European Student Think Tank

© Dieter Schütz/ Pixelio (www.pixelio.de)

The US com­pany Noble Energy announced it would start drilling in the exclus­ive eco­nomic zone of Cyprus for nat­ural gas, licensed by the Cyp­riot gov­ern­ment. Soon after, Turk­ish Prime Min­is­ter (PM) Recep Tayyip Erdogan respon­ded: Tur­key would start drilling in its own eco­nomic zone –Tur­key and North­ern Cyprus.

The island was divided in 1974 when a Turk­ish inva­sion sep­ar­ated it into the Cyp­riot gov­ern­ment in the South, which is inter­na­tion­ally recog­nized, and the North­ern part of Cyprus, which is recog­nized and sup­por­ted only by the Turk­ish gov­ern­ment. There were always ten­sions between the two sides, but it seemed they escal­ated after the offi­cial announce­ment made by the Turk­ish Min­is­ter of Interior Besir Atalay this July: “If the peace nego­ti­ations there (Cyprus) are not con­clus­ive, and the EU gives its rotat­ing pres­id­ency to south­ern Cyprus, the real crisis will be between Tur­key and EU”.

The Turk­ish PM said he was going to mon­itor the east­ern Medi­ter­ranean with air­crafts, frig­ates and tor­pedo boats. Though, this state­ment did not seem to impede Noble Energy to start explor­at­ory drilling for gas, which began just a short time ago. The whole pro­cess, accord­ing to the Cyp­riot energy chief Solon Kassinis, is going to last for about 73 days.

Last year, Israeli and Cyp­ri­ots agreed to explore an area named Block 12. After they began work­ing there, Turk­ish Energy Min­is­ter Taner Yildiz presen­ted the drilling for gas in the east­ern Medi­ter­ranean as a pro­voca­tion. He repeatedly warned the Cyp­ri­ots to con­tinue cooper­a­tion with Noble Energy – oth­er­wise the Turk­ish research ships would also start explor­ing in the area. Erdogan also con­firmed this state­ment: right before leav­ing for the New York UN sum­mit, he said Tur­key was ready to start drilling the fol­low­ing week.

From the Cyp­riot side, Pres­id­ent Dimitris Chris­tofias urged the Turk­ish gov­ern­ment to join the nego­ti­ation table, instead of pro­ceed­ing to any action that would be against the inter­na­tional law. “If and when the Cyprus prob­lem is solved, we will share this gift that nature has given to us”, he said, adding: “they can’t talk about the rights of an illegal state”. He also presen­ted the con­cerns of Tur­key as unjus­ti­fied and need­less for the time being, cla­ri­fy­ing that the experts would need at least a year to determ­ine the qual­ity of the deposits.

The European reaction

The EU seems to be aler­ted by the on-going situ­ation. In response to the threat posed by Tur­key con­cern­ing the cease of EU-Turkish rela­tions, Maja Kocijancic – spokes­wo­man for EU for­eign policy chief Cath­er­ine Ashton – cla­ri­fied that there were no plans in chan­ging the pres­id­ency. Fur­ther­more, the European Com­mis­sion believes that this del­ic­ate situ­ation has to be dealt with from its own root and this is the on-going from 1974 dis­pute. Brus­sels urges both sides to make efforts so that they would resolve the ter­rit­orial con­flict, present­ing it as the top priority.

Future crisis

No fur­ther actions have been taken so far. It is cer­tain at the moment, Cyprus has triggered ten­sions by con­duct­ing research for oil and gas at its south­ern coast. If Tur­key decides to mon­itor the Cyp­riot ter­rit­orial waters, or if it is going to send its own research ships to start drilling as well, it is most def­in­ite that ten­sions are going to reach their highest level, mak­ing a mil­it­ary con­front­a­tion very possible.

Ank­ara is strictly refus­ing any kind of nego­ti­ations so far, since it believes that the time of nego­ti­ations has come and gone (refer­ring to the effort made by the former UN Sec­ret­ary Gen­eral, Kofi A. Anan). The Turk­ish PM strongly believes that dip­lomacy is no longer the way to over­come the dif­fi­culties with the Cyp­riot gov­ern­ment, which he repeatedly refuses to recog­nize. What is left to see, is whether the Turk­ish threats are soon about to become a real­ity that is going to affect the fra­gile secur­ity in the Medi­ter­ranean. He also con­stantly urges for the uni­fic­a­tion of the island, stat­ing that no gov­ern­ment has any right upon dis­put­able ter­rit­orial waters. In the case they become real, Tur­key will have to con­front both Cyprus and Israel – since the dis­puted Block 12 is an area that is mutu­ally agreed upon research since 2010.

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