Oil and gas reserves around Cyprus attract 'Neo Ottoman' conqueror Turkey.

Oil and gas reserves around Cyprus attract 'Neo Ottoman' conqueror Turkey. (Guardian).

It had been hoped that discovering the reserves would galvanise the two sides to conciliate – but this has not happened.

Tensions have risen in the eastern Mediterranean with an escalating war of words between Athens, Ankara and Nicosia over oil and gas reserves in the region.

Wrangling over hydrocarbons to be found in the area’s waters, has intensified after the leaders of Greece, Cyprus and Egypt signed an agreement in Cairo on Saturday to boost energy cooperation.

Within minutes of the accord being announced Cyprus’s president, Nicos Anastasiades, accused Turkey of “provocative actions” for sending a surveillance vessel and war ships to search for natural resources in the island’s exclusive economic zone.

“Turkey’s provocative actions do not just compromise the peace talks,” he said, referring to UN-brokered reunification negotiations suspended by his government last month. “[They] also affect security in the eastern Mediterranean region.”

On Sunday the head of the Turkish navy, Admiral Bülent Bostanoğlu, revealed he had been handed new rules of engagement in the event of “a situation” involving hydrocarbons in the eastern Mediterranean. “We will move according to the rules of engagement that have been given us,” he said when asked how Turkey’s navy would react if it encountered a Greek or Israeli ship in the region.

On Monday, a senior Greek military official was quoted in the daily paper To Vima as saying: “We have rules of engagement, too, that have been approved by the prime minister and the cabinet, not only just in the Aegean but the south-east Mediterranean for the defence of our national interests.”

Visiting Nicosia last week the Israeli foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, lambasted Turkey for intruding on Cyprus’s exclusive economic zone – criticism echoed by the Greek prime minister, Antonis Samaras, when he too held talks in the capital on Friday.

Ankara, which sees itself as the region’s burgeoning economic powerhouse, has signalled that it will respond in kind. Before a visit to the Turkish capital by the US vice-president later this month, it has conveyed its displeasure at the signing of the Cairo accord.

“Tension is definitely on the rise,” said Hubert Faussmann, associate professor of history and political science at the University of Nicosia. “The peace talks have become a victim of the hydrocarbons which are inseparably linked to the Cyprus problem. They have escalated rather than de-escalated the situation,” he told the Guardian from Nicosia. Hmmm....It's high time the World realizes that Islamist Turkey, is being run by a dictator that will make look Saddam and Assad as 'nice' guys, once he totally unleashes his ambitions.Read the full story here.