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| Logo of NATO[Photo: Collected/Google] |
This maritime clash started actually in 2010 when an American gas company named Nobel discovered a 600 billion cubic meter game-changing gas field in Leviathan, Israel which is just 47 miles south-west of the Tamar gas field. There are eight(8) official gas fields in Israel that supply 60% of Israel's energy production. They meet the other 40% by oil. So when Israel just thought about exporting the whole Europe toppled down to Israel, especially south-east European countries and Israel agreed to export to Europe mainly because of two reasons.
1. A strong alliance between European countries and Israel;
2. European countries have to import natural gas from Russia.
Importing natural gas from Russia makes European countries dependent on Russia which makes NATO a vulnerable organization. Sometimes this may be considered as the gas politics of Putin.
But there's the only way to make the gas transaction. An underwater pipeline which is proposed by IGI Poseidon still isn't under construction with a 50-50 joint venture of Greece and Italy. The estimated cost of this pipeline construction project is nearly $7 bn.
Now shedding the focus light at the southern part of the Mediterranean Sea in Libya which is now an extremely hot battleground. And the prime man behind this heat is warlord Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar who raised & overthrew Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. Khalifa Haftar is now the chief of LNA(Libyan National Army) which is controlling Libya's heart & most important coastal city Benghazi. Haftar is considered as the puppet of Israel and the USA and economically backed by KSA (Kingdom Of Saudi Arabia) and UAE(United Arab Emirates) as well. Recently Russia's supplying weapons to Haftar also. Benghazi is the prime strategic point of Libya which gave Haftar the aim of detaching the Libyan Government Army (GNA) and Libyan Government which is militarily backed by Turkey and diplomatically by the UN from the Mediterranean Sea.
Now the real fact took place when Turkey signed such a contract with the Libyan Government which even made the vacant sea area between Libya and Turkey made Turkish EEZ(Exclusive Economic Zone). This made a maritime economic blockade in the Mediterranean. These other countries without Libya will have to take Turkey's permission for conducting any kind of economic activity there. Erdogan's this type of activity can be the reason for not enlisting Turkey's name in the underwater pipeline project despite being a NATO and EU member.
This made Haftar very much angry that he did some crazy jobs like abducting some Turkish nationals with their ship because today or later this treaty between Turkey and Libya will overthrow his force from the control of Benghazi. On the other part, Israel burst into anger because the pipeline would go by the Turkish shore and Israel don't want to export its gas to Turkey. There could be several reasons behind Israel's this kind of conduct but for sure one is the Kurdistan problem.
It took time for Egypt to understand the patches of geopolitics. Though Egypt criticized the Turkish -Libyan deal at first when they realized that the deal will flourish their EEZ they went silent.
Now, in the end, there're a few things I should mention that though Turkey has a very long way to be a superpower, Greece won't be able to cope with Turkey. Still being a regional power Turkey shouldn't forget their real capabilities. Whatever, I don't know why people can't see the shadow of Trump in case of not enlisting Turkey's name in the pipeline project though they can see Putin's shadow on Erdogan.
The author is a student at Department of Criminology, University Of Dhaka.
