Greece courts Egypt, aims to pre-empt Turkish machinations

The visit of Greece’s president Karolos Papoulias to Egypt this week went a little under the radar; but it shouldn’t be underestimated. Papoulias doesn’t make that many trips abroad, so this one (which took in commemorations for the 70th anniversary of the Greek and Allied victory at El Alamein) indicates that Greece has targetted Egypt for a charm offensive, concerned that the new Muslim Brotherhood regime will steer the country into an alliance with Turkey, also with a Sunni and Islamist outlook, which would undermine Greece’s and Cyprus’ sovereign rights in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Greece does not have an agreement with Egypt on Exclusive Economic Zones and knows that Turkey is lobbying Egypt to agree to their maritime borders in such a way that would ignore the sovereignty of Cyprus and Greece and turn the Eastern Mediterranean into a Turko-Egyptian sea. Greece can claim a 200 nautical mile EEZ around Kastelorizo, implementation of which would make Greece’s and Cyprus’ EEZs contiguous, while Cyprus has an EEZ agreement with Egypt, but it was signed with the Mubarak regime in 2003 and Lefkosia is now concerned that the new government in Cairo, with new strategic priorities, will abandon it. (Remarkably, Greece and Cyprus do not have an EEZ agreement).

In his public comments to President Mohammed Morsi, Papoulias made prominent reference to the EEZ issue, saying: ‘The discovery of significant gas deposits in the Eastern Mediterranean is an important geopolitical and geoeconomic development. Greece attaches particular importance to the brokering of an agreement with Egypt for the delineation of an EEZ, which would be of benefit to both countries.’

And just to underline Greece’s anxiety about a Turkey-Egypt alliance, it’s worth reading this article from the New York Times, which begins:

‘With war on Turkey’s borders, and political and economic troubles in Egypt, the two countries have turned to each other for support, looking to build an alliance that could represent a significant geopolitical shift in the Middle East prompted by the Arab Spring, uniting two countries with regional ambitions each headed by parties with roots in political Islam.’