The Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan stated regarding the Turkey-Libya agreement, that Ankara would not take a step back from its claims. The maritime border agreement, he said, will be approved by the Turkish parliament. His intervention came at the inauguration of the TANAP pipeline, near the border with Greece, prompting the immediate reaction of the Deputy Minister of the Environment, Dimitris Economou, who withdrew along with the Greek delegation in protest.

The Turkish president stressed: “Some people prefer a rhetoric of threat and blackmail instead of fair distribution of resources in the eastern Mediterranean. No country is superior to international law. No one can get anywhere with logic ‘I did it and that’s it’. Turkey will not take a step back to such issues”.

He also noted that “two of our drilling rigs, Fatih and Yavuz, and two of our seismic vessels continue their work. We will not pull our ships out of there because they are screaming. We have made an agreement with Libya. Now they have begun to threaten Libya. Then the agreement will come to our parliament and we will move on to another form. From our drillings there will be no conflict or blood but peace and prosperity”.