Diplomatic relations between Algeria and Greece date back for more than 2000 years. Diplomatic relations have been solid since Algeria's first years of independence. Greece maintains an embassy in Algiers, and Algeria is represented in Greece by its embassy in Athens. Trade between Greece and Algeria is increasing, with imports of natural gas from Algeria an important factor. There have been problems with illegal immigration from Algeria to Greece in recent years, and with Algerian trafficking of Sub-Saharan Africans seeking to enter the European Union.
History
The first recorded contacts between Greeks and Algerians were struggles in the 5th century BC between the Phoenicians, who had settled in what is now Tunisia and Algeria with their capital at Carthage, and the Greek colony of Syracuse in Sicily. The capital of Numidia, Cirta (later renamed Constantine) was founded in 203 BC with the help of Greek colonists. The Greek historian Polybius discusses the wars that led to Carthage and Numidia becoming the Roman provinces of Africa and Mauretania.
After almost 600 years as part of the Roman Empire, the territory that is now Algeria was occupied by the Vandals in 428 AD. In 533–534, the Greek general Belisarius defeated the Vandals, and Africa became a province of the Byzantine empire. In 535, the Greek emperor Justinian I made Sicily a Byzantine province.
The Arab forces of Caliph Uthman invaded Sicily in 652, without success, although the Arabs managed to drive the Greeks out of North Africa between 670 and 711 AD. A serious assault on Sicily was launched in 740 from Carthage, where the Arabs had built shipyards and a permanent base from which to make more sustained attacks, again without success. In 826, Ziyadat Allah the Emir of Ifriqiya sent an army that conquered the southern shore of the island and laid siege to Syracuse, but was forced to abandon the attempt due to plague. In 831 Berber units captured Palermo after a year-long siege. Palermo became the Muslim capital of Sicily, renamed al-Madinah. Taormina fell in 902, but the Greeks clung onto territory in the island until 965.
In 1061, after a successful campaign against the Byzantines in the south of Italy, the Norman Robert Guiscard invaded the Emirate of Sicily and captured Messina. After a prolonged campaign, the Normans completed the conquest of Sicily by 1091. The Norman Kingdom of Sicily developed a vibrant culture, and became a gateway that opened the world of Greek philosophy and Muslim science to Western Europe. (Later the Normans went on to sack and occupy Constantinople itself in 1204 during the Fourth Crusade).
After the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453, most of Greece was subject to the Ottoman Empire until its declaration of independence in 1821. Algeria also became a province of the Ottoman Empire in 1517, captured by the half-Turkish Oruç Reis, who established the Barbary Corsairs. Algeria remained nominally subject to the Ottoman Empire until the French invasion of Algeria in 1830, but in practice was largely independent. The Barbary Corsairs, based in Algiers and other ports of the Barbary coast, were a severe threat to Mediterranean trade until their suppression in the early 19th century. Greek and Barbary pirates had close relations, with many Greeks sailing on Barbary ships.
A substantial proportion of the Greek speaking inhabitants of Cargèse emigrated to Sidi Merouane in Algeria between 1874 and 1876. Of the total population of 1078 in 1872, it is estimated that 235 emigrated, all of them Greek speakers. According to anecdotal evidence from some Greeks in France and Corsican Greek descendents living in Greece, most of the Greek inhabitants of Sidi Merouane who survived the Algerian War of Independence resettled in Southern France following Algeria's independence from France in 1962, having largely assimilated with other French and European Pied-Noir settlers in Algeria, although a small number are known to have settled in Greece or emigrated to the United States.
Greece was among the first countries to establish diplomatic relations with Algeria after its independence in 1962, by upgrading the then Greek Consulate General in Algiers to an embassy in 1963.