Ankara plans Aegean research in Turkish waters
Athens is waiting to see how the Turkish Petroleum Research Organization (TPAO) research vessels will move in the northeastern Aegean Sea, within Turkish territorial waters.
The Turkish government’s gazette published the coordinates for nine locations north and south of Imvros in the eastern Aegean, at various points in the Gulf of Saros, as well as an area in the Aegean Sea a few kilometers east of the Evros estuary that has been reserved.
The General Directorate of Mines and Petroleum Products at the Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources said the area has been reserved for oil exploration.
All these developments do not, however, constitute a condition capable of undermining the calm on the ground, which is the declared will of Athens and Ankara.
Nonetheless, after many months of complete inactivity, Ankara is raising the issue of exploration in the Aegean, a debate which had been put on the back burner, despite the occasional forays of some exploration vessels into Turkish territorial waters.
It should be noted that Turkish views regarding jurisdiction in the Aegean were expressed during the recent debate on environmental protection, with Ankara objecting to the creation by Greece of a marine park at a Natura site in the Aegean.
It is, however, a declared policy of Ankara to exhaust all means to identify and exploit deposits that may lie within its zones of jurisdiction in the Eastern Mediterranean, the Black Sea and the Aegean.
The searches in the northeastern Aegean were made public immediately after the Turkish Navtex stated for the first time Ankara’s position that the maritime border in the Evros estuary is not mutually agreed upon.
The next scheduled meeting between the two leaders of Greece and Turkey will be on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York next September, while there may also be a one-on-one meeting between Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Washington, DC, at the NATO Summit.
