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A storm is brewing in the Eastern Mediterranean. Turkey on Tuesday accused the Greek Coast Guard of shooting at the three occupants of a boat that was sailing in Greek waters near the island of Rhodes. One of them has been seriously injured. His complaint comes just a day after Athens accused Ankara of prospecting for "illegal" hydrocarbons in waters that both countries dispute. Greece has called for an emergency meeting of the EU to address the situation.

Behind this sway of accusations there is a territorial conflict with historical roots and juicy lucrative interests. Athens was put on alert this Monday due to the activity of the Oruç Reis . Turkish media showed this ship, escorted by five Turkish frigates, heading for the southern waters of the island of Kastelorizo. According to Ankara, this prospecting plan, which will end on 23 August, is the Turkish response to the signing last week of a Greek-Egyptian agreement contrary to its interests .

Although the base of the conflict are the immense pockets of hydrocarbons that are home to the eastern seabed of the Mare Nostrum, and a storm surge has been coming for years, the waters became muddy last week when Greece agreed with Egypt the delimitation of their respective Exclusive Economic Zones (ZEE). This delimitation overlaps with the one that Turkey and the Government of Libya recognized by the United Nations indicated in a Memorandum of Understanding signed last November.

SEZs are extraterritorial areas whose resources a given country can exploit. According to the UN Convention on the Right to the Sea (UNCLOS), it can extend up to 200 nautical miles (about 370 kilometers) from the coast. Given the size and characteristics of the Mediterranean, none of the countries that it bathes can claim such an extension, so they are forced, in the best of cases, to reach agreements. It is usually delimited by an equidistant line between both coasts.

A problem comes with the islands. Kastelorizo ​​is more than 500 kilometers from mainland Greece, but just two from the Turkish coast. Although Athens has not made its aspirations explicit, Turkey maintains that islands such as Kastelorizo ​​cannot originate a Greek EEZ of an extension equivalent to that suggested by UNCLOS. "This island is located on the opposite side of the median between Turkey and Greece," says Necdet Pamir, an energy expert for the Turkish CHP party.

"According to CONVEMAR and the judicial decisions on similar cases," adds Pamir, "these islands do not have an EEZ or have a very limited area. Turkey will continue its operations in the area that it accepts as a continental shelf." Among its allegations, Ankara relies on the fact that Spain has not claimed exclusive rights over its islets near Morocco, as is the case of the Chafarinas archipelago.

At the end of last month, Turkey announced new exploration near Kastelorizo, but ended up keeping the Oruç Reis in port in response to a diplomatic initiative from Germany, supported by Spain, to mediate. The Spanish foreign minister, Arancha González Laya, assured two weeks ago, after a meeting with her Turkish counterpart Mevlut Çavusoglu, that he had conveyed to her "Turkey's desire to initiate a constructive dialogue with its neighbors in the Eastern Mediterranean." Spanish diplomatic sources explain to EL MUNDO that Spain supports, after the Minister's recent trips to Turkey and Greece, "the search for durable solutions in future negotiations."

It would be a cyclopean effort since, in all its extension, it would imply addressing entrenched conflicts such as that of Cyprus - where Turkey demands to share the benefits of hydrocarbons with the Turkish Cypriot north -, the Palestinian-Israeli, the status of various Aegean islands or even wars like those in Libya or Syria. With no apparent possibility of a major agreement on EEZs among all the riparian countries, bilateral or trilateral agreements seem to be the priority objective.

All peacekeeping efforts appear to have been derailed on Monday, with the Turkish decision to respond to the Athens-Cairo agreement by reactivating the surveys. "It is the Greek side that has broken the agreement and broken trust," protested Turkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin last week. The Hellenic Foreign Ministry, on Monday, urged Turkey to end its "illegal actions" south of Kastelorizo ​​and described the Turkish operations as "a serious new escalation."

In the absence of dialogue, muscle politics is taking over. Although there is no fear of a military clash, and in fact both Turkey and the majority of EU countries defend a dialogue path or a sanctions regime, the swords are high above the waters. In recent times, Turkish and Greek patrol boats have held hostilities in Aegean and Mediterranean waters. A misinterpreted action could quickly trigger skirmishes.

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  • Arancha González Laya
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