51748 - Greek EEZ and Turkish Propaganda

N. Lygeros
Translated from the Greek by Athina Kehagias

Turkey wants to convince us in every manner that it has found a common grown with the official Libyan government.
However it has many problems.
The first, regards the fact that the little delimitation line which she is trying to bring across, not only has not been ratified by the Libyan Parliament, but quite the contrary, it has already invalidated the false agreement.
The second is her economy.
The third is, that she cannot support at a practical level her statements even in regards to the Cypriot EEZ.
But the most spectacular of all is that she has not agreed with Libya to conduct research and or drillings with its state-owned oil company wthin the Libyan EEZ.
Because if Libya in fact wanted to play with Turkey, it would have simpy licensed marine blocks further in the middle line delimitation between Greece and Libya.
In this case, everything would’ve been official and legal.
But both the countries are aware that Turkey’s real potentials are inadequate for such moves.
Therefore, it seems that the most important thing for Turkey is not for her to be in the region, but for Greece not to.
However, Egypt and Israel, as well as Cyprus afterall, need the Greek EEZ.
And that was most profoundly visible through the intergovernmental agreement regarding the East Med natural gas pipeline.
This is not about a confrontation between Greece and Turkey.
Quite simply Greece is following the international law, the law of the Sea, but also the strategy of the Mediterranean, where it finds itself on common ground, not only with the countries of the region, but also with America, France and Italy, which belong to NATO.
Additionally, those who are trying to give emphasis to the issue of Kastellorizo ​​in regards to Egypt, it seems that they are unable to calculate the EEZ correctly.
Because even if the Kastellorizian ​​complex obtained neither an EEZ nor a continental shelf, the profit for Egypt would have been minimal, since we would’ve used for the calculation merely half the distance between Kastellorizo ​​and Turkey.
Consequently, Egypt has virtually no gain into resulting to such a move, since the benefit would be all for Turkey.
Whereas, it would have a great cost from not reaching an agreement with Greece, since she constitutes the only passage for her to gain access to the European Union.