Greece dismisses Turkish claims
Greek officials bristle at Turkish officials’ claims that they have allegedly recognized Turkey’s rights to a continental shelf around the Aegean islands, claims that are also reflected in Turkish media.
“No respect [to Turkish maritime jurisdiction] was shown or will be shown in the future by the Greek Armed Forces to Turkey’s illegal actions within the zone legally delimited between Greece and Egypt,” Defense Ministry officials said Friday.
On Thursday, Turkish Defense Ministry sources had expressed their thanks to Greek authorities for “respecting our [maritime] jurisdiction and for their cooperation.”
Turkey’s claims that they had given the OK for research vessel Ievoli Relume to conclude its mission near the islands of Kassos and Karpathos flew in the face of a Greek-issued navigational warning defining the mission and time of completion.
Front-page headlines in the Turkish press reflected officialdom’s positions. “Greece recognized our continental shelf,” titled Turkiye Gazetesi, while Hurriyet proclaimed “Here, it is yours: a historic permission from Ankara to Athens during the Aegean crisis.”
At the same time, Turkish officials kept accusing Greece of harassing fishermen and for migrant pushbacks in the vicinity of the Imia islets.
In an interview to daily Sabah Friday, Turkey’s Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Alparslan Bayraktar implied that research for hydrocarbons in the Aegean is not Turkey’s top priority. “Prospects in the Mediterranean appear to be better,” he said.
