Angst in the Aegean
A row between Turkey and Greece over gas is raising tension in the
eastern Mediterranean
A plethora of countries is entangled in a string of disputes in the area
*International
<https://www-economist-com.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/international/>*Economist,
Aug 20th 2020 edition
<https://www-economist-com.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/printedition/2020-08-22>
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Aug 20th 2020
ATHENS, ISTANBUL AND PARIS
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As naval battlesgo, it was not a classic. The/Kemal Reis/, a Turkish
frigate named after a 15th-century Ottoman admiral who tormented the
Venetian fleet, was one of five escorts sent to protect the/Oruc Reis/,
an exploration ship designed to hunt for undersea oil and gas.
The/Limnos/, an elderly Greek frigate charged with protecting Greece’s
Exclusive Economic Zone (eez) from such predations, watched warily from
a distance. On August 12th they collided after a clumsy manoeuvre.
Both governments tried to keep the incident under wraps, but Greek navy
officials soon leaked details to local news websites. “We have fewer and
older ships, but we protected Greece’s maritime rights,” boasted one
veteran naval officer. Greece’s defence minister is said to have
congratulated the captain of the/Limnos/. “If this goes on, we will
retaliate,” thundered Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s president. “We
shall not leave either the dead or the living of our kin alone.” After a
call to Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the Greek prime minister, Emmanuel Macron,
France’s president, said that he had decided to “temporarily reinforce”
France’s military presence in the region with two fighter jets and a
pair of warships in order to “make sure that international law is
respected.”
Dust-ups between Greece and Turkey are nothing new. The two countries
came to the brink of war in 1996 over disputed Aegean islets, and
continue to spar over them. Greece complained that Turkish warplanes
ventured into its airspace over 3,000 times in 2017. They also disagree
over the status of Cyprus, split into two after a Turkish invasion in
1974. The current dispute, however, is part of a larger tapestry of
growing tensions in the eastern Mediterranean over energy, security and
ideology. Turkey finds itself pitted against a broad coalition of
European and Middle Eastern rivals in battlegrounds stretching from
Libya to Syria.
On the face of it, the latest skirmish is all about energy. Ten years
ago Israel, the most energy-starved country in the Middle East,
announced it had a huge hydrocarbon resource, after all. Tucked beneath
1,645 metres of sea were some 450 billion cubic metres (bcm) of
recoverable gas reserves, in a field presciently named Leviathan.
Israeli officials dubbed it the best energy news in the country’s history.
The decade since has seen another boom. In 2015 Eni, an Italian
oil-and-gas giant, discovered the huge Zohr field off Egypt’s coast. Big
gasfields have been found near Cyprus, too, their names borrowed from
Ovid or Homer: Glaucus (ExxonMobil and Qatar Petroleum), Aphrodite
(Noble Energy, Royal Dutch Shell and Delek Drilling) and Calypso (Eni
and Total). Together Egypt, Israel and Cyprus have 2.3tcm of gas,
reckons Rystad Energy, a Norwegian research firm, with the potential for
a lot more. Optimists claim that such riches may not only enhance the
local supply of natural gas, but foster new co-operation in a fractious
region and, via an ambitious pipeline, bolster energy security in
Europe. Some of these lofty aspirations have been realised. Others
remain the stuff of myth.
Many countries in the region are successfully exploiting hydrocarbons
without provoking their neighbours. Zohr and Leviathan have become
important suppliers of gas to their domestic markets. Egypt has become a
hub for foreign investment. Eni’s swift development of Zohr brought
other big oil and gas companies to Egypt, lured by geology, favourable
regulations and a large, growing domestic market for gas. It helps that
Egypt is also home to two large liquefied natural gas (lng) facilities,
which can accept gas by pipeline and turn it intolngsuitable for
shipping around the world.
Shared gas interests have also fostered unlikely collaboration.
Leviathan’s gas serves not only Israel but Jordan and Egypt. Leviathan’s
developers, America’s Noble Energy and Israel’s Delek Drilling, have
taken minority stakes in the pipeline that serves Egypt. They plan to
export 18.4mcm a day of Israeli gas to Egypt by mid-2022.
Yet ten years after Leviathan’s discovery, the economics of eastern
Mediterranean energy are shakier. Oil and gas companies, under pressure
from investors, were cutting capital spending even before covid-19
punctured energy demand. The price of gas is almost half what it was in
2010. Chevron in July said it would buy Noble for a bargain $5bn.
ExxonMobil, Total and Eni have delayed further drilling off Cyprus, as
the firms slash spending and struggle to deploy crews in the pandemic.
Club Med
The scramble for resources and how best to exploit them is aggravating
international tensions. That is partly because of the awkward history
and geography of the eastern Mediterranean. Greece argues that each of
its scattered islands, however small, is legally entitled to its own
continental shelf with sole drilling rights. Turkey, hemmed into the
Aegean by a forbidding archipelagic wall of those islands, counters that
the eastern ones rest on Turkey’s continental shelf and refuses to
accept that they generate economic zones around them. It is one of only
15 countries, including Israel and Syria, that have refused to join
theunConvention on the Law of the Sea, which largely supports Greece’s case.
