Turkey to continue oil drills in ‘Blue Homeland,’ Turkish energy minister says
Turkey will not neglect its energy interests in the eastern Mediterranean and Libya, despite prioritizing the natural gas Sakarya field in the Black Sea, Turkish Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar said on Thursday.
Bayraktar noted that Turkish Petroleum has drilled for oil in the sea surrounding the island of Cyprus, adding that “Unfortunately we have not made any discoveries of significant monetary value.”
“However, that does not mean that we have given up on the eastern Mediterranean. We will continue to persist in our search within the ‘Blue Homeland’.”
The purported “Blue Homeland” region includes parts of the sea surrounding Cyprus and the eastern Aegean islands, in contravention of the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne.
Turkish officials use the term as a shorthand expression for Turkey’s maritime claims in the eastern Mediterranean.
