A top Turkish minister this week essentially pointed to a revisiting of Ankara’s revisionist and aggressive “Blue Homeland” doctrine by announcing seismic research in Mediterranean maritime zones unilaterally and indiscriminately carved out by Ankara and the Tripoli-based provisional government for Libya in 2019.
If the announcement-cum provocation materializes, it would be the first direct back-tracking by the Erdogan administration amid a recent rapprochement between Greece and Turkey to normalize relations after nearly four years of frigid and often tense relations.
According to a report by CNN Turk this week from Tripoli, Turkey’s Minister of Energy & Natural Resources, Alparslan Bayraktar, told participants at a forum in the strife-plagued country’s capital that “…Last year we created a legal framework for cooperation with a memorandum of understanding in the field of hydrocarbons. As part of our maritime jurisdiction agreement, we want to operate in Libyan waters. We stated that, with our vessels, we can achieve greater, more efficient and faster economic results. In the coming period… we will send a team here (in disputed waters).”
The Greek government has categorically stated in all international forums, within the EU and in no uncertain terms to Ankara, that the Turkey-Libya EEZ delimitation deal is baseless, hostile and outside the framework of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) – meaning that it will not be recognized.
