Abstract:

Eastern Mediterranean have been creating barrier belt in its own backyard against growing threats and these are some of the characteristics around the region; terrorism, human trafficking (illegal migration), migrant smuggling, irregular migration, arms smuggling, drug trafficking, international organized crime, poverty, unstable governments, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), extending instability from Afghanistan to Sub-Saharan Africa. On the other side, Eastern Mediterranean provides the opportunity to transform to springboard for monitoring the events in Middle East from military perspective and for the operations if required as like the case of Libya. Hydrocarbon fields in Eastern Mediterranean, which are significant but limited by having only % 3.7 natural gas proven reserves of the world, have been putting forward the transit energy transportation as a necessity and also developing the nature of the relations between the coastal states in addition to increasing the strategic importance of the region. However, it has been complex to be exploiting these gas fields due to environmental situation. Beyond the geopolitical equation in the region, technical specialties intended to drilling and transportation of the gas have been creating new challenges. In the framework of the geopolitical value of region; PRC has determined its XXI. century maritime vision with including Eastern Mediterranean by One Belt One Road initiative, RF has developed fulcrums in Libya by intervening the events in Syria and Iraq by Iran’s support and involving the rivalry of naval dominance in Eastern Mediterranean; USA has esteemed the cooperation between Israel-Egypt-Saudi Arabia for the energy equation of region by preferring bilateral efforts with deemed significant countries rather than thankless multilateral cooperation; East Med Project, supported by EU, has become concrete growingly with Israel-Greece-Greek Cypriot trilateral meetings; the dispute between Turkey-Greek Cypriot has been defined as the most challenging issue for the future of region. Today, when the regional equation has been reestablishing, unstable situation of the Eastern Mediterranean has been more crucial regarding the energy security and actors have been in a situation to reevaluate their status progressively. In this research, it is assessed that global powers mainly USA, RF plus PRC and countries in the region have been endeavoring to reconstruct their strategies and tactics in the military, economic, political fields for Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean in the framework of energy security.

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