So many bad takes on what is going in the East Med, what countries are fighting over, and how energy fits in. The narrative “tensions over energy” is neat, simple—and mostly wrong. Let's break it down.
There are two conflicts: one over Cyprus, the other over the role of islands in determining maritime boundaries, continental shelves, exclusive economic zones (EEZ), etc. And each conflict subsumes several sub-conflicts.
First, Cyprus. Turkey is frustrated by the Republic of Cyprus’ (RoC) hydrocarbon activities; it disputes the right of the RoC to declare EEZs, to issue licenses, to exploit resources, to spend the revenue, etc. This dispute has nothing to do with sea boundaries.
Turkey also takes the view that both communities in Cyprus speak for the whole island. Northern Cyprus has issued licenses to TPAO (the Turkish company), and some of those licenses, off the southern coast, overlap with licenses issued by the RoC, and TPAO has sent ships there.
The three discoveries made in Cyprus are all in areas licensed by the RoC; they are in Cypriot waters (Aphrodite extends slightly into Israeli waters); no discovery has been made in any of the overlapping licenses.
So that’s dispute number one: it’s about Cyprus and Cypriot sovereignty and has nothing to do with marine boundaries, continental shelves, island EEZs, etc. And there is no “disputed gas discovery” or ambiguity over who owns what.
Dispute number two is over territorial waters and takes two forms. First, Turkey does not really accept that islands can generate an EEZ—it thus claims part of the Cypriot EEZ; and its deal with Libya springs from that view too, since it ignores the influence of Crete and Rhodes.
As far as I can tell, there is no legal basis here—that islands do not have a continental shelf and can generate an EEZ. But Turkey holds it, and that view produces territorial disputes with both Greece and Cyprus.
The second Turkish argument is that an island might have a partial or reduced or no effect in delineating maritime boundaries in order to preserve fairness—especially when that island is near the large coastline of another state.
This is about Kastelorizo. In Turkey's view, a full EEZ from Kastelorizo would deprive Turkey of a big EEZ in the East Med, which it sees as unfair. This is a different argument than whether islands get an EEZ in general—and something that a court (or negotiations) could resolve.
Turkish rhetoric often confuses the two—it is not uncommon to read an extensive legal review that would apply to Kastelorizo and then conclude, magically, that this applies to Cyprus, Crete, Rhodes, etc. The disputes are linked but also different.
That’s the context for the Greek-Egyptian delimitation: it challenged the first Turkish assertion (about islands having an EEZ in general) but it did not veer into the question of Kastelorizo (by doing a partial delimitation before reaching the areas affected by Kastelorizo).
(Btw: These two disputes are also different than what Greece and Turkey are quarreling over in the Aegean, which is largely but not exclusively about territorial waters and what the Aegean looks like with 12 nautical miles around all Greek islands.)
Now, let’s bring energy into the picture. None of the discoveries made since 2009 are in any of the disputed waters. No one has claimed persuasively that hydrocarbons exist in the dispute areas. And none of the disputes have really affected the exploitation of hydrocarbons.
There has been an intense debate, however, over “where East Med gas might go.” From the start, Turkey has felt left out because no one took it seriously as a destination. The reasons for this are mostly commercial, but there are political calculations too.
Then came two developments: the proposed East Med pipeline; and regional diplomacy plus the East Med Gas Forum. Turkey saw these as excluding it, the pipeline by circumvent it and crossing areas that it believes are in its continental shelf; the Forum diplomatically.
That sense of isolation—of things happening without Turkey—frustrates Turkey. It’s also largely symbolic—the East Med pipeline won’t happen, and the East Med Gas Forum isn’t a factor in determining where gas flows. But the optics have frustrated Turkey, and Turkey has lashed out.
Fast forward to today. Israeli gas is being produced for domestic use and for regional exports to Egypt and Jordan. Zohr (Egypt) is producing and helped Egypt resume exports briefly. There is no timeline for Aphrodite or any other discovery in Cyprus to produce any gas.
There is no grand debate about “where the gas will go” anymore, and the maritime conflicts are a sideshow to that question anyway. There remains some gas to sell (mostly at Leviathan and Aphrodite). But most resources are committed already.
So: there is a Cyprus gas conflict, which is really two or three conflicts; there is a maritime boundaries conflict which generates three distinct conflicts; and there is gas, which is being produced just fine regardless of all those conflicts.
In sum: please be precise about what dispute you’re referring to and what it is about; and, please, please if you drag energy into the conversation, educate yourself on the details before writing yet another “East Med fight over energy resources” piece. (fin)
