Erdogan’s Great Turkish Game in the Mediterranean Should Alert Europe and America.
To make his country the gas hub of Europe, the cunning President Erdogan will not hesitate to use any means.
On Monday, October 3, 2022, a high-level Turkish ministerial delegation (Ministers of Foreign Affairs, Energy, and Defense) traveled to Tripoli, the Libyan capital whose tranquility is, since the Western overthrow of Gaddafi in 2011, frequently disturbed by pitched battles between rival militias.
For the Turks, the game was worth the candle.
The Libyan interim government of Abdelhamid Dbeibah signed an operational memorandum with them to prepare for oil and gas exploitation of the rich continental shelf linking the two countries under the waters of the Mediterranean. This “Memorandum of Understanding” (MOU) activates the agreement in principle that had been signed, on November 27, 2019, in Ankara, between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Fayez al-Sarraj, the head of the UN-recognized Libyan government.
By wanting to monopolize a maritime strip between the Libyan coastline and the Turkish shoreline at the level of the city of Kas (southwest of Antalya), the Turks and those Libyans who have decided to be their vassals, violate the international law of the sea. For they are trampling happily on the Greek maritime space (especially off the Greek islands of Crete and Rhodes).
This is why these Turkish-Libyan agreements have been deemed invalid by both the EU and the United States of America.
To thank him for signing the 2019 agreement, the Turkish army offered in June 2020 a military victory to Sarraj, who managed to victoriously repel the troops of General Haftar who were besieging Tripoli. The Turks currently have on Libyan soil 2,000 soldiers belonging to their regular army and 6,000 Syrian mercenaries from the Idlib pocket, Syrian territory currently occupied by Turkey.
In the October 3, 2022 agreement, it was Dbeibah, Libya's interim prime minister in limbo (because theoretically overthrown by a motion of no confidence passed by the last democratically elected Parliament) who made a point of thanking the Turkish military for helping him, with its combat drones, drive out of Tripoli the men who sought to install the new parliament-appointed prime minister, Fathi Bachagha, who had been a good interior minister from October 2018 to March 2021.
Dbeibah had been appointed in February 2021 as interim prime minister by a conclave of Libyan personalities convened in Geneva by the UN. But the scope of his mandate did not allow him to sign foreign policy agreements. The Turkish-Libyan agreement of October 3 represents a strategic challenge for the EU.
The maritime strip it improperly traces in the eastern Mediterranean hinders the development of the EastMed project, a gas pipeline supplying southern Europe with gas from Israel (Tamar and Leviathan fields) and Egypt (Zohr field), passing through Cyprus and Greece.
The advantage of the EastMed gas pipeline is that it frees Europeans from any Russian or Turkish pressure.
Putin and Erdogan, who met in Astana (Kazakhstan) on October 13, 2022, want to make Turkey the gas hub of Europe. The advantage of the Turkish territory is that it escapes any European or American sanctions. Russia can deliver gas to it, which will then become Turkish by the operation of the Holy Spirit. Unlike money, gas has no national odor.
The Russian gas, transported by the Blue Stream 1 pipeline, arrives at the port of Novorossiysk, to cross the Black Sea to Samsun, then Ankara, where it connects to the Nabucco pipeline. From there it goes to the European part of Turkey, then to Bulgaria, then to Hungary. Turkey will certainly make a nice margin on the way. In exchange, Russia, which is present in Libya via Wagner, agrees to deliver all of western Libya to Turkey.
The Russians did not condemn the Turkish-Libyan agreement of October 3, 2022, which is contrary to the law of the sea. The Turks recognize Dbeibah, and the Russians recognize Bachagha. Libya is becoming a condominium, in the west in the hands of Turkey, and in the east in the hands of Russia and Egypt. President al-Sissi has the best relations with his Russian counterpart, who is ready to sell him nuclear power plants.
What will happen the day the Turkish navy installs a frigate to secure its illegal maritime strip? Will France be alone in coming to the rescue of the Greeks? In the eastern Mediterranean, Turkey already regularly uses blackmail against Europeans. It is blocking all negotiations on the reunification of the island of Cyprus, of which it stole 38% of the territory in a military operation in the summer of 1974, taking advantage of an America mired in Watergate.
One thing is certain: to make his country the gas hub of Europe, the cunning President Erdogan will not hesitate to use any means.
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