Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said this week that Ankara does not oppose the Great Sea Interconnector, the planne...

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said this week that Ankara does not oppose the Great Sea Interconnector, the planned undersea electricity cable linking Greece and Cyprus, but he paired that statement with a pitch that tells a very different story about Turkey's ambitions in the region. Speaking at the European Policy Center in Brussels, Fidan said Turkey's only ask is that ships conducting maritime surveys for the project send formal written notification of their planned activities, including the specific coordinates involved. He framed the request as a measure to prevent any unintended shift in the status quo in disputed Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean waters. At the same time, Fidan promoted an alternative vision entirely. He argued that Turkey could supply Cyprus with water, electricity and natural gas from the Turkish mainland, which sits roughly 70 miles from the island's northern coast. He said such an arrangement could benefit Greek Cypriots, Turkish Cypriots and the broader population, and claimed Turkish President Erdogan had raised the idea directly with Greek Prime Minister Mitsotakis in New York. The GSI is a multibillion-euro infrastructure project backed by European Union funding. Its purpose is to connect Cyprus to the European electricity grid through Greece, breaking the island's long-standing energy isolation. Cyprus currently operates one of the few electricity networks in the EU with no connection to the broader continental grid. Fidan's notification demand does not grant Turkey any legal authority to approve or veto survey operations. Under international maritime law, Greece maintains the right to conduct surveys in areas it considers its own jurisdiction. But Ankara's insistence on written coordination, framed around status quo preservation, signals that Turkey intends to position itself as a stakeholder in any infrastructure development that crosses contested waters. The GSI has faced repeated friction over competing maritime claims in the Eastern Mediterranean, where Greece, Turkey and Cyprus hold sharply diverging positions on who controls what. #Cyprus #EasternMediterranean #Greece