The Times 10 December 2019 - article by Hannah Lucinda Smith
Turkey is set to defy EU
warnings and acquire a third drilling ship to extract gas from disputed waters
in the eastern Mediterranean.
The move to increase Ankara’s fleet of gas
extraction vessels, purchasing a third ship from Norway, comes amid efforts to protect
Turkey against any possible international sanctions over its attempts to secure
access to natural gas reserves off Cyprus.
Ankara is also to train personnel in drilling
and exploration, Sabah, a Turkish newspaper part-owned by President
Erdogan’s extended family, reported.
Turkey and Libya have a bilateral maritime agreement
that sections off part of the eastern Mediterranean. A leaked map of the area
delineated under the pact shows it cutting through waters recognised as the
sovereign territory of Greece and the Republic of Cyprus.
Substantial gas reserves
discovered in the late 1990s are divided between the sovereign waters of Egypt,
Greece, Israel and Cyprus, whose sea borders were marked out and
internationally recognised in 2004.
However, Turkey has been cranking up the tension
in the seas around Cyprus over the past three years, insisting the Turkish
Cypriots who live in the northern third of the island in a state recognised
only by Ankara, should take a share of the profit of any gas extraction.
It has recently sent two drilling ships, Fatih
and Yavuz, into Cyprus’s economic exclusion zone and is blocking an
Italian drilling ship, which had been contracted by Nicosia, from starting
work.
Nikos Dendias, the Greek foreign minister,
accused Turkey of blackmailing Libya to secure the maritime agreement, and said
Athens would send a note to the UN outlining how the deal lacked legal
substance. “[Greece] does not believe in resolving disputes by force. But that
does not mean that it does not have the capacity and the will to protect its
national territory,” Mr Dendias said.
EU foreign ministers held talks on the
growing crisis. Josep Borrell, the bloc’s new foreign policy chief, said that
it was “not a matter of sanctions today” but that the ministers would study the
Turkey-Libya memorandum.
Several ministers voiced their opposition to
the pact, with Austrian foreign minister Alexander Schallenberg calling it “a
little bit astounding”.
Hulusi Akar, the Turkish defence minister,
insisted the memorandum with Libya was “neither a threat nor a breach of the
rights or the law of other countries”. Meanwhile, Mevlut Cavusoglu, the foreign
minister, said Turkey did not want escalation in the eastern Mediterranean, but
was “ready to respond to hostilities”.