Turkey, which has been increasingly at odds with its Western allies over
a number of issues, from illiberalism at home to migration flows into
Europe, is also the only country to recognise the breakaway republic in
the northern third of Cyprus and therefore the legitimacy of its waters.
It insists that any exploitation of energy resources in the region must
take into account Northern Cyprus. To back up these demands, it has sent
exploration ships with naval escorts into Cypriot waters and those of
Greek islands, most recently around Kastellorizo, close to Turkey’s
mainland (see map).
“Let those who come to the region from far away, and their companies,
see that nothing can be done in that region without us,” boasted
Turkey’s foreign minister last year. In the past couple of years, Mr
Erdogan’s government has embraced a revanchist doctrine known as the
Blue Homeland, which seeks to give Turkey control over the waters of the
eastern Aegean and the northern Mediterranean, disregarding every Greek
island from Samothrace to Rhodes.
Turkey has discovered no new Mediterranean gas of its own (though as/The
Economist/went to press, there were reports it may have done so in the
Black Sea). But it too aspires to become an energy hub through the
Trans-Anatolian pipeline (tanap), which can deliver up to 16bcm from
Azerbaijan to Turkey and Europe each year. Turkey plans to increase the
pipeline’s capacity to 61bcm. “The problem is that Azerbaijan does not
have enough to fill that,” says Michael Tanchum of the Austrian
Institute for European and Security Policy. “Turkmenistan has among the
world’s largest volumes of gas, but Russia and Iran keep preventing
pipelines from there,” says Mr Tanchum. “So if you’re thinking where
Turkey can get gas that Russia can’t interfere with, that’s Iraqi
Kurdistan or Israel or the eastern Mediterranean.”
Others in the eastern Mediterranean have snubbed Turkey, however. In
January Greece, Cyprus and Israel signed a deal to build a 1,900km
undersea pipeline to carry 10bcm of natural gas a year (around a tenth
of theeu’s needs) to Europe, bypassing mainland Turkey. The viability of
the plan is questionable. The pipeline would travel at extraordinary
depth—3km below the surface in one stretch—as well as through areas of
seabed prone to earthquakes. Industry analysts reckon its projected cost
of $6bn-7bn is optimistic.
To help settle these questions, the region is getting organised—without
Turkey. In January Cyprus, Greece, Israel, Italy, Jordan and Palestine
established a bloc called the East Mediterranean Gas Forum. France has
applied for membership, America for observer status. The forum has taken
on an increasingly Turkosceptic tenor as many of its members lock horns
with Turkey over a host of issues beyond energy.
“A decade ago the question was whether these gas discoveries would help
to overcome political conflicts, or whether they would exacerbate
political conflicts”, says Sir Michael Leigh, who served in the European
Commission from 2006 to 2011. “It’s pretty clear that it’s more the
latter than the former now. The gas issue has fed into other conflicts.
And what we’re seeing is very largely a result of the standoff over Libya.”
The Libyan connection
For years, Libya has been riven by civil war between aun-recognised
government in the west and the forces of Khalifa Haftar, a renegade
general, in the east. Turkey supports the government, which works with
Islamist militias, whereas France, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates (uae)
and Russia have aided General Haftar, who last year came close to
seizing Tripoli, the capital. Though it now claims to be taking a
neutral stance, France, which is battling jihadists in Mali, views the
general as a useful bulwark against extremist forces. Total, France’s
largest energy company, has investments in Libyan oilfields controlled
by him. French anti-tank missiles were found at one of the general’s
bases last summer, though France denied sending them.
In January Turkey halted General Haftar’s offensive by sending arms,
troops and thousands of Syrian mercenaries to beef up the government in
Tripoli. That prompted a crisis in June, when a French frigate,
operating as part of anatomission, was threatened by a trio of Turkish
naval vessels while inspecting a ship suspected of breaking theunarms
embargo on Libya.
Mr Erdogan’s intervention in Libya starkly illustrated how energy and
security in the region are entangled. His price for halting General
Haftar was the Libyan government’s assent to a maritime deal bolstering
Turkey’s claims. The accord mapped out Libyan and Turkish continental
shelves andeezs spanning the Mediterranean. They overlapped with those
of Cyprus and Greece—ignoring the existence of Crete and Rhodes—and
pointedly cut across the path of the proposed pipeline. The deal
prompted howls of complaint in Greece. So on August 6th Greece and
Egypt, which supports General Haftar and chafes at Turkey’s support for
Islamist factions in the Middle East, signed their own maritime accord.
That contributed to Mr Erdogan’s decision to send in the/Oruc Reis/and
so to the latest flare-up.
Libya is only one of several Franco-Turkish flashpoints. Last year Mr
Macron denounced a Turkish offensive in northern Syria which disrupted
American, British and French support for Kurdish fighters battling
Islamic State. “This re-emergence of authoritarian powers, essentially
Turkey and Russia, which are the two main players in our neighbourhood
policy... creates a kind of turmoil,” he declared. France also responded
to Turkish incursions into Cypriot waters by expanding its naval
presence in Cyprus and conducting joint military exercises in the area
with Greece, Cyprus and Italy (see diagram).
