Mediterranean Politics

November a new protest movement spread, quite unexpectedly, across Italy. At first glance its participants seemed rather silly. The ‘sardines’, as they called themselves, occupied to overflowing Bologna’s famous Piazza Grande, bearing images and placards of the eponymous fish, a symbol which, according to the organisers was to represent togetherness, non-violence and freedom on a massive scale.

90 piazzas were briefly occupied, the overall numbers involved in spontaneous protest being the greatest since the Second World War

Why this movement in particular has been picked up I don’t know. They’ve certainly used social media to the maximum. But if we are uncertain about causes, there can be no doubt about effects. They’ve interrupted the polls. They’ve already made Salvini dip a whole percentage point, which is big. Clearly, they’re serving some purpose.

This past October, the Italian Parliament’s Constitutional Affairs Committee brought back to the table the discussion about a reform of the citizenship law currently in force, which dates back to 1992 and mainly awards Italian citizenship through blood ties. The so-called jus culturae (Latin for “cultural right”) would offer a third alternative to the more common jus soli and jus sanguinis, which recognize birthright citizenship and citizenship by bloodlines, respectively. The reform instead proposes citizenship by cultural assimilation, mainly through the Italian education system, and aims to support demographic growth in a country with low birth rates.

during the 2017-2018 academic year, 842,000 “foreign” students enrolled at Italian public schools didn’t have Italian citizenship. (The report labels as foreign those students who hold residence permits but not Italian nationality.) If approved, the law will deliver automatic citizenship to all those children who were born in or entered Italy before turning 12 and finished at least five years of Italian schooling.

Next Generation Italy, a grassroots group of first- and second-generation Italians. Their work aims to give a voice to young Italians with immigrant backgrounds who do not feel sufficiently represented in Italian politics and are now asserting the importance of their citizenship rights and demanding fair representation in politics. It’s a rare opportunity for Italians to hear and learn directly from those affected by Italy’s immigration policies—rather than from politicians with no skin in the game.

Turkey was the only member to vote against two resolutions adopted by the UN General Assembly on the oceans and seas linked to the landmark 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS)

The “Oceans and the law of the sea” resolution — adopted by a recorded vote of 135 in favor to one against (Turkey), with three abstentions (Colombia, El Salvador, Venezuela) — called on states that have not done so to become parties to the Agreement for the Implementation of the UN Convention.

Mavroyiannis also criticized a Turkey-Libya deal to delimitate their maritime borders. “No country can pursue outlandish maritime claims guided by might, and not by well-established rules of international law, and no state should enter into dubious bilateral arrangements that contravene the convention,”

Cyprus has petitioned the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague to safeguard its offshore mineral rights, its president said on Thursday, according to Reuters, upping the ante with neighbor Turkey which disputes its claims.

Cyprus’s internationally recognized government discovered offshore gas in 2011 but has been at loggerheads with Turkey over maritime zones around the island, where it has granted licenses to multinational companies for oil and gas research.

Turkey, which does not have diplomatic relations with Cyprus’s government, says that some areas Nicosia operates in are either on the Turkish continental shelf or in areas where the breakaway Turkish Cypriot state has rights over any finds. It has sent its own drill ships to the island.

Since the opening of the Suez Canal, the renowned waterway connecting the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea, its environmental impact has been a matter of concern, with the arrival of nonindigenous species from other regions. Since the official inauguration 150 years ago, the number of species that have arrived through the canal — known as Lessepsian or Erythrean species — is estimated to exceed 400, according to different studies. This is a substantial migration that some observers warn is causing the most significant biogeographic change currently underway worldwide.

“This has caused a substantial change in the traffic [food] webs of the Eastern Mediterranean, and such kind of life chain change has not been observed anywhere else in the world.”

Even if the introduction of Erythrean species started as soon as the canal opened, only a few established in the Mediterranean back then. It has only been in the last decades that the process has skyrocketed, and the number of alien species in the Mediterranean — not only Lessepsian — more than doubled between 1970 and 2015, bringing a new sense of urgency.

a poster in a Moroccan bus station. Apparently hung by the major transport company CTM, it announced it would be "strictly forbidden to sell CTM tickets to Africans" traveling to cities near Europe if they couldn't produce a valid Moroccan residency permit. It was clear “African” referred to black sub-Saharans and not Moroccans.

Though the poster’s words came as a shock to most, the policy behind them has been in practice for several years, migrants say. And rather than the intended effect of curbing migration, such policies have only cultivated illegal trafficking networks. 

Morocco, a country of both origin and transit for migration, is a tense middle ground. The kingdom is the closest African country to Europe and shares land borders with two Spanish enclaves, making it a practical conduit for migrants. After Turkey and the European Union signed a border deal in 2016 and Italy closed its southern ports in 2018, scores more migrants headed for Morocco. 

While it is natural be outraged by the locking up of children in Donald Trump’s United States or the criminalization of rescues in Italy during Matteo Salvini’s reign as interior minister, this deadly game is sadly not just being played by a few erratic and callous politicians. Rather, it is systematic.

