Mediterranean Politics

Turkey’s fourth drilling ship set sail today as the country continues to pursue its offshore energy exploration.  The Abdulhamid Han will conduct a two-month mission in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. The ship is considered the strongest of the country’s fleet, the official Anadolu Agency reported. 

Turkey sent a drilling ship to parts of the Mediterranean Sea claimed by Greece in 2018 and began conducting exploration in maritime territory claimed by Cyprus in 2019. Turkey halted the activities ahead of dialogue with Greece that began in early 2021.  Turkey's dialogue with Greece ended in May of this year, and now tensions are on the rise again. Leaders of both states exchanged subtle threats in June. 

In June, Egyptian military leaders met with their Greek and Cypriot counterparts to discuss military cooperation. In May, the United Arab Emirates and Greece signed a $4.2 billion investment agreement. Last December, then-Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett hosted Greek and Cypriot leaders for a meeting on their security alliance. 

Tebboune announced that land borders between the two countries would reopen July 15. The announcement represented a breakthrough in the silent crisis between the two countries as the closure of the land borders has heavily affected Tunisia in particular.

disputes between the two countries have pushed Algeria to pressure Tunisia on several issues, including in delaying the reopening of the border.  Among the files that may have contributed to the silent tensions is Tunisia's position on the Western Sahara dispute pitting Morocco against the Algerian-backed Polisario Front.

Tunisia has in the past tried to distance itself from the Western Sahara conflict, amid reports of Algeria’s attempts, in vain, to lure Tunisia to its side.

With Ukraine’s seaports blockaded or captured by Russian forces, neighboring Romania’s Black Sea port of Constanta has emerged as a main conduit for the war-torn country’s grain exports amid a growing world food crisis.It’s Romania’s biggest port, home to Europe’s fastest-loading grain terminal, and has processed nearly a million tons of grain from Ukraine — one of the world’s biggest exporters of wheat and corn — since the Feb. 24 invasion.But port operators say that maintaining, let alone increasing, the volume they handle could soon be impossible without concerted European Union support and investment.

Constanta’s proximity by land to Ukraine, and by sea to the Suez Canal, make it the best current route for Ukrainian agricultural exports. Other alternatives include road and rail shipments across Ukraine’s western border into Poland and its Baltic Sea ports.

U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization projects up to 181 million people in 41 countries could face food crisis or worse levels of hunger this year in connection with the Ukraine war.

It's the first queer play to be staged in Tunisia -- director Essia Jaibi's latest work aims to challenge conservative attitudes in a country where same-sex acts are punishable by prison terms.

The work, co-produced by LGBTQ rights group Mawjoudin (translating to "we exist"), is played by six mostly amateur actors aged between 23 and 71, reflecting a decades-long struggle for gay rights in the North African country

Tunisia is seen as relatively liberal on social issues compared with other Arab countries, but nevertheless imposes sentences of up to three years in prison for "sodomy" for both men and women

Western powers once again make excuses for President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, understanding Turkey’s mysterious “legitimate security concerns,” which often equates to a license to kill. But by appeasing him for the sake of “keeping” the country within NATO, they miss the point that the Turkish leader is not so different from Russian President Vladimir Putin — and that once again, a policy of appeasement simply won’t work. 

Turkey has been allowed to indulge in its long-running double game, continuing to play Russia and the West against each other, delivering pre-ordered drones to Kyiv on the one hand, while ignoring sanctions against Moscow and opposing Finland and Sweden’s applications to join NATO on the other. 

the systems Erdoğan and Putin have crafted disregard the rule of law and supersede it with one-man rule, as they both have surrounded themselves by oligarchs and yes-men. Both countries are undemocratic, their elections neither free nor fair,  their regimes pushing narratives and pursuing actions that are irredentist, revisionist and bellicose