Saudi Gazette report

JEDDAH — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is misusing history to tamper with both geography and economy, while having illusions of the glories and grandeur of the Ottoman Empire. His actions are aimed at imposing geopolitical changes for obtaining strategic gains and economic spoils through the expansion of the territories and territorial waters of neighboring countries as if they were under the control of the erstwhile Ottoman Empire.

Erdogan is trying to solve his country’s problems and economic crises, and its need for gas and oil resources, by fabricating a new economic zone for exploration, without taking into account the sovereign rights of neighboring countries, which are regulated by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea agreement, and not by the dreams of the Ottoman Empire.

Erdogan wants to cover the internal problems of his country, and the decline in the popularity of the ruling Justice and Development Party following successive economic setbacks, by provoking an external conflict and raising the bogey about a threat to the homeland, with the aim of stemming his declining popularity as president of the republic as well as that of his party in the Turkish street.

In fact, the Turkish ambitions in the Mediterranean Sea are based on a new “imperialist” vision, expressed by the term “Blue Homeland”, which means imposing its control over more than 462,000 square meters of the surrounding seas in each of the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea, the Aegean and Marmara seas, an area equivalent to half of Turkey’s present-day area of 783,500 square kilometers.

In parallel, the so-called “Milli Charter” expresses the same “imperialist” vision, as Turkey aspires to extend its geographical borders to encompass the borders included in the charter, covering the current Iraqi Kurdistan region, the city of Mosul and the surrounding oil fields and other parts of a wide range of predominantly Sunni Arab areas of Iraq, the province of Aleppo and large parts of northern Syria, as well as other parts of Greece, the Aegean and the island of Cyprus. This has been embodied so far in its military interventions in northern Syria and Iraq.

In order to achieve Turkey’s expansionist ambitions, Erdogan and his ruling party sought to impose a new fait accompli in the Mediterranean region, through memorandum of understanding (MoU) concluded with Fayez Al-Sarraj, president of Libya’s National Accord Government, on Nov. 27, 2019, to define the maritime borders between Turkey and Libya, in what looks like a “compliance contract,” whereby the weaker party — Libya — is bound to implement all the provisions imposed on it by the stronger party — Turkey.

In fact, the Sarraj government does not have the legal authority to sign the MoU to delineate the maritime borders with Turkey, and all the powers it exercises override the terms of the Skhirat Agreement. So it does not have either the necessary mandate to sign the MoU or enjoy ratification from the internationally recognized Libyan parliament in Tobruk, facilitating its implementation.

The MoU signed between Turkey and Libya violates the most basic principles of international law, which considers agreements and treaties as a way to develop peaceful cooperation between states; guarantees equal rights, self-determination of peoples, and equality in sovereignty and independence of all states; non-interference in their internal affairs, and preventing the threat or use of force. The MoU violates all these principles.

The MoU between Turkey and the government of Al-Sarraj also violates the principles of international law on the other hand, as the principles of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea states that the rights of a country’s economic claim to the sea and the seabed, the “exclusive economic zone,” may extend to 200 nautical miles.

But Turkey insists that neither Greece (through the Greek islands scattered in the Mediterranean, such as the Island of Crete, and the Island of Kastellorizo, which is only one mile from the Turkish mainland), nor Cyprus has any right to claim an exclusive economic zone of more than 12 nautical miles in its territorial waters. Turkey considers the part extending from the Mediterranean Sea to the south of the Republic of Cyprus as a Turkish region, up to the maritime borders of Egypt.

The MoU between Turkey and the government of Tripoli is also linked to the conflict over potential gas reserves at the bottom of the Mediterranean, after the riparian countries have shown an increased appetite to search for new fields, after the great discoveries in the Israeli Tamar and Leviathan fields and the Egyptian Zohr field.

There is also competition between Turkey and Egypt to become a regional energy center, of which the latter seems to have actually succeeded in achieving it, by signing an agreement to establish a regional gas organization in Egypt.

The Erdogan regime, through the MoU, paved the way for military intervention in Libya and imposed economic agreements that tend to achieve his country’s self-interests at the expense of the Libyan people. This is in light of the Turkish president’s public admission of his country’s ambitions to control Libyan oil and gas, after Turkish efforts to explore for it in the Mediterranean Sea ended in a dismal failure.