The focus of the German press today is the departure of the new Turkish drilling rig “Abdul Hamid Khan”, while Handesblatt notes that the dissatisfaction of Brussels Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Turkey is again sending a drilling rig to the eastern Mediterranean, thus putting on the agenda a new dispute with Greece, the publication comments. Süddeutsche Zeitung. As he notes, “two NATO member states have been arguing for years about property rights and mining rights on the seabed.”

According to Turkish Energy Minister Fatih Donmez, the drilling rig will begin operations in the “Blue Homeland,” a term that a Munich newspaper points out has a political connotation “because Turkey uses it to express its claim to much of the Aegean and the eastern Mediterranean.” .

The publication goes on to say that Ankara considers its right to possible exploitation (including natural resources in the Aegean Sea) difficult, “since Greece, relying even on tiny, uninhabited rocky islands, has demarcated its borders around its islands at the expense of Turkey.”

“However, the maritime boundaries of Greece, as an EU member state, are internationally recognized. Athens, unlike Ankara, is also a signatory to the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which establishes the legal basis for activities in sea waters and oceans.

On the other hand, the German newspaper notes that Turkey has never joined the convention and does not consider itself bound by it, adding that “Cyprus is also part of this Greek-Turkish dispute, since natural gas fields also exist around the divided Mediterranean island. . There, the Republic of Cyprus, an EU member state, and Turkey, as well as the northern part of Cyprus occupied by Turkey in 1974, are fighting for access rights. However, the “Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus” is recognized as a state only by Ankara.”

Discontent grows in Brussels

Newspaper Handelsblatt focuses on another aspect: Brussels’ irritation with Erdogan’s actions.

Referring to the position of the European Union, she emphasizes that “the balance sheets are delicate as relations between Turkey and the EU are not convincing. already problematic. In Brussels, dissatisfaction with Erdogan appears to have been growing for weeks. Not only his challenges to Greece and Cyprus, but his rapprochement with Russian President Vladimir Putin and other authoritarian leaders seem to anger partners.

Despite all this, the newspaper reports, “there are several reasons why the EU’s reaction to and the US against NATO partner and EU candidate is considered unlikely: the importance of Turkey now is too great for a harsh reaction against it.”

“In addition, EU foreign ministers. they are not to meet again until the end of August. Therefore, no European reaction to Erdogan’s antics is expected before this meeting. The Turkish leader knows very well that he has a free hand from the West, which could cause further tensions with the EU in the coming months and ahead of decisive elections in his country.”

According, of course, to the correspondents of the newspaper in Brussels and Istanbul, “discussions about the persecution of Erdogan take place only in narrow circles and are reproduced in Ankara through low diplomatic channels. Publicly, however, the Commission and Member States remain suspiciously silent. The reason is that a public rebuke is unlikely to impress the Turkish President, which in turn will highlight Brussels’ impotence.”

Source: Deutsche Welle.