Turkish warships "threatened to use force" to stop a renewed attempt yesterday by a rig to reach an area off Cyprus where Italian company Eni was scheduled to drill for gas, the ABC News website reports today (February 24, 2018).
Yiorgos Lakkotrypis, Cyprus' energy minister, said yesterday that the rig's skipper showed "great determination" to reach the target. But he said Turkish warships got in the rig's way the closer it got to the drilling target, forcing it to stop.
Turkey says it won't allow Cyprus' government to proceed with a "unilateral" offshore gas search as long as the rights of breakaway Turkish Cypriots on the Greek-majority island are ignored.
But the Cyprus government says drilling off its shores is its sovereign right and will benefit all Cypriot citizens. Both the United Nations and the European Union have recently warned Turkey to stop interfering with the Cyprus government's right to drill for gas off the island's coast, but Turkey has defied the international organizations' warnings.
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