{"id":41764,"date":"2019-11-30T11:23:27","date_gmt":"2019-11-30T11:23:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=41764"},"modified":"2019-11-30T11:23:27","modified_gmt":"2019-11-30T11:23:27","slug":"threats-arrests-targeted-killings-silence-iraqi-dissidents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=41764","title":{"rendered":"Threats, arrests, targeted killings silence Iraqi dissidents"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\nANKARA: A memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed between Turkey and Libya on Wednesday to demarcate maritime zones in the Eastern Mediterranean has sparked condemnation from Greece.<\/p>\n

\nAthens sees the MoU as an attempt to block Greek and Cypriot energy drilling activities in the zone.<\/p>\n

\nTurkey and Greece, although allies under the NATO umbrella, have long been at loggerheads over Cyprus and especially about the maritime zones they both claim as their own.<\/p>\n

\nHailing the MoU as a victory, Ankara claims that the move aims to \u201cprotect Turkey\u2019s rights deriving from international law,\u201d while Athens considers it a violation of the sovereign rights of third countries and of the good neighborliness principle. On Friday, the Greek Foreign Ministry summoned Turkish Ambassador Burak Ozugergin.<\/p>\n

\nAhmet Sozen, who chairs the department of international relations at the Eastern Mediterranean University in Nicosia, thinks Turkey is trying to get out of the isolation that it has been facing in the Eastern Mediterranean.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cIsrael, Egypt, Greece and the Greek Cypriots have been forging bilateral and trilateral agreements keeping Turkey out of the equation for some time. Now, with the MoU with Libya, Turkey has been retaliating to this strategy,\u201d he told Arab News.<\/p>\n

\nLibya\u2019s neighbor Egypt has been closely cooperating with Greece and Cyprus on energy resources in the Eastern Mediterranean, including a possible establishment of a regional gas market. Egyptian relations with Turkey have been especially frosty since 2013. Cairo condemned the deal as \u201cillegal.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nThe controversial move came just two weeks after the EU agreed on restrictive measures against Turkey in response to its drilling activities near the Cypriot coast in violation of the established maritime economic zone off the divided island.<\/p>\n

\nMona Sukkarieh, a political risk consultant and cofounder of Middle East Strategic Perspectives, said little regard is given to the presence of a number of Greek islands\u00a0 \u2014 especially Crete, located between the coasts of Turkey and Libya \u2014 along the corridor between Libyan and Turkish shores.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cThis is not surprising because Turkey\u2019s longstanding position is that islands\u2019 capacity to generate maritime zones should be limited, compared with states with longer coastal fronts,\u201d she told Arab News.<\/p>\n

\nTurkey is among a handful of countries that did not ratify the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. According to Sukkarieh, Ankara opposed the move \u201cspecifically because it opposes provisions governing the regime of islands.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nLast year, Wess Mitchell, US assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, sent a message to Ankara over the drilling activities for hydrocarbons underway in Cyprus\u2019s exclusive economic zone. He said that \u201cTurkey\u2019s view is a minority of one versus the rest of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nSukkarieh said: \u201cThe deal is significant for Turkey because Ankara was finally able to find a partner in the Eastern Mediterranean that shares its views on the demarcation of maritime areas. On paper, Turkey is no longer alone.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ANKARA: A memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed between Turkey and Libya on Wednesday to demarcate maritime zones in the Eastern Mediterranean has sparked condemnation from Greece. Athens sees the MoU as an attempt to block Greek and Cypriot energy drilling activities in the zone. Turkey and Greece, although allies under the NATO umbrella, have long…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":41765,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41764\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/41765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}