Turkey’s foreign ministry has warned of the threat of action between Greece and the eastern Mediterranean blockade with Cyprus.
Turkey has denied threats of EU sanctions on its energy research activities in the disputed eastern Mediterranean.
European Union leaders warned early on Friday that they could allow Turkey if it failed to stop the blueprint for illegal drilling and exploration in water claimed by Cyprus and Greece.
“The continued use of the language of sanctions is unconstitutional,” Turkey’s foreign ministry said in a statement on Friday. “The European Union must now understand that it will come nowhere with such a discourse.”
The resource-rich coastal dispute was averted after Ankara and Athens agreed to hold research talks last month.
Both NATO-members, neighbors holding rival war games in disputed waters and advancing their rhetoric in August, called on Greece and Cyprus to demand a strong response from the European Union.
The EU summit statement said Turkey has the potential for closer ties and better trade if Ankara pledges to “conduct dialogue in good faith and refrain from unilateral actions”.
When the Turkish ministry welcomed these “positive elements”, it said “some parts were disconnected from reality”.
The EU statement showed how some countries “wanted to develop relations” with Turkey, but was an example of how Greece and Cyprus held EU-Turkish relations hostage, the ministry said.
Berke Mandirasi, a Turkish analyst with the International Crisis Group, said the EU statement was “the best thing Ankara had hoped for.”
Turkey also called on the EU to establish a mechanism to coordinate hydrocarbon activities to promote dialogue between the Cyprus Republic and Turkish Cypriots in the northern third of the island.
Cyprus has been divided since 1974 when Turkey occupied its northern third in response to the Athens-inspired uprising in Nicosia seeking to unite the whole island with Greece.
