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Ukraine at the time dismissed the assertion as untrue and politically motivated. “This is complete disinformation from the Russian side,” Viktor Vyshnov, deputy head of Ukraine’s Maritime Administration, told Reuters. “This was done to justify the closure of these districts of the Black Sea under so-called ‘danger of mines.’ ”

A 1907 international treaty prohibits countries from laying unanchored mines designed to damage ships unless they can be controlled or are “constructed as to become harmless one hour at most after the person who laid them ceases to control them.”

Meanwhile, Turkey said Monday that it had neutralized a mine detected off the coast of Igneada, a town in the country’s northwest near the border with Bulgaria, while on Saturday another mine, which was thought to have drifted from the Black Sea, forced a temporary closure of the Bosporus, the key waterway that runs through Istanbul.

fears that the conflict between Russia and Ukraine could threaten traffic in the Bosporus, a choke point for global energy supplies and commerce.

On Saturday, Turkey’s defense minister, Hulusi Akar, described the mine as “old” and said Turkey had been in touch with the Kremlin and with Kyiv about its appearance in the Bosporus.

Retired Turkish rear admiral Deniz Kutluk told MEE that Blue Motherland’s main aim was to show the real capabilities of Turkey's navy for deterrence, rather than sending messages to any neighbouring country. “There was this outside perception that the Turkish navy has been undermined by domestic shocks," he said.  "Senior commanders seem to understand this misperception. That’s why they wanted to reveal to the world that the Turkish navy is capable of simultaneously fighting in three seas surrounding Turkey.”

the drills come a week after Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu declared that Turkey would in coming days send two ships to the waters near Cyprus to begin exploring for oil and gas

Nothing at all can be done in the Mediterranean without Turkey, we will not allow that

Last November, Greece, Italy and Cyprus signed a $7bn deal with Israel to lay a pipeline and purchase Israeli natural gas, which will eventually reach wider European markets.

Necdet Ozcelik, an independent security analyst who served as an operations sergeant in the Turkish special forces, told MEE that Blue Motherland was being used to demonstrate that Turkey could provide energy security and act as a transit hub for resources in the region. “The competition in eastern Mediterranean for energy resources will be increasingly under the spotlight as the Syrian crisis comes to an end," he said. 

During Ahmet Davutoğlu’s tenure as Turkey’s prime minister, relations between Ankara and the Tobruk-based parliament deteriorated to the point where all Turkish firms were expelled from Libya. 

Ankara's efforts to gain influence in Libya pale in comparison to the security assets that Moscow and Egypt may be preparing for a more expanded military presence in Libya. On November 7, 2018, Haftar and his senior staff visited Moscow for their latest meeting with Russia's defense minister Sergei Shoigu. Following the session, the Libyan Armed Forces released a video showing the presence of Yevgeny Prigozhin, an associate of Russian President Vladimir Putin and linked to several Russian private military companies, including the Wagner Group that allegedly participated in operations in Syria. Prigozhin's presence at the Haftar-Shoigu meeting has suggested to observers within Russia and beyond that Moscow may be gearing up for some form of increased intervention in Libya with operations similar to those conducted in Syria.

from November 3 to 16, Egypt hosted a two-week long joint exercise with the militaries of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Jordan. Dubbed Arab Shield 1, the exercise involved land, naval, and air forces as well as Special Forces and took place at Egypt's base in Marsa Matrouh. While some view the exercises as a step toward creating an 'Arab NATO' to confront Iran, the massive joint Arab exercise on Egypt's Mediterranean coast sent a clear signal to Turkey and demonstrated the sort of coalition Egypt could muster should it decide to expand its military footprint in Libya

both Russia and Egypt have strategic incentives to escalate their support for the aging Libyan commander Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar.  In April 2018, the general suffered a stroke and required hospitalization in an intensive care unit in Paris.  Although two of Haftar's sons are commanders in the Libyan National Army, it is unclear whether either one of them could maintain the loyalty of the coalition of diverse factions that have united under the figure of Khalifa Haftar.  It would behoove both Moscow and Cairo to press their current advantage and deepen their respective positions in preparation for a post-Haftar era.

Moscow’s military presence in Libya would enable the Kremlin to complete a Russian ring around the southern half of the eastern Mediterranean. It is worth noting that Vladimir Putin's Russia is more popular than NATO in Greece and among Greek Cypriots. With only 195 nautical miles (360 km) separating Tobruk and Crete, Turkey thus faces the prospect of eventually finding itself encircled by a Russian presence among all of its regional adversaries

The change in the balance of power in North Africa in favor of Russia and Egypt inevitably and severely undermines Turkey's already challenging strategic position in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Turkey's drilling operations near Cyprus prompted the EU to threaten sanctions that stipulated severing high-level contacts with Turkey, suspending the Comprehensive Air Transport Agreement and reducing 145.8 million euros ($161.4 million) in funding the EU was to provide until 2020. On Nov. 11, the EU announced the framework of sanctions targeting people and institutions participating in Turkey’s exploration activities.

