At the end of the summit of European Union foreign ministers on the tensions in the Eastern Mediterranean organized at the request of Athens, Berlin had been very critical about sending French ships and planes Rafale in the Aegean Sea, to try to put pressure on the Turkish president and to put an end to the gas exploration mission of the Turkish vessel Orus Reis and its military escort. For the German Chancellery, widely convinced of the benefits of negotiation and soft power, France's attitude only added fuel to the fire in the already explosive relations between the two countries. On the occasion of the meeting between German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her French counterpart Emmanuel Macron at Fort Brégançon last week, German positions had not changed, even if the two European leaders tried to argue the complementary nature of the two initiatives.
And this morning, for a short while, Berlin might have thought it was right, pulling Turkish and Greek representatives promise to start negotiations. But the joy was short-lived. A few minutes after this announcement, Turkish President RT Erdogan indeed spoke to affirm that the country would not make any concessions concerning its gas claims in the Eastern Mediterranean, adding, as usual, that any “mistake” on the part of Greece would lead to “ruin”, in its own words. And his foreign minister added that if Greece tried to oppose it, Turkey would multiply the deployments and exercises in all the area, so as to pose the threat not only on the Cypriot gas fields, but also on the Greek islands which dot the Aegean Sea and the Ionian Sea.
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