Eastern Mediterranean heats up as gas rivalry stakes grow higher

Turkey’s dispatch of a second drillship to disputed waters off Cyprus has raised the specter of renewed tensions in the eastern Mediterranean. Yet Ankara finds itself increasingly isolated in the region's gas rivalry, facing a critical choice between military escalation or a diplomatic push to gain allies.

The Yavuz drilling ship, which Turkey’s state-owned petroleum company bought for $262 million in October, was launched to sea in a grand ceremony June 20 at Dilovasi, not far from Istanbul, after nearly two months of maintenance work and training for the crew.

The Yavuz, en route to the eastern Mediterranean via the Aegean Sea, is expected to reach the Bay of Famagusta on the eastern side of Cyprus the second week of July and start exploratory drills in an offshore zone known as Karpas-1, to the south of the Karpas Peninsula. The vessel will reach a drilling depth of more than 3,000 meters, Turkish Energy Minister Fatih Donmez said at the ceremony.

Manned by a 150-strong crew, half of them foreign nationals, the ship aims to advance to farther locations in follow-up drilling missions. A major objective of the expedition, planned to last about four months, is to increase the deep-sea drilling expertise of Turkish engineers onboard. The Yavuz will reportedly sail on to the south of Cyprus in late August for exploratory drilling in an area where Turkey’s seismic research vessel Barbaros Hayreddin is already present.