Turkey threatens to annex part ( for now ) of Cyrus , don't rule out oil being a big factor in this !

http://www.todayszaman.com/news-273223-turkish-cyprus-might-be-annexed-to-turkey-minister-says.html

Turkish Cyprus might be annexed to Turkey, minister says

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4 March 2012 / TODAYSZAMAN.COM,

Turkish Cyprus could be annexed to Turkey if ongoing talks between Turkish and Greek Cypriots for reunification fail to produce a solution, Turkey's minister for European Union Affairs has said.

Egemen Bağış, in remarks published in Turkish Cypriot newspaper Kıbrıs, said all options are on table regarding the fate of Cyprus, private news stations NTV reported on Sunday. “Reunification under a deal that [Turkish and Greek Cypriot] leaders could reach, creation of two independent states after an agreement between the two leaders if they are unable to reach a deal for reunification, or annexation of the [Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus] KKTC to Turkey. These are all options on the table,” Bağış said.

Turkish Cypriot leader Derviş Eroğlu and Greek Cypriot leader Dimitris Christofias have been holding talks to reunite the island, but the two sides are unable to report any significant progress from the negotiations, under way since 2008.

Bağış said the Turkish government would support any formula that Eroğlu and Christofias would be able sell to their respective communities. “This includes reunification or failure of reunification; the important thing is that the two leaders manage to get sufficient public support. We, as Turkey, are concerned about only one thing, which is political equality on the island,” Bağış said.

NTV reported that Bağış's remarks have already elicited protests from the KKTC opposition. Main opposition Republican Turkish Party (CTP) leader Özkan Yorgancıoğlu condemned the EU Affairs minister's remarks, saying the idea of annexing the KKTC to Turkey is unacceptable.

Cyprus' division affects Turkey's own membership bid at the EU as well, given that Greek Cyprus -- internationally recognized as representing the entire island -- has been blocking progress in the already stalled Turkish membership process since it joined the bloc as a full member in 2004. Turkey has already declared that it will suspend dialogue with the EU presidency when Greek Cyprus takes over the rotating term presidency of the 27-nation bloc in July.

http://hat4uk.wordpress.com/2012/03/04/greece-erdogan-in-cyprus-annexation-threat/

GREECE: ERDOGAN IN CYPRUS ANNEXATION THREAT…

…as Lala Papademos sets Greek election for April 29th

Wannabe EU member Turkey yesterday threatened to annex part of the EU

One of either Manuelo Barroso or Lucas Papademos has allowed the date of the Greek election to leak following their meeting last Friday. It’s going to be April 29th. Whether this will make Berlin, the bondholders, Brussels or anything else beginning with B more or less happy is anyone’s guess. In the now pretty obvious countdown to default, EU reality is in another place never imagined by George Orwell. We have the eurozone spinners, for example, pushing a new oxymoron to explain their utter confusion and economic illiteracy: growth-friendly fiscal consolidation. About the kindest thing I can say about that phrase is that it sounds like something Hazel Blears might have said.

“Well you see,” began Brussels commissioner Luigi Pistacchio, “it’s mainly a case of taking what we cut because it was more than what we had to spend and investing it in growth. We do this by the ingenious process of leveraging, whereby something we never had is borrowed and thus becomes something to which we add some newly printed currency and create a verruca. So, like a bazooka rams worthless money up your ass, a verruca creates growth in your foot, just above the grass roots. This allows the body of the economy to expand on a stable footing.”

So anyway, there’s going to be ‘an election’ in Greece on April 29th. Now for those of you either way about calendric stuff, let me explain that, between March 23rd when Greece finally goes pop (or the 20th if you prefer Felix Salmon’s critical path) and the election, Greece in general and the Athens Government in particular are going to be in what we senior economists call Haetus the Headless Hellenic Chicken goes Imploding. And our old friend Recep Erdogan has spotted this. You can always rely on a politician to steal from the other guy in the middle of his nervous breakdown, and Recep has no desire to be an exception to that general rule.

Yesterday, Turkey’s Minister for EU Affairs Egemen Bağış, told Cypriot newspaper Kıbrıs, that unless the Cyprus dispute negotiations get a whole lot better very soon, Northern Cyprus could be annexed by peaceloving, non-expansionist Turkey. You can imagine how that played in Athens when Greek newspaper Kathemerini spotted the story this morning, and ran it.

