime borders after 10 days.
The military sources added that military technical meetings between the two parties will be held at the headquarters of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in the Belgian capital Brussels, and both countries are members of the alliance.
The military technical meetings between Greece and Turkey touch on aspects related to establishing mechanisms to avoid skirmishes between them in the eastern Mediterranean, as the forces of the two countries conducted special military exercises for each of them with regional partners, and two warships collided with them last August.
On the other hand, the exploratory (preliminary) political talks between the two sides seek to find a solution to the dispute over sovereignty over the eastern Mediterranean regions claimed by each party.
Ankara and Athens held 60 rounds of talks between 2002 and 2016, but plans to resume talks last year were stalled by Turkey sending a ship to explore energy resources in disputed areas in the eastern Mediterranean, angering Greece and the European Union.
Exploratory negotiations
The Turkish Foreign Ministry announced earlier that the exploratory negotiations with Athens will take place on the 25th of this month in Istanbul, at a time when its Greek counterpart expressed its willingness to engage in joint exploratory talks on the continental shelf and exclusive economic zones.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said last Tuesday that he hoped the resumption of talks with Greece over a dispute over maritime claims "ushered in a new era" and urged Athens not to escalate tension in the region.
"We must stop making the Mediterranean an area of competition, and move to what serves our interests in the long term," he told the ambassadors of the European Union countries in Ankara.
It is reported that the leaders of the European Union imposed sanctions on Turkish personalities last month, in response to what they said were "unilateral activities and provocations" in disputed waters near Cyprus and Greece.