Agnes Szucs
29 August 2020•Update: 30 August 2020
BRUSSELS
A former advisor to the Belgian prime minister said Turkey’s position on the Eastern Mediterranean is relevant.
“Turkey actually has a point,” Koert Debeuf said in a tweet.
He also shared a map highlighting territorial waters based on the agreement between Greece and Italy on the countries’ exclusive economic zones.
“Greek territorial waters are a bit out of proportion compared with the Turkish one," he added.
Debeuf, who is a political expert on the Middle East, in an opinion piece published Saturday in Belgian daily De Standaard shed light on the division between European nations.
Titled, Is the EU Sinking in the Mediterranean, the piece argued that the conflict between the two main political alliances of the Middle East -- Turkey, Qatar, the Muslim Brotherhood and Iran on the one hand and Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Israel on the other -- has the potential to exacerbate cracks in relations between European nations.
“This is very dangerous. It is not clear how this will end,” the piece cites a letter that Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of the Turkish Republic wrote in 1914, at the start of World War I.
Turkey resumed energy exploration earlier this month in the Eastern Mediterranean after Greece and Egypt signed a controversial maritime delimitation deal.
Greece and other countries have tried to box in Turkey’s maritime territory and energy exploration rights.
Turkey has consistently opposed Greek efforts to declare a huge exclusive economic zone, violating the interests of Turkey, the country with the longest coastline in the Mediterranean.
Ankara has also said energy resources near the island of Cyprus must be shared fairly between the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) -- which has issued Turkish state oil company Turkish Petroleum a license -- and the Greek Cypriot administration of Southern Cyprus.
