Speaking during a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Wednesday, Turkey's President
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan stressed in his speech: "No
colonial power can deprive Turkey of the
energy resources said to exist in
Eastern Mediterranean."
No threats can deter Turkey from
seeking natural resources in the
Eastern Mediterranean, Erdoğan said as making remarks related to the latest
political developments.
Erdoğan added that Ankara expects
actors in the region to take steps to
de-escalate tensions. He also reiterated that Ankara wanted to
solve the dispute through
dialogue and
diplomacy, rather than escalate tensions.
Turkey's
struggle in the various fronts from
Eastern Mediterranean to
Libya is struggle for future, besides fight for right, Turkish leader added.
As it turned back the
1920 Treaty of Sevres, meant to box in and hold back the
Turkish nation, Turkey will do the same to efforts to restrict it from
energy resources near its shores, vowed the country's president.
"Just as it rejected the
Treaty of Sevres 100 years ago, Turkey will not bow down to the modern
Sevres being pushed on it in the
Eastern Mediterranean," Erdoğan said in the Turkish capital Ankara.
Turkey has charged
Greece, France, Egypt, and other countries with trying to illegally deprive it of
Mediterranean energy resources and box it in, even though it has the
largest coastline on the sea of any country.
In the wake of World War I, the Turkish War of Independence pushed back Sevres, a pact meant to liquidate the Ottoman Empire and all but abolish Turkish sovereignty, in favor of the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne.
Erdoğan added that Turkey's struggle on various fronts from the Eastern Mediterranean to Libya is a struggle for the future, besides a fight for the country's rights.
