EU diplomats agreed Tuesday to impose sanctions on two Turkish oil company officials over drilling activity in the Eastern Mediterranean, in a move that is likely to increase tensions with Ankara.
The two people work for the state-owned oil company TPAO, five diplomats said, and will be subject to asset freezes and travel bans.
However, “none of them is high ranking,” said one of the diplomats.
The original list of those who could be sanctioned was much longer and included TPAO itself. Yet “at this stage there’s an agreement on two individuals only,” said a second diplomat.
The sanctions follow what EU leaders at a meeting in October described as “Turkeyʼs illegal drilling activities in Cyprus’s Exclusive Economic Zone,” a point they reiterated at a summit in December. Since 1974 the Mediterranean island has been split into a Turkish Cypriot-administered north, recognised only by Ankara, and a Greek Cypriot-controlled south, which is internationally recognized. Both lay claim to the exploration of natural resources.
The legal text for the sanctions now has to be finalized and it should be ready for approval at a meeting of EU foreign ministers on February 17, said the second diplomat.
Turkey’s role in the Mediterranean has been growing, gaining influence first in neighboring Syria and more recently in Libya, while the EU has seen its power in the region diminish. In March 2016, at the peak of the migration crisis, Ankara signed a deal with the EU to stop hundreds of thousands of refugees and migrants heading into the heart of Europe.
The relationship with Turkey “is complex and has to be calibrated in a way that takes into account all these aspects,” said a third diplomat.
The EU funded that migration deal with €6 billion and now faces the problem of how to provide more money, an issue that some diplomats expect will be discussed by EU leaders in March. The figure being discussed in EU diplomatic circles is another €1 billion.
The new sanctions “were the least we could do, we had to do something, but it’s very likely the Turks will get angry,” a fourth diplomat said.
That proved correct. “Any kind of sanction against Turkish individuals is unacceptable,” said a Turkish diplomat. “The EU cannot be playing both the prosecutor and judge on this issue,” they added before promising that “we’ll of course react.”