Europe's legal system offers flexibilities that can benefit IS members. If those sent to Germany are not definitively implicated in armed clashes, killing or torture, they can avoid the court process. Just having traveled to IS-controlled areas isn't enough; prosecutors want proof that those sent back intentionally joined IS.

Sending IS members back to their original countries is a major issue, even beyond Turkey’s desire to use such deportations for its own interests. The decision by some countries to revoke the citizenship of IS members has made the issue much more complex. For instance, as of February the UK had revoked the citizenship of about 100 returnees.

According to official data, there are 1,180 IS suspects in Turkish prisons, 250 in repatriation centers and 850 in areas Turkey controls in Syria. There are also an estimated 90,000 IS-affiliated suspects in Kurdish camps in Syria. Ankara was accused of allowing some prisoners to escape during the operation it launched in Syria last month.

A European official who deals with IS issues said he, like others, sees Erdogan's actions as blackmail. “Erdogan, with his blackmail policy, gets whatever he wants because economic interests override [everything else]. Fear of immigration is big," he told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity. “[European countries] didn’t want to take the IS militants and their families while they were held by Kurds; they wanted them to stay there. Some countries quietly brought over some IS families. But this is not a sustainable policy. Now as Erdogan is [deporting] them, many countries are astounded,”

Turkey says it has the longest coastline in the eastern Mediterranean but that it is penned in to a narrow strip of coastal water by the presence of numerous small Greek islands close to its shore. Greece and other regional states cite a United Nations accord to support their maritime demarcations.

UNHCR said that there have been at least 21 boat voyage attempts from Lebanon to Cyprus by Syrians, Lebanese and migrant workers between July 14 and September amid worsening economic conditions in Lebanon.

The Greek Island Kastellorizo, where most of the Greek military buildup has been happening since early 2022, is 600 kilometers away from Greece’s mainland, while it is only 1950 meters away from Turkey.

repeated threats by Turkish officials have not prevented Greece from announcing in late December its intention to unilaterally extend its maritime zone to a point twelve nautical miles southwest of Crete

Greece’s decision has obviously angered Turkey and Libya, which will be directly affected. Yet, Greece’s unilateral move has also been frowned upon by Egypt, which has been a strong ally to Greece against Turkey

it is not expected that Egypt and Greece would clash over these uncoordinated demarcations. However, such moves may overturn or completely invalidate their Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) agreement, which they signed in August 2020 to rescind the maritime agreement signed between Turkey and the former Libyan interim Government of National Accord (GNA) in December 2019. In other words, this is not serving Greece’s goal to curb Turkey’s advances to use the Libyan maritime zone to conduct seismic research for hydrocarbon resources. That is particularly true in light of the improvement of Turkey-Egypt relations following a historic handshake between the Egyptian and Turkish presidents in Doha in early December. It does not seem that Egypt is planning to end its EEZ agreement with Greece, but it reserves the right to sign similar agreements with Turkey in the future.

two new bilateral agreements. One agreement allows Libya’s interim Government of National Unity (GNU) to receive advanced weapons, including drones, from Turkey. The other memorandum admits Turkey to the Libyan waters in the Mediterranean for hydrocarbon exploration purposes. In a provocative response to Greece’s and Egypt’s objection to these memoranda, the Libyan and the Turkish officials plainly said they “do not care for what third parties think about our bilateral agreements.”

Turkey called for open negotiations with all involved parties in the Eastern Mediterranean. In the past year, Ankara led a successful campaign to mend broken ties with all its neighbors in the Middle East and the Eastern Mediterranean, including Egypt, Israel, and Syria. Turkey’s renewed relations with neighboring countries, in addition to Turkey’s mediator role in the Russia-Ukraine crisis, have dramatically improved Turkey’s situation in the Eastern Mediterranean

Libya is just another victim of an unfair agreement signed over a century ago in the fog of world wars. Rather than bringing peace, the Lausanne Agreement (1922) has left the Eastern Mediterranean with a chronic conflict over a messy geographic ordeal that the successive regional leaders have failed to resolve. The agreement preserved Turkish sovereignty over Turkey’s mainland but inelegantly stripped Turkey of its rights in the seabed resources of the Mediterranean, despite being the country with the longest border (1870 km) in the hydrocarbon-rich sea.

According to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), an exclusive economic zone (EEZ) of 200 nautical miles (370 km) may be claimed by coastal countries. If the distance between the shores of two neighboring countries is less than this space, the maritime demarcation between them should be drawn exactly at the half-line distance. However, this is not the case for Turkey, which is literally cuffed to its own shores, either in the southern area towards Cyprus or the southwest zone towards Greece, because Lausanne Agreement gave all the small islands in the Aegean and Mediterranean to Greece.

In the summer of 2020, the quiet basin of the Eastern Mediterranean witnessed an unprecedented number of military encounters disguised as joint aero-naval military exercises, wherein advanced fighter jets and navy arsenals from outside the region intervened. In 2023, these conflicts have a high potential to be re-ignited if they are not preceded by pragmatic negotiations wherein all the concerned parties on the three shores of the Eastern Mediterranean are involved.