Ankara ready to talk with Athens on EastMed, top diplomat says

Turkey has openly conveyed to Greece that it has always stood ready to discuss maritime delimitation issues in the Eastern Mediterranean, Turkey's foreign minister told an interview to a Greek daily.

Turkey has always supported a policy that seeks dialogue in addressing the problems in the region, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu told Greek newspaper To Vima.

"Unfortunately, our calls for dialogue have fallen on deaf ears. Most littoral countries of the East Mediterranean ignored our calls and chose to proceed unilaterally," Çavuşoğlu underlined.

Stressing that only Libya had responded to Turkey's calls for dialogue, he said Ankara had recently signed a pact with the Tripoli-based, UN-recognized Government of National Accord (GNA) "to eliminate the uncertainty" concerning Turkey's maritime jurisdiction areas.

On Nov. 27, Ankara and Tripoli signed two separate memorandums of understanding: One on military cooperation and the other on maritime boundaries of countries in the Eastern Mediterranean.

The maritime pact asserted Turkey's rights in the Eastern Mediterranean in the face of unilateral drilling by the Greek Cypriot administration, clarifying that the Turkish Cyprus also has rights to the resources in the area. It went into effect on Dec. 8.

Çavuşoğlu highlighted that the Turkey-Libya pact is in full compliance with international law and respects the fundamental norms of maritime boundary delimitation.

He added that the GNA is the only legitimate authority in Libya to conclude international agreements.

"They [GNA] have signed similar memoranda with other countries, such as the MoU with Italy in 2018 and in 2019, U.S. in 2018 and in 2019, EU in 2018 and Niger in 2019," said Çavuşoğlu,

He...