Libya (GNA)–Turkey maritime deal

Libya's prime minister suspended Foreign Minister Najla Mangoush on Sunday and referred her for investigation after Israel said its Foreign Minister Eli Cohen had met her last week despite the countries not having formal relations.

After several years of virtually nonexistent relations, Foreign Minister George Gerapetritis spoke on the telephone Wednesday with his Libyan counterpart Najla Mangoush, signaling that contacts between Athens and Tripoli are at a turning point in the effort to build functional channels of communication.

The upcoming NATO summit in Vilnius on July 11-12 is a first opportunity for Greece and Turkey to pick up the thread of bilateral relations again. The preceding four years started badly, with the sharp increase in refugee and migrant flows in the summer of 2019, and got even worse with the signing of the Turkey-Libya (GNA) maritime deal in November of the same year.

Türkiye's parliament on June 21 extended for another 18 months a mandate that allows the deployment of Turkish troops to Libya.

The mandate was renewed with the votes of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's ruling party and its nationalist allies which hold a majority in parliament. An opposition party also voted in favor of the extension.

A presidential motion demanding the extension of the duration of the Turkish troops in Libya for another 18 months was submitted to the Parliament late on June 13.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Feb. 15 warned against attempts by Greece for the armament of the Aegean islands.

"It is not possible for us to remain silent about the military activities carried out in violation of the agreements on the islands with disarmed status," Erdoğan told journalists traveling with him from the United Arab Emirates to Turkey.

Ankara has slammed the Greek top diplomat's "hostile" and "provocative" statements against Turkey at a four-way summit that included French, Egyptian and Greek Cypriot colleagues.

A joint declaration after the ninth trilateral summit between Greece, Cyprus and Egypt sent a strong, unified message to Turkey.

In the wake of Greece's defense agreements with France and the United States, the 9th Greece-Egypt-Cyprus Tripartite Summit is taking place today, Tuesday, in Athens, at which key regional policy issues are on the table, focusing on developments in the Eastern Mediterranean. the Cyprus issue and Libya, as well as the dynamics of cooperation having as a spearhead the energy sector.

In his address to the UN General Assembly to Cyprus' President Nicos Anastasiades launched a scathing attack on Turkey on everything from its stance toward Greece and Cyprus in the Mediterranean to its posture on Cyprus talks, to its stance on Cyprus' gas deposits and its destabilising role in the Syria and Libya.