Page 11 - MEOG Week 05

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French involvement
French President Emmanuel Macron has sent warships to the Eastern Mediterranean to give support to Greece against Turkey’s quest for energy reserves in the region.
With Macron was Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who was on a visit to the French capital Paris to garner support against Turkey at a time when hostile relations with Tur- key have eclipsed all other issues on the agenda of his near seven-month-old government. Mit- sotakis welcomed the decision and described the warships as “guarantors of peace.” “ e only way to end di erences in the eastern Mediterranean is through international justice,” he told report- ers a er holding talks with Macron. “Greece and France are pursuing a new framework of strate- gic defence.”
The EU has repeatedly called on Turkey to give up its claim to a share of the energy resources,claimingthatitsactivitiesare“illegal”, leading the Union to impose sanctions on the Republic in July last year over the issue, as well as due to Turkey’s military incursion – Operation Peace Spring – into northern Syria in October.
France is one of the most prominent sup- porters of Greece in the dispute, Macron went on to accuse Turkey of being the one responsible for raising tensions as well as causing trouble in war-torn Libya. “I want to express my concerns with regard to the behaviour of Turkey at the moment,” said Macron. “We have seen during these last days Turkish warships accompanied by Syrian mercenaries arriving on Libyan soil. is is an explicit and serious infringement of what was agreed in Berlin [conference]. It’s a broken promise.”
e Gallic-Greek alliance cements what o - cials in Athens are calling a renewed diplomatic push to counter Turkish belligerence in the Mediterranean. Greece’s defence minister, Nikos Panagiotopoulos, recently went as far as to warn that armed forces were “examining all scenarios, even that of military engagement” in the face of heightened aggression from Ankara. Rejecting Turkish demands that Greece demilitarise 16 Aegean islands, he accused Turkey of displaying unusually provocative behaviour.
e demand, made by his Turkish counter- part, hulusi Akar, follows a dramatic surge in recent months in the number of violations of Greek airspace by Turkish ghter jets. “Greece does not provoke, does not violate the sovereign rights of others, but it doesn’t like to see its own rights violated,” said Panagiotopoulos.
Tensions between the NATO allies prompted Donald Trump to take the unprecedented step of voicing concerns over the situation in a tele- phone call with the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, on 27 January. The White house spokesman Judd Deere tweeted that in a conversation focusing on Libya and Syria that the US president had also “highlighted the importance of Turkey and Greece resolving their di erences in the east Mediterranean”.
Regional tensions have escalated as Turkish
anger has risen over con icting claims to poten- tially massive energy reserves in the eastern Mediterranean.
Erdoğan’s ire has so far been aimed at Cyprus, where a feud over exploration rights has deep- ened following the discovery of natural gas deposits in waters around the island. Ignoring Turkish anger at not being included, the interna- tionally recognised Greek Cypriot government has forged ahead with the search, commission- ing international energy companies, includ- ing the French multinational Total, to explore allocated blocs off the island for underwater resources.
is month the Turkish president threatened to send more drill ships to the region in retal- iation. But an accord reached between Ankara and the UN-backed government in Tripoli in December, delineating new maritime bounda- ries between the two nations, has taken this bilat- eralanimositytoahigherlevel.
Waters south of Crete are directly challenged under the agreement, with o cials in Athens viewing it as a deliberate and unprecedented attempt to undermine the country’s sovereignty. Standing alongside Mitsotakis a er their talks, Macron said France “deplores the Turkish-Lib- yan deal in the clearest terms”.
“What we are seeing is a far more revision- ist and aggressive Turkey aiming at change of borders, be it on land or sea,” said the interna- tional relations professor Aristotle Tziampiris at the University of Piraeus. “ at, and Erdoğan’s increasing authoritarianism, is the cause of such tensions and consternation with Greece,” he said. “To counter the aggression, Athens is resolved to strengthen partnerships and strategic alliances, be it with France, other EU allies or the US.”
Tziampiris does not believe the tensions will lead inexorably to confrontation, but the possi- bility of the two neighbours slipping involuntar- ily into con ict is real.
“The chances of war are slim, not least because it would be too much of a lose-lose sit- uation,” he said, “but the chances of a [hot] inci- dent, by design or accident, are very real and that iswhatisworryingusall.”
Greece itself has reportedly long been pre- pared for a military confrontation, with Pana- giotopoulos recently warning that the country was “examining all scenarios, even that of mili- tary engagement.” is was shown with Greece’s arming of 16 Aegean islands last week, in vio- lation of international law which stipulates that they remain demilitarised. When Turkey called on Greece to disarm them and uphold interna- tional law, Greece refused to comply.
The latest flashpoint came on January 31 when the Oruc Reis was spotted in Greek terri- torial waters; the Greek frigate Nikiforos Flkaas was deployed to the area to monitor the vessel’s activity. Before entering Greek territorial waters the Oruc Reis was operating in blocks 4 and 5 of the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of Cyprus. It is believed that the vessel may have been forced to change course by bad weather.™
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