Ankara sends Barbaros off the Cypriot coast again
Turkey is stoking tension again in Cyprus by sending surveying vessel Barbaros toward Nicosia’s exclusive economic zone on Monday, according to reports in the Cypriot press, as Athens calls on Ankara to return to the path of sensibility.
The seismographic ship of the Turkish navy will be escorted by two support vessels, following the issue of a new Navtex directive by Turkey, which commits a large region including parts of the Republic of Cyprus’s zone.
Nicosia daily Phileleftheros published a map showing that the mission of Barbaros will concern a region starting four sea miles off the Apostolos Andreas Cape on the Karpasia peninsula, northeastern Cyprus, stretching east to the Syrian-Turkish borderline coastal point.
In the last couple of months Barbaros has also conducted seismic surveys for hydrocarbon reserves further to the northwest, in the area between the coast of Karpasia and the Turkish shore.
In an interview with Ethnos newspaper in Athens on Saturday, Greek government spokesman Dimitris Tzanakopoulos invited Turkey back to the path of sensibility, "as the strategy of aggravation it has chosen is not beneficial for Turkey or for the broader region. I think sooner or later our neighbors will realize that."
