“The power that controls the Mediterranean dominates three continents: Europe, Africa and Asia.” The quote corresponds to a recent article in the state-run news agency Turkish Anadolu that quote these days incriminatoriamente the media Greek, in allusion to the new show of Ankara in the courtyard of neighbors in the eastern Mediterranean, this corner of the Mare Nostrum where they meet inquinas thousand-year-old, the three religions of the book and, most importantly, natural gas reserves by value of 700,000 million dollars, according to the US Geological Survey.
So that, after its intervention in Syria, the latest move by Ankara —the dispatch of troops to Libya, following the signing in November with the legitimate Government of Tripoli agreements of military cooperation and maritime— plus seems to be a delusion, if not a mule to the large, to take advantage of the immense cake of the gas. A “fair allocation” of resources, definition of Ankara; or one shows more of the “aggressive strategy” in Turkish, according to Athens.
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The rest of the countries involved —Cyprus, Egypt and Israel—, the lead singer of the protest of the takes Athens, where the 2 of January is scheduled the signing of the agreement of the pipeline, EastMed, a joint project with Cyprus and Israel budgeted at 8,000 million dollars. Two days later, the Foreign ministers of Cyprus, Egypt and Greece are to hold a trilateral which will be added to its French counterpart. What has that to do much diplomatic movement, with Turkey and their caprices neotomanas in north Africa? Therefore, the agreement sea it signed with Libya in November yugulará —if it enters into force— the path of the pipeline, in addition to brushing the territorial waters of Greek (south of Crete) and pushing the of Cyprus.
The exclusive economic zone, which contemplates the pact, Turkish-libyan is a broad beam that is displayed diagonally, from the southwest of Turkey to the northeast of Libya. For Greece and Cyprus —of which the northern one third was occupied in 1974 by Turkey, causing a division of the island that still maintains—, the covenant violates the international maritime law. Egypt and Israel have also criticized the project, which they consider “illegal and non-binding,” and that also “puts in danger the peace and stability in the region”. Geographically, closer to Libya that Turkey is the island of Crete, on whose southern coast is captured with a certain ease radio stations libyan.
Of the countries mentioned, only Greece and Cyprus belong to the EU, which in the last European Council, expressed his “unequivocal support” to both. But also Greece and Turkey are members of NATO, to whose summit of London, in commemoration of the 70th anniversary of its creation, Athens rose to their complaints. The official response, even sotto voce, of the Alliance was that no media in bilateral issues. It should be recalled that Turkey is the second Army of NATO troops after the U.S., but also that the Alliance has a naval base in Souda (Crete) and that develops from months ago to a proactive policy on the eastern flank of Europe, Mediterranean included.
After the announcement of the covenant of maritime Turkish-libyan, a bombing in diplomatic terms, Athens expelled the ambassador of the Government of National Unity (GNU, in its abbreviation, the only one recognized by the international community) and increased their contacts with the marshal’s rebellious Khalifa Hafter, whose troops are advancing on Tripoli and that the deployment steam tries to restrain. The Foreign minister of Greek, Nikos Dendias met on Sunday in Benghazi with Hafter, who analyzed the “baseless memorandums” of Ankara and Tripoli, and later he traveled to Egypt and Cyprus.
Athens has been aware of its presence in the region since the Government of Alexis Tsipras, with regular summits trilateral (with Cyprus and Egypt or Cyprus and Israel) for the sake of energy interests in common. It was enough for Syriza to harsh criticism by its sudden proximity to a autocrat as the egyptian Abdelfatá al-Sisi, and to Israel despite its electoral commitment prior with the palestinians.
For Andreas Teofanus, professor of the University of Nicosia and director of the Center for Cypriot Studies International, the recent movements of Turkey in the eastern Mediterranean —the addition of drones to the work of prospecting in their boats in around Cyprus is another example— are a further example of a so-called gunboat diplomacy, or diplomacy by gunboat, which is exercised through the threat or use of force. “[President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan is convinced that, whatever you do, it will not change too much the position of the international community. And this is an issue that calls into question even more the regional powers, because Ankara intends to control the eastern Mediterranean, but also the margin of manoeuvre of the US” in the zone. The war in Syria, which also faces the eastern Mediterranean, it is a worrying precedent, as the dispute of Cyprus, recalls.
The resentment comes from far away. So complicated is the relationship of Greece with Turkey that the political class and all the media without exception, regardless of his parentage, ideological, refer to the economic capital of the neighboring country as Constantinople instead of Istanbul, although it fell in the hands of ottomans in 1453. There he traveled on Tuesday, Dendias, to visit the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, and meet later with the mayor of Istanbul, the social democratic Ekrem Imamoglu, not precisely related to Erdogan. Because even in a place as contradictory as the fickle East has validity to that adage that says that the enemies of my enemies are always my friends.