For many years now, a key part of the game has been to get poorer neighbors to do the dirty work of deterring migration

outsourcing of migration and border controls represents a spectacular own goal not just in humanitarian terms, but also politically

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has once again stunned Europe, this time by threatening to send captured Islamic State (IS) suspects there

Erdogan's most recent threats came as he was responding to the European Union warning of sanctions against Turkey’s drilling operations in the eastern Mediterranean.

Ankara is angry that the Cyprus government is pursuing oil and natural gas exploration without ensuring the rights of the Turkish side, and that the EU is backing Cyprus. Ankara has found itself isolated. Greece, which had made exploration deals with Italy's ENI, France's Total and America's Noble and ExxonMobil, secured the full support of the United States and the EU last year. Early this year, the Republic of Cyprus, Greece, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Palestine and Egypt established the Eastern Mediterranean Gas Forum in Cairo.

Picasso-Mediterranee, a two-year project involving a range of museums, galleries and art centers to explore Picasso's relation to the Mediterranean, which served as his home and as inspiration. Picasso, undeniably Mediterranean, drew inspiration from both the northern and southern shores of the sea. The culture and myths of ancient Greece as well as the Middle Eastern were of great interest to him. In version L of “Women of Algiers,” a series of 15 paintings and hundreds of sketches paying tribute to the French orientalist painter Eugene Delacroix, he drew a single woman with a hookah, an image inspired by the ancient Middle Eastern goddess Astarte. Picasso-Mediterranee presented more than forty-five exhibitions in Mediterranean cities during 2017-2019. At the press conference for the Izmir opening, Laurent Le Bon, president of the Paris-based Picasso National Museum, remarked, “Monographic, thematic or exploring the relationship between Picasso and other artists, all provide an innovative approach to Picasso’s works as seen through the prism of the Mediterranean world.” The Paris museum oversaw the project.

There is good reason for Picasso to continue to inspire the Mediterranean world nearly half a century after his death and at a time when populations around the region are in flux. “Picasso himself was a migrant,” Le Bon recalled in Izmir. “Though he spent most of his life in France, when he applied for nationality [in 1940], he was denied.” The themes Picasso dealt with — among them poverty, inequality, social protests, and, as depicted in his most famous work, “Guernica,” civil war and destruction — still dominate the lands surrounding the sea.

In 2016, the EU signed a controversial refugee deal with Turkey, known as the EU-Turkey Statement , to stop the refugee flow from Turkey's western coast to Greece. Under the agreement, Ankara agreed to take back all refugees and migrants who cross to Greece from its territories in return for aid money and the relocation of some Syrian refugees from Turkey to Europe. As part of the deal, Greece agreed to its islands being used as "holding areas" to stop new arrivals from reaching mainland Europe, on the condition that most of the people held there would be swiftly returned to Turkey.  The plan for the containment of refugees on the Greek islands relied heavily on five "hot spots", including Moria, where asylum seekers would be registered and provided with temporary shelter.

While Turkey initially succeeded in stopping a high percentage of refugees from embarking on a dangerous journey across the Aegean Sea, this did not last long. As the relations between Ankara and Brussels took a downturn, the refugee flows to Greece began to increase again. Moreover, Greek authorities proved inefficient in processing asylum applications and Turkey kept stalling over the readmissions. As a result, the population in Moria and the other Greek "hot spot" refugee camps started to increase rapidly.

These camps, with Moria chief among them, are now places where already traumatised people are stripped off their dignity.

From Tripoli to Tyre, and Beirut to Baalbek, Lebanese have been chanting the same slogan: “All of them means all of them.” Since its independence, Lebanon has been ruled by a clique of politicians and political families who have used sectarianism, corruption and clientelism to cling to power and amass incredible wealth. Now protesters are calling for them all to be removed, from Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah to Prime Minister Saad Hariri, with nervous responses from the leaders themselves. Middle East Eye takes a quick look at some of the more prominent figures and parties in the protesters’ sights.

The Hariri family was once the darling of Saudi Arabia, but apparently no longer

Aoun is one of Lebanon’s many leaders who played an active and violent part in the country’s 1975-90 civil war. As head of the army in the war’s latter years, Aoun fought bitter conflicts with the occupying Syrian military and the Lebanese Forces paramilitary headed by his rival, Samir Geagea. In 1989, Aoun found himself besieged in the presidential palace in Baabda, where he now resides as president, and fled Syrian troops to the French embassy, which granted him exile.

Global shipping firms under pressure to cut carbon emissions are experimenting with an age-old technology: sails to harness ocean winds and reduce reliance on costly fuels.

picked by European rocket-maker Ariane Group for a sail-equipped cargo ship to transport parts for its new Ariane 6 launcher to French Guiana starting in 2022.The ship will be equipped with four huge rectangular sails rising 30 metres (100 feet) high, supplementing a motor and cutting fuel consumption by about 30 percent.

“Our 136-metre ship costs 30% more than current ships,” Zanuttini said, “but we compensate by using 80 to 90% less fuel.”Wind-powered vessels are also slower — a hard sell for some shipowners and clients who want their raw materials and merchandise to move as quick as possible.

a seemingly endless series of scandals across a network of detention centers ostensibly run by the Libyan Department for Combating Illegal Migration, which is associated with the U.N.-backed, Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA). In reality, many of the detention centers are controlled by militias.

