Daily Sabah – The European Union is unlikely to follow through on the threat to impose sanctions on Turkey after Ankara and Athens agreed to resume talks over their contested maritime claims in the Eastern Mediterranean, senior EU diplomats and officials said Wednesday.
Mediation led by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and European Council President Charles Michel has calmed Greek and Turkish tempers after weeks of tension over the disputed region, securing an agreement on Tuesday to restart talks on continental shelf boundaries that broke off in 2016. No date has been set for the exploratory talks planned to take place in Istanbul.
“From our point of view, it is, of course, important that these talks begin soon and further confidence is built up,” Steffen Seibert, a spokesperson for Merkel, told reporters in Berlin Wednesday.
“Dialogue has reduced the need to threaten sanctions on Turkey, and so there’s no consensus among the 27 for such a step right now,” one EU diplomat was cited by Reuters as saying.
Turkey’s decision to pull its seismic exploration ship, Oruç Reis, out of disputed waters was seen as helpful. A postponement of Thursday’s EU summit in Brussels, due to focus on Turkey, has also served to allow more time, a second diplomat said.
The leaders of the EU’s 27 nations are expected to review proposals for imposing sanctions on Turkey at their next summit, which was originally scheduled for this week but has been postponed until Oct. 1-2. Greece is an EU member but not Turkey.
Turkey began drilling for oil and gas near the island of Cyprus last year, amid broader fears of a military escalation in the Eastern Mediterranean as Greece and Turkey – who are NATO allies but have been estranged for years over myriad bilateral disputes – held naval drills in the area.
The Greek Cypriot administration proposed in June to impose sanctions on Turkish companies and individuals involved in drilling, but many EU states say such measures would derail diplomacy.
“The Turks are playing a clever game. Being more engaging toward Greece, they are trying to drive a wedge between the other members and us,” a Greek Cypriot diplomat said. “We seem to have been left by the wayside.”
Turkey has demanded that the host of disagreements it has with Greece be handled as a whole. Those include territorial waters in the Eastern Mediterranean, the continental shelf, demilitarization of the islands, the legal status of geographical formations, the width of national airspace and search and rescue operations.
Turkey also insists that the topics of the continental shelf and exclusive economic zones (EEZ) should be approached with equitable principles, unlike Greece’s current expansionist approach.
Turkey rejects the one-sided steps by Greece in concert with the Greek Cypriot administration in the region, which, Turkey says, overlook the rights of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC).
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