The EU Council adopted on Thursday 27 February sanctions against two persons linked to unauthorised drilling activities carried out by Turkey in the Eastern Mediterranean.
The two men are officials from the Turkish Petroleum Corporation (TPAO). The first is Mehmet Ferruh Akalin, Vice President of TPAO, who heads the company’s ‘Exploration’, ‘R&D Centre’ and ‘Information Technology’ departments and in this capacity is responsible for the planning, direction and implementation of offshore hydrocarbon exploration activities, including drilling activities not authorised by the Republic of Cyprus in 2019 and early 2020. The second is Ali Coscun Namoglu, TPAO’s Deputy Director of ‘Exploration’, who, in this capacity, is involved in the planning, direction and implementation of TPAO’s offshore hydrocarbon exploration activities, including unauthorised drilling activities.
Two TPAO vessels, the Yavuz and the Fatih, each carried out unauthorised activities during two separate periods, and the company announced its plans to carry out new drilling activities without the authorisation of Cyprus from January to May 2020, according to legal acts published in the Official Gazette.
On 11 November, the ‘Foreign Affairs’ Council adopted the legal framework for the adoption of such restrictive measures (see EUROPE 12367/8). Ministers had called for the implementation of such a framework on 14 October (see EUROPE 12348/2), supported by their Heads of State and Government on 17 October (see EUROPE 12351/3). (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)