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If it had been up to him, Emmanuel Macron would have already decided on the sanctions against Turkey, which for months has been invading the territorial waters of Cyprus and Greece with its military ships to inspect the seabed for gas. After all, today while Giuseppe Conte, the Spanish Pedro Sanchez, the Greek Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the Portuguese Antonio Costa, the Cypriot Nikos Anastasiades and the Maltese Robert Abela arrived in Ajaccio, following the French invitation to a Mediterranean summit on Turkey, Macron committed himself in a verbal melee with Ankara. Heavy mutual accusations.
But at the summit in Corsica, the other Mediterranean countries, apart from Greece and Cyprus, which are parties to the dispute, are evading the French president’s ‘call to arms’ against Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Seven countries facing the same sea: divided also over Turkey as well as Libya, fronts of a Mediterranean without peace.
In view of the extraordinary European council of 24 and 25 September, convened especially for the tensions in the Aegean, Macron only manages to reach an understanding with Mitsotakis: full military collaboration between Paris and Athens against Ankara, is decided in a bilateral agreement before the summit with other Mediterranean leaders. It is not a little, but it is not the common reaction of the EU called for by the Elysée. In Ajaccio Conte does not follow the head of the Elysée in harsh tones against Turkey. “Dialogue” is its watchword.
But the first to be opposed to a more severe sentence is Angela Merkel, the current president of the EU until December. So far the Chancellor has limited herself to the request for “dialogue” between Athens and Ankara, so as not to upset Erdogan who, by virtue of a financial agreement wanted by Berlin for the whole EU, is holding back the flow of immigration to Germany from the Balkans.
Instead, the French president also has Libya which divides him from the Turkish president. Macron, close to the commander of Cyrenaica Haftar, had to suffer the presence of Turkish soldiers in Tripoli in support of the UN-recognized Al Serraj government. Before the pandemic, military tensions in Libya reached a peak – in the meantime Putin had sided with Haftar against Erdogan – so much so that an international conference in Berlin on Libya on January 19 was necessary. “We must accept the Turkish presence in Libya”, Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio surrendered a few days ago speaking to the Gazette, just to say about the lines in the field and the divisions.
Turkey “is no longer a partner”, are the bellicose words with which Macron opens the Ajaccio summit today. He maintains “inadmissible behavior” and in the face of President Erdogan “we Europeans must be clear and firm”. The French president expressed his “profound hope to restart a fruitful dialogue with Turkey”, but then immediately adds to the dose: Turkish ships adopt “unacceptable practices off the Libyan coast”. The reference is to tensions with a French frigate in recent weeks. And more explicit: the agreement that Turkey signed with the government of the Libyan national agreement, denying the legitimate rights of Greece, is “unacceptable”, while exploration activities in Cypriot waters are equally “unacceptable”.
Ankara’s response is ready. Macron has shown himself “arrogant again with his old colonial reflexes” in his statements on Turkey and “feeds tensions and puts EU interests at risk with his personalistic and nationalist attitude”, reads a note from the Foreign Ministry Turkish.
The Ajaccio summit isolates Macron but certifies the divisions of the Mediterranean on open fronts. And this is not good news.
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