ISTANBUL (Reuters) – President Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday that Turkey had resumed power exploration in the eastern Mediterranean after Greece failed to deliver on its of such activities in the region.
NATO members, Turkey and Greece have long disagreed on overlapping demands for hydrocarbon resources and tensions erupted last month, leading German Chancellor Angela Merkel to talk with the country’s leaders to ease tensions.
“We have drills again,” Erdogan told reporters after attending Friday prayers at the Hagia Sophia mosque.”We do not feel compelled to communicate with those who do not have rights in the spaces of maritime jurisdiction.”
He said the Barbaros Hayreddin Passes from Turkey, a seismic prospecting vessel, had been sent to the region to fulfill its obligations.The vessel entered the waters of Cyprus at the end of July and remains in the area.
Erdogan commented when asked about an agreement signed on Thursday through Egypt and Greece for an exclusive economic zone between the two Mediterranean countries.
Diplomats in Greece said their agreement was annual for an agreement reached last year between Turkey and Libya’s identified government around the world.
However, Erdogan said that the agreement between Egypt and Greece was void and that Turkey would make its agreement with Libya “decisively”. Turkey’s Foreign Ministry said that the Egypt-Greece zone was in the domain of Turkey’s continental shelf.
Turkey and Greece also disagree on a variety of problems ranging from flights over the territory of others in the ethnically divided Aegean to Cyprus.
(Report through Ali Kucukgocmen and Nevzat Devranoglu; written through Daren Butler; edited through Dominic Evans and Susan Fenton)
Subscribe
Sign up for our news explosion.