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AAn increasingly contentious showdown over access to gas reserves has transformed a dispute between Turkey and Greece that was once primarily over Cyprus into one that now ensnares Libya, Israel, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, and fuels other problems. politicians in the Mediterranean and has raised fears of a naval conflict between the two NATO allies in the Aegean Sea.
The crisis has deepened in recent months with French President Emmanuel Macron leading those within the EU who oppose Turkey’s increasingly military foreign policy and saying that Turkey can already be considered a partner in the Mediterranean. It has offered French military support to Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, including the possible sale of 18 Rafale jets.
The issue was on the agenda at a meeting of the Med7 group of southern Mediterranean leaders on the French island of Corsica on Thursday and again at an EU council meeting on September 23 that will discuss the imposition of severe sanctions on the banking sector. Turkish already in distress due to its demand for access to large swaths of the eastern Mediterranean.
Germany, the main mediator between Turkey and Greece, is exploring a strengthened customs union between Turkey and the EU to defuse the dispute, which has been compounded by large hydrocarbon discoveries over the past decade in the eastern Mediterranean.
Turkey has long sought a broader customs union with the EU, and while Greece could view any offer as a reward for harassment, Germany believes both carrots and sticks are needed to persuade Turkey to change its strategy.
But Germany is also warning Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan that its current unilateral strategy is a business dead end, as no private gas company is going to cooperate with Turkey if it is trying to exploit illegal claims on gas reserves.
The scale of Turkish reserves and ambitions last year led Israel, Egypt, Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Jordan, and the Palestinian Authority to form an East Med Gas forum to craft a joint plan to extract and export gas from the region. . France would also like to join, and the United Arab Emirates, which is also fighting against the Turkish intervention in Libya, supports it, creating an imposing anti-Turkish network.
Turkey argues that Greece claims economically that the Aegean Sea is purely Greek, despite Turkey having a longer coastline.
Some Turkish analysts, such as Cem Gürdeniz, a former admiral, see it as the geopolitical problem of the 21st century and an opportunity to challenge treaty agreements made a century ago amid the collapse of the Ottoman empire. “We are defending our blue homeland,” he says. “It is a defensive doctrine after Greece and Cyprus stole our continental shelf [and] represents the greatest geostrategic challenge of the century ”.
Macron has already increased the French naval presence at sea and has called for the withdrawal of the Turkish reconnaissance ship Oruç Reis, accompanied by Turkish naval ships. The ship is conducting seismic studies in Greek waters south of Cyprus. A key moment may come on September 12, when the Turkish Navtex warning for Oruç Reis ends. If it spreads, it increases the risk of a naval engagement between Greece and Turkey, two NATO partners, either by accident or by design.
The fear that the conflict will spiral out of control has led to an urgent search for a neutral arbitrator and an agreed agenda for the talks. A NATO effort to start technical naval conflict resolution talks was delayed after Greece objected to NATO involvement. Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias insisted that talks would only begin when the threats cease. He then flew to New York to request the help of UN Secretary General António Guterres.
Parallel mediation efforts by the EU, through the German presidency, had begun to make progress. At the request of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Erdogan halted Turkish exploration activities near Cyprus last month, resuming only when Greece announced a maritime border agreement with Egypt similar to the one signed by Turkey and Libya last November.
Germany’s mediation is hampered by Turkish warnings that the EU must be impartial and that the EU is biased towards current EU members Greece and Cyprus. The Turkish ambassador to the UK, Ümit Yalçın, insists that his country is sincere in seeking talks with Greece.
A solution is difficult as both parties have legitimate claims and the inherently complex developing law of the sea is interpreted differently by Greece and Turkey, leading both parties to publish totally contradictory maps showing the extent of their continental shelf and, therefore, its economic exclusion. zones.
