Foreign Ministers Dandyas and Shukri reached an agreement on a controversial oil and gas exploration block: "This was a technical problem" • Egyptian officials: "We did not talk to Turkey"
The meeting between the foreign ministers of Greece and Egypt in Cairo, yesterday
Photo:
IPI
Turkey tried to bring Egypt closer to it, but it came back to it like a boomerang:
Cairo and Athens reached a compromise yesterday (Monday) regarding disagreement over gas and oil exploration areas in the eastern Mediterranean.
It came just five days after Turkish Foreign Minister Mevluth Chebushoulu said, "We can reach a maritime border agreement with Egypt," and Erdogan's associate, Admiral Jihat Yaiji, proposed an outline for the agreement.
However, the diplomatic process created by the Foreign Ministry in Ankara is the complete opposite of their original purpose.
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis spoke by telephone with Egyptian President Abdul Fatah al-Sisi, sent his foreign minister Nikos Dandyas to Cairo yesterday - where he reached an agreement with his Egyptian counterpart Sameh Shukri.
Photo: Reuters
"The disagreement over one of Egypt's three search areas was technical - and resolved," Dandias said.
According to reports, teams from the two countries sat together and redrawn the maritime borders in the problematic search block.
The same conclusion directly affects Ankara, since the Turks claim that territory from the search block agreed upon by Greece and Egypt - belongs to them.
As part of the embarrassment to Ankara, senior Egyptian diplomats told the Arab News network that rumors of talks between Cairo and Ankara regarding borders in the eastern Mediterranean are untrue.
Israel is responsible for the first embarrassment: In December, Israel Today published for the first time the proposal of Admiral Jihat Yaiji, an associate of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to regulate the maritime economic border between Turkey and Israel.
The proposal was published in full in an article in the monthly "Turkeyscope" published by the Moshe Dayan Center at Tel Aviv University.
Four months earlier, Ankara had sent a clear message to Jerusalem about its desire to open talks on this issue.
However, due to the corona plague, the process did not evolve.
Even if it was not dependent on the corona virus, Jerusalem continued to strengthen the development momentum in the eastern Mediterranean with Greece and Cyprus, led by Energy Minister Dr. Yuval Steinitz.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan / Photo: Reuters
Beyond that, while Israel is progressing economically thanks to its agreements with its neighbors in the eastern Mediterranean, including with Egypt - Turkey is going backwards.
An example of this is obtained from a summary of Saudi Arabia's import data from Turkey compared to those from Egypt last year.
Saudi imports from Turkey were 50.6 billion riyals in December, compared to 834 billion riyals in August.
On the other hand, Riyadh's imports from Egypt were 478 billion riyals in August and 735 billion riyals in December.
A completely reverse process.
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