By Sami Zaptia.
London, 12 May 2020:
Cyprus, Egypt, France, Greece and the United Arab Emirates condemned Turkey’s military interference in Libya.
The denunciation came in a Foreign Ministerial joint declaration on Monday which urged Turkey “to fully respect the U.N. arms embargo and stop the influx of foreign fighters from Syria to Libya.’’
It also denounced what they referred to as Turkey’s illegal activities in the eastern Mediterranean and condemned the escalation of Turkey’s violations of the Greek national airspace and the “instrumentalization of civilians by Turkey in an attempt to illegally cross Greek land borders.’’
Referring to the 27 November 2019 agreement signed between Turkey and Libya’s internationally recognised government in Tripoli, the statement said that Turkey must fully “respect the sovereignty and the sovereign rights of all states in their maritime zones in the Eastern Mediterranean,’’.
Turkey has recently stepped up its efforts to exploit the oil reserves in the east Mediterranean in waters off the divided island of Cyprus. Turkey and Greece disagree on maritime territories and continental shelf zones in the Aegean.
