Mediterranean Politics

Why it matters: Turkey has been conducting energy exploration in the eastern Mediterranean Sea and western Black Sea. Ankara's activities in the eastern Mediterranean have been a source of major contention between Greece, Cyprus and Turkey over conflicting territorial claims.  The tensions reached a high point last October when Turkish forces turned back a Cypriot research vessel for allegedly entering Turkish territory. Yet, revival of the exploratory talks between Ankara and Athens last year offered a diplomatic offramp to the escalation. In March, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Istanbul, following third round of talks between the two parties on Feb. 22

Glasgow’s Dr Campbell Price is British TV’s go-to guy when it comes to ancient Egypt. But the study is riddled with racism and he wants to drag the world of mummies into the 21st century … and he doesn’t care if you call him ‘woke’.

Price is at the forefront of the fight to ‘decolonise’ the study of Ancient Egypt and drag it into the 21st century. He wants the discipline to confront its history of racism and empire, and he’s not shy about apportioning a fair amount of blame on Scotland and its own role in Britain’s colonial adventures.

the study of Ancient Egypt was founded by colonialists from Britain and France in the early 1800s and it still hasn’t shaken off the baggage of the past. There’s a lingering sense that Egyptians are considered unable or incapable of studying their own history without the assistance of white, western academics who are really the people best suited to the discipline. The whiff of racism and a “white saviour narrative” still hangs in the air, he feels.

Lebanon’s dire financial crisis over the past two years has slipped over three-quarters of the population into poverty. Many Lebanese are struggling to cope with skyrocketing inflation, crippling power cuts, medicine shortages, and an absence of viable social services.

Many Lebanese, Syrian and Palestinian families have resorted to selling everything they own, and trying to migrate by sea to Europe to find job opportunities.

Turkey and Romania have scrambled in recent days to neutralize potentially explosive mines amid concerns that the weapons may be drifting across the Black Sea from Ukraine’s shores toward neighboring countries.

Turkey’s government had said previously that it was in contact with both Moscow and Kyiv about the weapons, but did not specify which side, if either, was responsible for the mines

Russia’s intelligence service, the FSB, claimed on March 19 that poor weather had caused more than 400 naval mines to become disconnected from the cables that were anchoring them, and warned that the mines were “drifting freely in the western part of the Black Sea,” which includes the territorial waters of Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey.

the confrontation is likely to reduce the level of pressure to reform until now put by Europe on Middle Eastern and North African autocrats. The shift in the attention of European leaders towards security in Eastern Europe will likely permit despots and autocrats to further consolidate and roll back the respect for human rights and good governance.  

authoritarian leaders in the Southern Mediterranean have over the past two decades successfully built leverage among Western leaders by posing as partners in fighting Islamist terrorism and as partners in fighting migration towards Europe

autocratic leaders in oil- and gas-exporting Middle Eastern and North African countries will in the short run be able to increase their political leverage among European leaders by posing as suppliers of Europe’s immediate energy gap. Algeria has already done so – and other countries like Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Iran are likely to follow.

for NATO-member Turkey, the stakes could not be higher. Its 2,000 kilometre-long Black Sea coastline stretching from the Bulgarian border in the West to Georgia in the East is the longest of any of the Sea's littoral states,  including Russia and Ukraine.

Turkey’s stakes are magnified by last year’s discovery of a natural gas field in its Black Sea littoral waters that, according to Energy Minister Fatih Donmez, could by 2027 provide nearly a third of Turkey’s domestic needs.

“Syria remains Turkey’s soft spot. For that matter, Russia is likely to put pressure on Turkey through Syria,” said Turkey scholar Galip Dalay. “At a broader level, Russia and Turkey have cooperated and competed with each other through the conflict spots in the Middle East and North Africa. However, Moscow has been less open to repeating this experience with Turkey in the ex-Soviet area."

In a typical year, the glass factories here power down only once, for maintenance in August. But with Europe in the midst of an energy crisis, facing a 400 percent increase in natural gas bills, the gas-fueled blazes needed to produce Murano’s richly colored, ornate creations have become a luxury the glassmakers can scarcely afford.

The gas crisis stems from a combination of factors — insufficient stockpiles within Europe, constrained supply from Russia and increased competition from Asia for access to liquid natural gas. And with the Kremlin threatening to cut off flows if it is hit with sanctions over Ukraine, the crisis could get worse.

For Murano’s glassmakers, who were already reeling from a pandemic lockdown in 2020 and massive flooding in 2019, support has come in the form of regional and national subsidies intended to help them get through the winter. But with gas prices continuing to rise, the subsidies aren’t expected to last them beyond next month, tops. That’s led companies like Effetre to keep their furnaces off — and some to consider closing up shop for good.

Russian warships entered the Barents Sea on Wednesday to rehearse protecting a major shipping lane in the Arctic, its Northern Fleet said on Wednesday, as Moscow stages sweeping military exercises involving all of its fleets.

The exercises will also include manoeuvres in the Mediterranean, the North Sea, the Sea of Okhotsk, the northeast Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific.

designed to assess troops' combat readiness in the Arctic and their ability to protect the Northern Sea Route