15 December 2015, 07:23 GMT
MOSCOW (Sputnik) — The decades-long dispute between Greece and Turkey over boundary delimitation in the Aegean Sea will be the subject of discussion for Wednesday's bilateral meeting in Istanbul, Hurriyet Daily News newspaper reported.
The meeting will mark the 59th round of exploratory contacts between Turkey and Greece, according to a press release by the Turkish Foreign Ministry.
The Aegean dispute has been a major source of tension between Greece and Turkey since the 1970s, bringing the two countries to the brink of military confrontation in 1987 and 1996. The dispute revolves around a set of issues involving the delimitation of territorial waters, airspace, demilitarized zones and the status several Aegean Sea islands.
Talks to resolve the issue began after 1999, when Turkey agreed to resolve the bilateral dispute as part of its accession deal with the European Union.