The UN convention on the law of the sea (Unclos), signed by 167 states but not by Turkey, establishes the limits of exclusive economic zones based on a country’s continental shelf. There have been as many as 300 similar maritime disputes around the world. The convention also allows inhabited and economically viable islands to have exclusive economic zones. Greece, through its ownership of the 12 Greek islands scattered in the Dodecanese east of Cyprus, can substantially claim exploration rights.
The small island of Kastellorizo, just 1.2 miles (2 km) off the Turkish coast and 300 miles (500 km) from the Greek mainland, is a Greek possession, but in the last century it has been in the hands of Turkey, Italy and Germany and it has been a Briton. protectorate. Turkey is threatening to send ships off the island to explore for hydrocarbon reserves.
Analysts who pressure both sides to attempt arbitration, as many countries in similar disputes have done, say that in practice the international court of justice in The Hague, which acts as an arbitration body, may not endorse the maximalist position of Greece.
“To resolve the dispute, the main question would be whether the islands have the same maritime area as the mainland,” wrote Yunus Emre Açıkgönül, a former Turkish diplomat and expert in maritime law. “Turkey wants to ignore the Greek islands from the definition of the EEZ, while Greece would like to give all the weight to these islands. There is no clear answer to these questions. The effect that should be granted to the islands has been one of the most controversial issues in the history of the law defining maritime limits ”.
But he says case law shows that factors such as the size, status and location of an island and its distance from the mainland must be taken into account. It is unlikely, for example, that the arbitration will find Kastellorizo justified in expanding the Greek exclusive economic zone of Rhodes another 80 miles (125 km) further east, depriving Turkey of 400,000 square kilometers of water.
To lure Turkey back into the arbitration lottery would be difficult as there is a risk that most of the Aegean will remain Greek. But Turkey and Greece almost agreed to resolve their differences at the ICJ in 1976-78, and the plan failed because of preconditions. The stakes are higher now.
The most important diplomatic judgment is whether the conflict is just a dispute over gas, which the cartographers can resolve, or is instead driven by Erdogan appropriating a pan-Islamic Ottoman ideology, largely due to his political weakness. internal.
Blue homeland theorists claim that Turkey’s problems stem from unfair treatment by former colonial powers, including pro-Greek former British Prime Minister David Lloyd George. Erdogan’s supporters argue that at a point of historic weakness and without a navy, Turkey was forced to sign the Sèvres treaty in 1920, and its inadequate revision in the Lausanne treaty in 1923. This effectively left Turkey trapped as a landlocked power. even though it has some 5,000 miles (8,000 km) of coastline.
Concern in the French political classes about the general political direction of Turkey is growing. Jacques Attali, who was an advisor to former French President François Mitterrand, recently said: “We have to listen to what Turkey is saying, take it very seriously and be prepared to act by all means. If our predecessors had taken the Führer’s speeches from 1933 to 1936 seriously, they could have prevented this monster from accumulating the means to do what he did. “
Former French UN envoy Gérard Araud also placed Turkish behavior in historical context. He wrote: “Russia, China and Turkey are revisionist powers that do not accept a status quo based on a world order defined largely by the West in 1945 and 1991. They are emboldened by a new global balance of power and by American politics. Where will they stop? What should Europeans do? “
Macron put it bluntly at a conference in Lugano: “We have to create Pax Mediterranea because we see that an imperial regional power returns with some fantasies of its own history, and I mean essentially Turkey. “
Turkey accuses France of hysteria and resentment. He claims that France is frustrated by the Turkish intervention in Libya in early 2020 to protect the UN-recognized Government of National Accord in Tripoli from an assault by French-backed General Khalifa Haftar.
Turkey then took advantage of the gratitude and political vulnerability of the GNA to cajole its prime minister, Fayez al-Serraj, into signing a new bilateral maritime treaty. The treaty and associated maps totally contradict previously understood Greek and Cypriot drilling rights, effectively ignoring the existence of Crete. Erdogan hailed the deal as the reversal of Sèvres and the beginning of a new order.
The next few months will decide if he is right and if that order is achieved through war or diplomacy.
