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IAN LANGSDON via Getty Images
If it had been for him, Emmanuel Macron would have already decided on sanctions against Turkey, which for months invaded the territorial waters of Cyprus and Greece with its military ships to inspect the seabed for gas. After all, today while Giuseppe Conte, the Spanish Pedro Sánchez, the Greek Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the Portuguese Antonio Costa, the Cypriot Nikos Anastasiades and the Maltese Robert Abela arrived in Ajaccio, following the French invitation to a Mediterranean summit on Turkey, Macron engaged in a verbal riot with Ankara. Strong mutual accusations.
But at the Corsica summit, the other Mediterranean countries, in addition to Greece and Cyprus, which are parties to the dispute, are evading the French president’s ‘call to arms’ against Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Seven countries facing the same sea: divided also over Turkey and Libya, fronts of a Mediterranean without peace.
In view of the extraordinary European council of 24 and 25 September, convened especially by the tensions in the Aegean, Macron only manages to reach an agreement with Mitsotakis: the full military collaboration between Paris and Athens against Ankara, is decided in a bilateral agreement before of the summit with other Mediterranean leaders. It is not little, but it is not the common reaction of the EU that the Elysee asks for. In Ajaccio Conte does not follow the head of the Elysee in a harsh tone against Turkey. “Dialogue” is their motto.
But the first to oppose a harsher sentence is Angela Merkel, the current EU president until December. So far the chancellor has limited herself to the request for “dialogue” between Athens and Ankara, so as not to upset Erdogan who, under a financial agreement that Berlin wants for the entire EU, is slowing down the flow of immigration to Germany from the Balkans.
Instead, the French president also has Libya, which separates him from the Turkish president. Macron, close to the commander of Cyrenaica Haftar, had to suffer the presence of Turkish soldiers in Tripoli in support of the UN-recognized government of Al Serraj. Before the pandemic, military tensions in Libya reached a peak, meanwhile Putin had sided with Haftar against Erdogan, so much so that an international conference in Berlin on Libya on January 19 was necessary. “We must accept the Turkish presence in Libya,” Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio surrendered a few days ago in statements to the Gazette, only to say about the alignments on the ground and the divisions.
Turkey “is no longer a partner”, are the bellicose words with which Macron opens the Ajaccio summit today. He maintains “unacceptable behavior” and before President Erdogan “we Europeans must be clear and firm”. The French president expressed “deep hope to restart a fruitful dialogue with Turkey”, but then immediately adds to the dose: Turkish ships adopt “unacceptable practices off the Libyan coast.” The reference is to the tensions with a French frigate in recent weeks. And more explicit: the agreement that Turkey signed with the government of the Libyan national agreement, which denies the legitimate rights of Greece, is “unacceptable”, while exploration activities in Cypriot waters are equally “unacceptable”.
Ankara’s response is ready. Macron has once again shown “arrogant with his old colonial reflections” in his statements on Turkey and “fuels tensions and puts the interests of the EU at risk with his personalistic and nationalist attitude,” read a note from the Foreign Ministry. Turkish.
The Ajaccio summit isolates Macron but certifies the divisions of the Mediterranean on open fronts. And this is not good news.
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