The Turkish president's statements come after the European Union has proposed sanctions against the Eurasian nation

Erdogan warns that sanctions will not deter Turkey from exploring resources in the eastern Mediterranean

photo_camera PHOTO/AP - The President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan

Turkey's President Receo Tayyip Erdogan has said that his country will not give in to provocations or threats of sanctions in the eastern Mediterranean, where Ankara is engaged in a dispute over maritime borders with Greece, according to the Europa Press agency. The conflict over economic rights in this area, which has brought Ankara and Athens to the brink of military confrontation for weeks, is for the Turkish government a fight "for the living space" of the Eurasian country. This confrontation has been going on for more than a decade, since huge natural gas deposits were discovered in the south and south-east of Cyprus, which has accelerated the competition of the coastal countries to delimit an exclusive economic zone (EEZ) off their coasts. 

Ankara is pressing ahead with plans for continued exploration in the face of warnings from Greece, which has repeated on numerous occasions that Turkey is violating its sovereignty. Erdogan's statements do not call for calm and reflect a desire to continue the verbal and military escalation. EU foreign ministers met on Saturday to discuss the conflict in the eastern Mediterranean and hinted at the possibility of imposing sanctions on Turkey. The most paradoxical aspect of the tension between Greece and Turkey is that both nations are allies in NATO, which further complicates the situation. 

New shipment of an exploration vessel

The Turkish government has not shied away from the warnings and on Sunday sent another oil exploration vessel, in a gesture of reaffirming control over the maritime area that Turkey and Cyprus claim as an exclusive economic zone, according to the Turkish daily Hürriyet. The dispatch of the explorer Yavuz, accompanied by three support and supply vessels - the Orhan Bey, the Ertugrul Bey and the Osman Bey - was announced on Saturday afternoon by the Navtex maritime warning service. The Navtex communiqué, issued from the Turkish station in Antalya and accessible on the Turkish Armed Forces Navigation Service website, states that the four ships will be in the indicated area until 15 September. In the note, Antalya asks all vessels to "leave space" for the Turkish ships and "strongly advises not to enter their working area".

Buque

The coordinates indicated indicate an area of 600 square kilometres about 120 kilometres southeast of the town of Paphos on the island of Cyprus. The area is equidistant from the Turkish and Egyptian coasts, about 250 kilometres from each other. Hours later, the Navtex station at Larnaca in Cyprus issued a message calling the "unauthorized and illegal activity of the drilling vessel Yavuz and support vessels in the exclusive economic zone and on the continental shelf of the Republic of Cyprus" a "serious violation of international law as well as an offence under Cypriot law".

In response, Antalya issued another Navtex message stating that Larnaca does not represent the state of Cyprus created in 1960, in line with Turkey's position that it does not recognise the Republic of Cyprus, a member of the European Union. According to its public position data, the Yavuz is already in the indicated position, accompanied by the Orhan Bey. Unlike the seismic vessel Barbaros Hayreddin Pasa, which has been exploring the seabed in eastern Cyprus since July, and the Oruç Reis, which has been operating in a maritime area halfway between Cyprus and Crete since last week, the Yavuz is a vessel equipped with a drilling rig to probe oil deposits.

The European Union's High Representative for Foreign Policy Josep Borrell warned on Sunday that sending another ship to Cyprus to intensify oil exploration "undermines efforts for dialogue" to ease tensions in that region. "Today's announcement by Turkey of further exploration activities by the vessel Yavuz in a maritime area delineated by Cyprus and Egypt unfortunately further fuels tensions and insecurity in the eastern Mediterranean," Borrell said in a statement.

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