Turkey renews plans to drill off Cyprus

ISTANBUL — Turkey will soon begin offshore drilling near the island of Cyprus, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Thursday, risking another flare-up of tensions in the eastern Mediterranean and following a rebuke of his government from the European Parliament (EP) over a failure to resolve territorial disputes on the divided island.

Turkey has no formal relations with the internationally recognized government in Cyprus and keeps tens of thousands of troops in the island’s breakaway north, administered by Turkish Cypriots, after invading in 1974 to thwart a short-lived Greek Cypriot coup. International efforts over the decades to reunite Cyprus’ ethnic Greeks and Turks have failed and the lack of a settlement has contributed to obstructing progress on Turkey’s bid to join the European Union, to which Cyprus belongs and with which Turkey began formally negotiating in 2005.

The discovery of gas fields off the Cypriot coast in 2011 has further estranged Turkey and Cyprus, with Ankara unsatisfied with a Cypriot government pledge that any wealth obtained from oil and gas from beneath the seabed would be shared with everyone on the island. Exploratory drilling by US oil major ExxonMobil, Italy’s ENI and Texas-based Noble Energy of the Cypriot block has infuriated Ankara, and last year it dispatched naval ships to block Greek Cypriot gas exploration efforts. It has also repeatedly warned that it will hunt for gas in areas claimed by Turkish Cypriots, and in October sent ships to explore off its own coastline.

“We are starting exploration in the coming days with two ships around Cyprus. It should be observed that nothing can be done in that region without us; those companies that come to that region from faraway should realize this. We will not permit anything to be done in the Mediterranean without Turkey,” Cavusoglu told a business group.