Turkey ignores EU and resumes activity in the Mediterranean

Bill Murray's famous film, "Groundhog Day", told the story of a weatherman who, while covering the annual Groundhog Day event, finds himself trapped in a cycle of time, repeating the same day over and over again. 

The same thing seems to be happening in the eastern Mediterranean. Every week, a Turkish ship announces the reactivation of the gas search near Greece and Athens sends a message denouncing the Turkish interference. 

This Monday, Ankara sent the ship Oruç Reis again, together with two other ships, to the south of the island of Kastellorizo for ten days. As announced on Sunday evening by the Turkish maritime warning service Navtex. 

The Greek foreign ministry described the development as a “major escalation” and a “direct threat to peace in the region”.

Ankara had withdrawn the same vessel from contested waters in the eastern Mediterranean last month to “allow for diplomacy” before an EU summit at which Cyprus pushed for sanctions against Turkey if it continued operations in the region and that sanctions could be imposed as soon as December.

The withdrawal of the ship was taken by both Greece and Brussels as a positive step towards reducing tensions in the area. The day before the withdrawal, Foreign Ministers of Turkey, Mevlüt Çavusoglu, and Greece, Nikos Dendias, held a meeting between the two delegations in an international forum, being the first high level meeting between the two countries since the tensions in the Aegean Sea resumed this summer. 

“Turkey has proven it lacks credibiity. All those who believed Turkey meant all it said before the European summit of Oct. 1-2 now stand corrected,” government spokesman Stelios Petsas said. “Turkey did the precise opposite to what was sought by the European Council … So the only issue here is to activate more drastic solutions,” Petsas said

The declaration on Navtex, the international maritime safety system, angered Greece, announcing on Monday that the new Turkish hydrocarbon explorations near the Greek island, were "illegal". (Turkey) insists on aggressive and illegal behaviour of past centuries, and confirms its role as a factor of instability and illegality in the region," the ministry said in a statement. 

Turkish Energy Minister Fatih Donmez wrote on Twitter that the Oruc Reis had weighed anchor after undergoing maintenance. “We will continue to explore, dig and protect our rights,” he wrote. Turkey said on Monday Greece had no right to oppose Turkish seismic exploration work 15 kilometers (9.3 miles) from Turkey and 425 km (2.5 miles) from Greek territory. 

Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said Ankara’s operations were within its continental shelf and it expected Greece to refrain from steps escalating tensions.

Dendias denounced Turkey is the main factor of instability in the region, from Libya to the Aegean Sea and Cyprus, Syria, Iraq and now Nagorno-Karabakh.

Tension between Ankara and Athens in maritime waters is compounded by the ethnic division of Cyprus. The situation on the island was revived last week when the Turkish northern part of Cyprus partially reopened a spa abandoned by Greek Cypriot residents during the 1974 war. 

The government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced the reopening of the coastal quarter of Varosha, in an area only recognised by Turkey and a few days before the first round of elections in the Turkish Cypriot enclave. This meant not only that Ankara got into the elections in full, but also that the peace process stagnated even more. 

Ersin Tatar, the nationalist candidate supported by Erdogan, managed to take the lead in the first round of the elections of the self-proclaimed Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), positioning himself ahead of the outgoing leader Mustafa Akinci, according to the Electoral Council. 

With the vote count completed, the nationalist Tatar won the support of 32.35 percent of the voters, followed by Akinci with 29.84 percent and the centre-left leader of the Turkish Republican Party, Tufan Erhürman, with 21.68 percent.

For a candidate to be a winner in the first round, he or she would have had to achieve more than 50% of the support, but, as neither of them achieved it, the top two candidates will face off again on Sunday 18th. Several analysts have assured that a second round will be an "easy" victory for Akinci. 

The UN Security Council on Friday called on Turkey to reverse its decision on the return of the prospect activity in the Mediterranean. 

This Wednesday, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas will meet with Çavusoglu in Ankara to discuss the tensions in the Eastern Mediterranean. Maas will also visit Athens and Nicosia, in a further attempt by Germany to defuse tensions in the area.