Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced the launch of the country’s Abdulhamid Han drill ship in contested waters off Cyprus on Tuesday (Greek time).
The inaugural ceremony for Abdulhamid Han, Turkey’s largest drilling ship, was scheduled to set out for an offshore exploration of oil and natural gas in the eastern Mediterranean. The Abdulhamid Han is a nine-storey drill ship with crew capacity of 200. The vessel has the ability to drill at 40,000 feet and the eastern Mediterranean is its first mission.
Erdogan, who took a helicopter ride to the ship’s helipad, did not appear to be in a hurry to announce the final destination and if it was in contested waters, seen by Greek political pundits as a political calculation.
The Turkish Petroleum Company, which operates the state-of-the-art vessel, also did not disclose any coordinates ahead of time as they did not file a NAVTEX in advance, Kathimerini Cyprus reported.
Greece and the Greek Cypriots in the Republic of Cyprus have accused Turkey of violating the two countries’ rights within the their respective exclusive economic zones, while Ankara has disputed some of the claims arguing they were encroaching on Turkish and Turkish Cypriot rights.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu warned on Monday that his country was defending sovereign rights in the eastern Mediterranean, pointing to past actions by Ankara when “the Greek and Greek-Cypriot duo attempted to send nine ships to our continental shelf”.
“We prevented these with the measures we took both on ground and at the table. And tomorrow the ship Abdulhamid Han will sail for its first operations in the Mediterranean,” he said.