Tens of thousands of refugees and migrants have been locked up indefinitely in Libyan detention centers over the past two and a half years, after they were intercepted by the Libyan coast guard trying to reach Italy across the Mediterranean Sea. Since 2017, the Libyan coast guard has been supported with equipment and training worth tens of millions of dollars by the European Union. This money comes from the Trust Fund for Africa—a multibillion-dollar fund created at the height of the so-called migration crisis, with the aim of preventing migration to Europe by increasing border controls and funding projects in 26 African countries

EU’s deal with Libya—a country without a stable government where conflict is raging—has been repeatedly condemned by human rights organizations. They say the EU is supporting the coast guard with the aim of circumventing the international law principle of non-refoulement, which would prohibit European ships from returning asylum-seekers and refugees to a country where they could face persecution

In parallel with Turkey’s growing defense and security rapprochement with Russia, the United States is forging closer military bonds with Greece, heralding shifts in geostrategic balances in the Balkans, the Aegean Sea and the eastern Mediterranean

Pompeo and Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias inked a protocol expanding the scope of the US-Greece Mutual Defense Cooperation Agreement, which relates to the use of Greek military facilities by US forces

The transfer of US military technologies to Greece in the fields of drones, smart munitions and army aviation; A more active use by the US Navy, including submarines, and the US Air Force of the military port and airbase at Souda Bay on the island of Crete, which is considered a gateway to the eastern Mediterranean;

Western countries – whether it’s the US, the EU or Australia – are increasingly electing populist parties, whose solution to almost every problem is: less immigration.

People move because they want to improve their lives, or the lives of their children. They move because they want to see the world. They move because they want to have agency over their own future. Whether there are fences, walls or entire oceans: people will move.

In western media, the overwhelming majority of migration reporting is from the perspective of arrival – not departure

Turkey, which occupies Northern Cyprus, has launched a last-ditch attempt to convince lawmakers to drop a provision in the annual defense authorization bill that would lift the United States’ three-decade arms embargo on Cyprus.

Congressional efforts to lift the embargo first originated in the Eastern Mediterranean Security and Partnership Act, introduced by Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The committee advanced the bill in June as an effort to deepen energy cooperation with Cyprus, Greece and Israel while rebuking Turkey for its natural gas drilling activity off the Cypriot coast.

Turkey recently expanded its drilling activities to areas where Cyprus has already awarded licenses for European companies to drill earlier this month, prompting the European Union to draw up sanctions earlier this week. Cyprus has also dispatched drones to surveil the Turkish drill ships.

No one who has visited Jerusalem over the past few years will be surprised by the preponderance of red Turkish flags with their crescent and star, fluttering over the city’s eastern Palestinian neighborhoods. These flags are just one visible manifestation of a major effort by the Turkish government to establish a presence in the Israeli capital. Investigative reports in the press, conducted over the last few years, have revealed the scope of Turkish activity in Jerusalem, which includes the renovation of homes, restoration of mosques and efforts to expose the residents of East Jerusalem to Turkish culture, including cooking workshops and Turkish-language classes. These efforts also include increasing involvement in the affairs of Al-Aqsa Mosque, as described by Ben Caspit in July 2018.

Israel has decided to put an end to this Turkish involvement in Jerusalem affairs

Israel intends to revoke the head of TIKA’s diplomatic status in Jerusalem, effectively making his presence in Israel illegal. “The era of the Ottoman Empire is over. Turkey has no reason to be in Jerusalem,” said the Foreign Ministry in an especially bellicose statement. “[Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan’s declarations that Jerusalem belongs to all Muslims are absolutely baseless and ridiculous. Israel maintains sovereignty in Jerusalem, while ensuring freedom of worship for all religions. We will not allow anyone to interrupt this sovereignty.”

The seventh tripartite summit between Egypt, Cyprus and Greece was held Oct. 8 at Ittihadiya Palace in Cairo. The summit was chaired by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and involved Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.

a joint declaration that the three presidents underlined the importance of making additional efforts to boost security and stability in the Eastern Mediterranean region, and strongly denounce any Turkish attempt to undermine the Syrian territorial integrity. They also expressed willingness to promote cooperation in the fields of natural gas drilling and transportation, and stressed the need for stronger international efforts in combating terrorism and extremism. The declaration stated that the three presidents emphasized that an effective international role to break the deadlock in the talks over the Grand Renaissance Dam is a necessity.

attributed the importance of the summit’s timing “to the need that each country supports the other in the decisive issues facing it.”

Art from the Middle East is outgrowing its "Orientalist" straitjacket.

a major exhibition in London's British Museum called Inspired by the East, that explores the significant - yet often unacknowledged - influence of Eastern culture on the West

"People might forget that there has been an exchange between East and West for centuries, much longer than we think and while, of course, some of that has been warfare, a lot of it has been diplomatic relations and artistic exchange. "Looking at this through an artistic medium and showing how there has been this interest in the 'other' from both directions over the years shows that there has been an ongoing dialogue."