Yavuz

Turkey's Fatih drilling vessel is set to sail off to the Black Sea on May 29, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has said at the inauguration ceremony of the Democracy end Freedoms Island. 

"Our Fatih drilling ship will cross the Bosphorus on 29 May and go to the Black Sea for a new drilling," he said on May 27.

The resumption of Turkish drilling inside Cyprus' continental shelf by the Yavuz drillship and Ankara's behavior in the Aegean was raised at Thursday's European Union summit by both Cyprus President Nikos Anastasiades and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis despite the fact that the issue was not on the agenda.

As part of Turkey's efforts to evacuate its nationals from abroad amid the coronavirus pandemic, as many as 1,765 Turkish citizens were brought back to the country over the past 24 hours, a Turkish official said on April 18. 

Turkey's third drillship arrived in Taşucu, Mersin, a coastal city in the Mediterranean region of the country on March 15, the energy minister said.

Fatih Dönmez said that the Turkish Petroleum Corporation took the ship into its inventory on Jan. 31 and it set off from the U.K.

The Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece (KIS) described as "unacceptable and deplorable" a statement by a Turkish official on social media who compared the alleged treatment of migrants seeking to cross the frontier with conditions prevailing at Nazi death camps at Auschwitz.

State-run Turkish Petroleum Corporation (TPAO) has added another drilling vessel to its fleet for $37.5 million, according to a prominent Turkish maritime publication.

Sertao, moored at Port Talbot in Britain for two years, was acquired by TPAO in an auction, Istanbul-based Denizcilik Dergisi (Maritime Magazine) reported on Feb. 8.

Turkey has reportedly acquired a third drillship which is bigger than the Fatih and the Yavuz, both currently prospecting for hydrocarbons in Cyprus' exclusive economic zone.

The United States is "deeply concerned" by Turkey's drilling operations off Cyprus, including plans to dispatch its Yavuz drillship south of Limassol, a State Department spokesman has said, urging Turkish authorities to cancel such plans.

Ankara's announcement on Friday that it is dispatching a vessel to conduct drilling operations off northeastern Cyprus coupled with a spike in Turkish violations of Greek airspace is being seen as a response to, if not an outright snub of sanctions announced a few days ago by the European Union Foreign Affairs Council over its activities within the Eastern Mediterranean island's territorial wat

Turkish oil-and-gas drilling ship Fatih, which had been conducting surveying work off southwestern Cyprus, is sailing away from the country's exclusive economic zone (EZZ), Kathimerini Cyprus reported.

The vessel Fatih had been deployed west of Akamas peninsula since last April. It now appears to be heading towards Turkey's coast but has not declared a specific destination.