23 SEP 2020 · Political science professor Muzaffer Şenel told Ahval editor David Lepeska that he expects the European Union to levy minor sanctions against Turkey this week, that both Turkey and Greece are asserting maximalist maritime claims and that Turkish politicians are increasingly using refugees as scapegoats for the country’s economic and social issues. 

17 SEP 2020 · Warsaw-based analyst Karol Wasilewski told Ahval editor David Lepeska that NATO has to be innovative to get Turkey and Greece to the negotiating table, that a divided European Union has strengthened Ankara’s hand and that Turkish foreign policy gains in Libya, Syria and the eastern Mediterranean could evaporate quickly. 

16 SEP 2020 · Cyprus analyst Fiona Mullen told Ahval editor David Lepeska that conflict might have broken out in the eastern Mediterranean by now if the Greek and Turkish militaries had not been talking regularly, that Cyprus missed a great opportunity to develop its gas fields, and that the planned EastMed pipeline is probably a pipe dream. 

9 SEP 2020 · Harry Tzimitras of the Peace Research Institute Oslo told Ahval editor David Lepeska that Turkey has been using its quest for natural gas to send a political and military message to the region and the West, and that the pandemic has shrunk energy demand and dramatically altered the situation in the eastern Mediterranean, from which gas will not be going to the European market.

8 SEP 2020 · Maritime law scholar Nicholas Ioannides told Ahval editor David Lepeska that several factors come into play when determining the maritime borders around the Greek island of Kastellorizo and that Turkey has violated the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, to which it is not a signatory, and sought to introduce deviations from international law while other regional actors have accepted standard regulations and sought to cooperate. 

3 SEP 2020 · Migration and diaspora scholar Gerasimos Tsourapas told Ahval editor David Lepeska that a covid outbreak in any of Greece’s Aegean island refugee camps could exact a high toll, that President Erdogan’s weaponisation of refugees is likely to deliver diminishing results and that Turkey’s repressive measures abroad, like those of many authoritarian regimes, tend to make a real impact. 

1 SEP 2020 · Researcher Meghan Bodette told Ahval editor David Lepeska that more than 170 women have been kidnapped by Turkey-backed rebels in Syria’s Afrin province since the start of the Turkish occupation in January 2018, including 11 more in August, and that Turkey has no intention of responding to reports of war crimes and rights violations in Afrin or northeast Syria.

26 AUG 2020 · Guillaume Perrier, longtime Turkey correspondent for French newspaper Le Monde, told Ahval editor David Lepeska that the threat of Turkey-linked political parties and Islamist and ultra-nationalist groups is growing in France and that with their latest exchange of insults presidents Erdogan and Macron are playing to a domestic audience and may soon move closer on Libya and the eastern Mediterranean as Paris aims to broker talks.

25 AUG 2020 · Atlantic Council fellow Dimitar Bechev told Ahval editor David Lepeska that we cannot yet assess the likely impact of Turkey’s gas discovery in the Black Sea, that Turkish President Erdogan appears to have U.S. President Trump wrapped around his finger and that Turkey’s policies in Syria, in halting Syrian President Assad’s offensive and curbing the Kurdish nationalist movement, have been a measured success. 

19 AUG 2020 · German parliamentarian Sevim Dağdelen told Ahval editor David Lepeska that Germany cannot be a credible mediator on Libya or Turkey-Greece tensions until it halts arms shipments to Turkey and that Germany’s largest Muslim organisation is not a religious body but a political one, a representative of the Turkish state with which Germany should end all cooperation and funding.