A growing problem
Turkey’s relations with other eastern Mediterranean countries have also
soured. A decade ago Israel and Turkey were close military partners, but
that ended after Israeli commandos attacked Turkish civilian ships
trying to break a blockade of Gaza in 2010. “Greece became very
important in providing a substitute, especially in terms of training
space,” says Oded Eran, a former Israeli diplomat at the Institute for
National Security Studies in Tel Aviv. Yossi Cohen, Israel’s spy chief,
is reported to have told his Saudi, Emirati and Egyptian counterparts
last year that Turkey posed a greater threat than Iran.
He would have found a sympathetic audience, for Turkey is at loggerheads
with both Egypt and theuae. A kaleidoscope of grievances against Turkey
has helped to meld a trio of European states (Greece, Cyprus and
France), a pair of Arab ones (Egypt and theuae) and Israel into a loose
but formidable geopolitical front. “Turkey basically has had its back
against the wall for the last four or five years,” says Nathalie Tocci
of the Italian Institute of International Affairs, who advises Josep
Borrell, theeu’s foreign-policy chief. “What Turkey managed to do in the
last year is get back into the game through Libya,” she says.
When Greece and Turkey came close to war in 1996, America helped calm
the crisis. It remains a big player in the region and has its own gripes
about Turkey. After Mr Erdogan bought Russia’ss-400 air-defence system
againstnatoobjections, the Trump administration kicked Turkey out of the
programme for buyingf-35 warplanes.
In December America lifted an arms embargo on Cyprus, part of a batch of
measures it said would boost energy security in Cyprus and Europe; that
Cypriot interests align with ExxonMobil’s may have helped. Last month
America said it would fund military training for the island for the
first time and sent an aircraft-carrier to exercise with Greece off
Crete, prompting the/Oruc Reis/to scurry back to harbour. This week a
brand-new American helicopter carrier anchored in Souda Bay, a Greek
base on Crete.
Yet American policy is erratic. Its approach to Libya has see-sawed.
Donald Trump is unlikely to pay much attention to the intricacies of
maritime boundaries as America’s presidential election looms. That makes
theeu, which Cyprus joined in 2004, a vital actor. The club lacks
America’s armadas. But it has other levers at its disposal. It has
already sanctioned Turkey for “unauthorised drilling activities”. Mr
Macron is keen to go further.
Dr Erdogan makes a house call in Libya
The problem is that theeu, which makes foreign-policy decisions by
consensus, is itself divided. Italy and Spain want to smooth things over
with Turkey. Germany was irked by Greece’s decision to tweak Turkey’s
nose by signing the maritime pact with Egypt just a day before talks
between Greece and Turkey—mediated by Germany—were to take place.
Others are irritated by France, particularly its support for General
Haftar in Libya. “There is little love for Turkey in Western capitals
these days, but the French way of confronting Erdogan is not popular
either,” writes Emile Hokayem of the International Institute for
Strategic Studies in London.
On August 19th European leaders expressed “full solidarity” with Greece
and Cyprus and agreed to discuss the issue further in September,
promising that “all options will be on the table”. But Ms Tocci
concludes that “ultimately Europeans are not going to do anything
significant.” That infuriates France, which believes someone should
stand up to Turkey’s challenges to theeu’s maritime borders. “Defence is
not a spectator sport,” comments François Heisbourg of the Foundation
for Strategic Research, referring to German policy.
Neither Greece nor Turkey can afford these rising tensions in the
Mediterranean. Both depend on their coastlines for billions of dollars
from tourism. The few foreigners considering a trip to a Turkish or
Greek resort later this year may be willing to risk covid-19, but not
war. But neither country can back down easily. Mr Mitsotakis, Greece’s
centre-right prime minister, is held hostage by a nationalist faction in
his New Democracy party with enoughmps to topple his government. Mr
Erdogan may be a divisive figure, but his Mediterranean policy wins
bipartisan backing at home, notes Sinan Ülgen, a former Turkish diplomat
who chairsedam, a think-tank in Istanbul. “This is viewed as an attack
on Turkey’s national sovereignty.”
On August 16th Turkey’s foreign ministry vowed to press ahead with
exploration: “No alliance of malice will manage to prevent this. Those
who think otherwise have not taken their lessons from history.” On
August 18th another Turkish vessel, the/Yavuz/, a drillship, headed for
Cypriot waters to start four weeks of seismic surveys. A third vessel,
the/Barbaros/, has been in the area since late July. If Turkish ships
were to enter Crete’s potentially oil-rich waters, which under the
Turkey-Libya accord is assigned to Libya, then “all bets are off,” warns
Mr Tanchum. That is unlikely for the moment. But in the past, says Selim
Kuneralp, a former Turkish ambassador to theeu, “there was the army and
the president who acted as a brake. But now there is no brake and a guy
[Mr Erdogan] who’s completely unpredictable.”■
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