After a series of very friendly signals from Ankara to Jerusalem in recent weeks, Turkey shifted gears on Monday by protesting a recent agreement reached between Israel, Greece and Cyprus advancing plans to build a 2,000-megawatt undersea electricity cable connecting the three.

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Turkey formally protested the agreement, arguing that the route of the planned cable, expected to be funded by the EU, transgressed Turkish territorial waters, the Anadolu Agency reported.

In diplomatic protest notes presented to Greek, Israeli and EU diplomats in Ankara, Turkish officials also stated that the three countries needed to seek Turkey's approval before conducting feasibility studies, the agency reported.

The three countries reached an agreement last week to expedite permits and approvals to conduct feasibility studies for the undersea cable and to coordinate with their respective national electricity regulators on how best to proceed.

Previously, the three countries had teamed up for a planned $6 billion undersea pipeline to carry gas from new offshore deposits in the southeastern Mediterranean to continental Europe, by bypassing Turkey.

Israel, Greece and Cyprus also conducted a joint naval exercise last week, in the latest example of increased cooperation between the three which increasingly view Turkey as a rival in the Mediterranean Sea.

Greece and Cyprus are embroiled in a dispute with Turkey, which has sent gas prospecting vessels into waters claimed by Greece and drilling ships into an area where Cyprus claims exclusive rights. The tension brought NATO allies Greece and Turkey close to open conflict last year, but tensions have eased since then.

Last Wednesday, a close associate of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Admiral Cihat Yayci, told Turkish Jewish newspaper Şalom that "it is in the interests of both Turkey and Israel to re-normalize relations."

Yayci called on Israel to take up the proposal of a shared maritime border, first reported by Israel Hayom on March 5. A more detailed version of the plan was published in the Turkeyscope monthly journal published by the Moshe Dayan Center at Tel Aviv University.

Yayci gave the interview after Turkey suffered another diplomatic blow when Egypt and Greece agreed to compromise on proposed areas for gas and oil drilling in the eastern Mediterranean Sea.

This occurred five days after Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said that Turkey could reach an agreement with Egypt on a maritime border.

Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias said that the dispute over one of Egypt's three drilling areas was "technical" and had been resolved. According to reports, teams from Egypt met and re-drew maritime borders for the problematic area, a deal which directly affects Turkey, since the Turks claim ownership of the area delineated by Greece and Egypt.

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The post Turkey to Israel: Respect our territorial waters appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

Following years of diplomatic strife, Turkey over the weekend signaled to Israel yet again its desire for rapprochement. On Monday, former admiral Cihat Yayci, a close confidant of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is expected to publish a first-of-its-kind proposal for an agreement on the countries' shared exclusive economic zones in the Mediterranean Sea. The article will appear in the Israeli academic journal Turkeyscope –published by the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University – indicating in and of itself a desire to quell tensions with Israel.

Israel Hayom has learned this was the second such signal of reconciliation from Turkey as it pertains to Israel's energy market. Four months ago, officials in Ankara sent their Israeli counterparts a clear message about Turkey's desire to launch talks on the matter. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, however, the process stalled. The next proposal followed a report last week in an Erdogan–affiliated Turkish media outlet about secret talks between Mossad officials and their Turkish counterparts. According to the report, in these talks, too, Erdogan's representatives expressed a desire to readjust relations with Israel. The report also said that in recent months the Turkish leader has ceased making belligerent statements about the Jewish state.

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According to Yayci's proposal, meanwhile, the maritime borders between the two countries will come together at the expense of Cyprus. From the perspective of the Turks, the deal proposed to the Israelis is an extension of the maritime border the former admiral constructed with Libya. That deal was signed in Tripoli on November 27 of last year and is the source of the current tensions between Ankara and Athens. If to this point the Greeks were already enraged over their maritime contiguity with Cyprus being severed – then such a deal would make things even more difficult for Athens and Nicosia.

First and foremost, the former Turkish admiral is focusing on transferring blocs 8,9,11 and 12 from Cypriot to Israeli hands. Bloc 12 is the location of the significantly sized Yishai-Aphrodite gas field, northwest of Israel's Leviathan gas field, controlled by Israeli company Delek, industry giant Shell, and US-based Noble Energy. The gas field, discovered off Cyprus' shores in 2011 by Texas-based Noble Energy, is estimated to contain between 7-10 billion cubic meters of gas on the Israeli side and about 100 billion cubic meters on the Cypriot side. As a reference, the estimated value of 100 billion cubic meters of gas is about $9 billion.

The maritime border between Israel and Cyprus in the area of the Yishai-Aphrodite reservoir is still under dispute, despite all the other agreements the countries have signed. At the same time, Cyprus and Turkey are mired in numerous disputes over their maritime borders. Therefore, Yayci is endeavoring to resolve both Ankara and Jerusalem's problems in one fell swoop, through a bilateral agreement between Turkey and Israel that leaves Cyprus in the lurch.

Also of potential benefit to Israel, based on Yayci's proposal, is connecting Israel's intended gas pipeline to Europe to the already existing Turkish pipeline. According to Yayci, this option would be "significantly more practicable and cheap for Israel in comparison to the EastMed project."

Any Israeli consent to Yayci's proposal, meanwhile, would almost certainly spark strident resistance from Greece and Cyprus, among other reasons. First and foremost, they would view any Israeli-Turkish application of sovereignty in what they consider their own territorial waters – as an invasion. Secondly, Israeli agreement to the Turkish proposal would also represent recognition of Turkey's position on the exclusive economic zone off near the Greek islands of Rhodes and Kastellorizo.

Finally, it would put Israel in an uncertain position in relation to the United Arab Emirates, for two reasons. This first: Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed recently signed a defense pact with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis. Beyond that, the tensions between the UAE and Erdogan and his Qatari partners could lead to real diplomatic fallout between Jerusalem and Abu Dhabi.

As for the Turkish proposal, a senior Israeli official said that improving relations with Ankara was a welcome development. However, any proposal that comes at the expense of Cyprus is a non-starter. "Cyprus is an ally of Israel and the maritime border between the countries is recognized by the United Nations and European Union," the senior Israeli official explained.

"In light of the recent reports of rapprochement between the countries' intelligence agencies, Yayci's very proposal put forth in the article he penned indicates Ankara's desire for a new upgrade of relations [with Israel]," Turkeyscope editor Dr. Hay Eytan Cohen Yanarocak told Israel Hayom. "With that, for the two countries to upgrade relations to the point of real normalization, trust-building measures must be put in place, which before all else requires the return of ambassadors and consuls."

Yanarocak added: "For the sake of any relationship built on mutual trust, Turkey needs to change the nature of its discourse toward the State of Israel. In other words, it must stop with the de-legitimization of Israel that harms its image in the Turkish street. Beyond that, Ankara must scrap its intimate relationship with Hamas. If Erdogan does this, it's reasonably safe to believe, Jerusalem will strive to find ways to make the relationship prosper again, as has happened in the past."

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