Turkey's Eastern Mediterranean policy in the context of Turkish-Greek relations

The subject of this study is "Turkey's Eastern Mediterranean Policy in the Context of Turkish-Greek Relations". The Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East region have been a very important geography that empires have wanted to control and states have struggled to control throughout history. The Ottoman Empire has taken control not only of these regions but also of the Balkans and the North African coasts. The island of Cyprus, conquered in 1571, is like a forward gendarmerie outpost and an unsinkable aircraft carrier in the Eastern Mediterranean. Nationalist rebellions did spread throughout the Ottoman geography in the early 19th century under the influence of the French Revolution, and new states emerged as a result of the wars. Greece, which gained its independence from the Ottomans in 1830, has expanded its territory on the Turkish lands, which is its natural expansion area, exactly six times since its establishment. The aim of the study is to examine, analyze and give perspective Turkish-Greek relations and Turkey's Eastern Mediterranean policy for the future. In the wake of the War of Turkish National Struggle, the Turkish-Greek balance was achieved with the signing of the Lausanne Peace Treaty, nevertheless in the following years, disputes arose between the two countries on the Aegean Sea, Cyprus and the Eastern Mediterranean. Since the discovery of hydrocarbon resources in the Eastern Mediterranean in the early 2000s, the issue of sharing maritime jurisdiction areas between regional countries came to the fore, the Greek Cypriot Administration of Southern Cyprus signed maritime jurisdiction delimitation agreements with some regional countries, and the Cyprus dispute sprawled to the sea due to overlapping maritime areas on the Turkish continental shelf. The mentioned dispute turned into a trilateral discourse between Turkey-Greek Cypriot Administration of Southern Cyprus, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus-Greek Cypriot Administration of Southern Cyprus and Turkey-Greece. The theoretical and legal framework of the study was structured on the law of the sea, and Turkish-Greek relations were examined from 1923 to 2024. The energy-related crisis that emerged with the delimitation of maritime jurisdiction areas between regional countries did not prevail a crisis only between Turkey and Greece, but gained an international dimension with the involvement of regional and global actors. This is why the study is important and remains relevant.