Greece has flatly rejected Turkey's demand to be consulted before seabed surveys resume for the Great Sea Interconnector...

Greece has flatly rejected Turkey's demand to be consulted before seabed surveys resume for the Great Sea Interconnector, the undersea electricity cable linking Cyprus to Crete. Foreign Minister Giorgos Gerapetritis called it "inconceivable" that Turkey could obstruct the project, and Athens says the surveys will proceed as soon as the operating company submits its formal authorization request. About 60 percent of the surveys are already done. The remaining 40 percent run through waters that both Greece and Turkey claim, and it is there that the standoff is now concentrated. Turkey's defense ministry restated last Thursday that any cable laying or scientific research on what it calls its continental shelf must be coordinated with Ankara as a "coastal state," a position it says has been unchanged since 2024, when Turkish warships were deployed after a survey vessel entered disputed waters near the Greek island of Kasos. Greece cannot accept that framing. Athens has a legally delimited exclusive economic zone under UNCLOS and recognizes no Turkish right to veto or even receive formal notification of sovereign Greek activities in those waters. Accepting any such arrangement, Greek officials say, would amount to indirect recognition of the 2019 Turkey-Libya maritime memorandum, the legal basis for Turkey's "Blue Homeland" doctrine, which Greece considers null and void. The Great Sea Interconnector holds EU status as a project of common interest and has received a 657 million euro grant from the European Commission. A French company now holds the majority stake, and French officials had reportedly been exploring whether Greece could notify all eastern Mediterranean states of the surveys rather than asking Turkey directly. Turkey rejected even that workaround, demanding full coastal-state authority. Meanwhile, Turkey deployed the Oruc Reis research vessel to waters between Turkey and occupied northern Cyprus, issuing a new NAVTEX for energy work ahead of a planned natural gas pipeline. Athens condemned the move as a violation of Cypriot sovereignty and a breach of international law, framing the whole pattern as Turkey systematically entrenching territorial gain...