The paper quotes Bağış as quite specifically using the words “annexation to the Turkish Republic”; and while he is only talking about the predominantly Turkish bit, why hell, if your army gets there and the other side seem to be all over the place, then…what’s a guy to do?

It is of course merely Erdogan being mischievous, but it does highlight yet again the broader geopolitical factors that surround the fate of Greece, and why the Americans want to keep a very firm hand on this tiller. Fine, Turkey is a NATO ally, but then Pakistan is a US ally and behaves like a suburb of Tehran: Washington is slowly realising that when an Islamist says he’s an ally, he doesn’t necessarily mean your ally.

Now, all those idiots like David Cameron just busting to get Turkey into the EU should think on this announcement very carefully, because it gives an indication of what might be down the road were that to happen. Here we have a sovereign State allegedly tumsescing about the thought of being a good European (even though it isn’t) threatening to annex an island which, in theory, is part of that very same EU.

Lest anyone’s in any doubt about this, the EU is quite clear about the fact that thewhole of the island of Cyprus is in the EU.

So that’ll be a fun one for the FCO’s dunderheads to deal with, will it not?

and this may be a factoa apart from Greece's curent political mess...

http://www.defence.pk/forums/turkey-defence/148900-turkish-warships-shell-narrow-water-between-israeli-cypriot-gas-fields.html

Cypriot President Demetris Christofias has warned Turkey to stop its warships shelling the strip of water dividing the Cypriot and Israeli gas exploration zones in the eastern Mediterranean.
debkafile's military forces report that Wednesday, Dec. 21, Turkish warships began turning their guns on the strip dividing Israel's Leviathan gas field from Block 12 of Cyprus's Exclusive Economic Zone-EEZ, where a large gas field was recently discovered.
Neither Israel nor Cyprus reported the Turkish attacks which are staged in international waters, but both reinforced their naval units around the gas fields. It was the Cypriot president who broke the silence Friday, Dec. 23 with a warning: "If Turkey does not change its gunboat diplomacy and stop playing the part of regional police officer, there will be consequences which, for sure, will not be good - either for the whole region or the Turkish people and first and foremost for Turkish Cypriots," he said.

On Dec. 22, Israel canceled the $90 million sale to the Turkish Air Force of Elbit's hi-tech LOROP-Long Range Oblique Photography military surveillance system.Israeli defense sources said the transaction was cancelled lest SAR radar or LOROP technology find their way into the hands of Israel's enemies, such as Iran.

According to our military sources, Israel timed the deal's cancellation as a warning to Ankara to back off from its campaign of harassment in and around Israel's gas fields.
Jerusalem, Athens and Nicosia are economic and security partners in the exploration and development of eastern Mediterranean gas resources. The same firm, Noble Energy Inc of Houston, Texas, is working both Cypriot and Israeli fields. Shares in the US company are held in Cyprus by the Cypriot national energy company and in Israel by Delek Drilling LP and Avner Oil Exploration LLP.

The recent discovery that the gas fields are much bigger than first believed has raised the stakes around them. The three governments involved are looking forward to becoming major gas suppliers to Europe and so reducing the continent's dependence on Russian and Turkish gas pipelines.
Noble Energy's latest estimate published Monday, Dec. 19, added 6.3 percent to the Leviathan well's untapped potential, raising it from the previous estimate of 16 to 20 trillion cubic feet.

Nicosia too will shortly issue an upwardly revised estimate of its gas field. According to debkafile's energy industry sources, the new figure is cautiously estimated as 10 trillion cubic feet.Both expect Ankara to escalate its nuisance offensive after the new Nicosia bulletin. As a precaution, Cypriot Foreign Minister Erato Kozakou-Marcoullis was dispatched to Washington Tuesday, Dec. 19, to talk the situation over with administration officials and obtain US support for the continuing gas enterprise and the Cypriot stance against Turkish threats.

According to our Washington sources, the advice from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was to go full steam ahead with gas drilling and ignore Turkish harassment. After their meeting, Kozakou-Marcoullis said the prospects for gas development have already dramatically increased her country's strategic importance.

In a speech at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, she called Turkey "the neighborhood bully," adding that a Turkey "whose foreign minister once promoted a policy of 'zero problems' with its neighbors is now pursuing a policy of 'only problems.' "