Turkey to step up Mediterranean energy exploration by year-end: Erdogan

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed on Friday to step up the search for energy in the Mediterranean by the end of the year, despite tensions with Greece and the rest of the EU.

"We are going to speed up our operations in the Mediterranean with the deployment by the end of the year of the Kanuni (drilling ship), which is currently in maintenance," Erdogan said in a keynote address in Istanbul.

Also read: Why eastern Mediterranean has become a crisis centre for Europe

A new geopolitical storm brewing in the Mediterranean threatens to become a multinational conflict and it could engulf Europe.

Currently, there are two factions, on one hand, there are European countries like France, Cyprus and Greece, one the other there's Turkey - a country that wants to establish a modern-day Islamic Caliphate and is taking a cue from China's expansionism.

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been militarising the eastern Mediterranean region where several geopolitical faultlines converge.

There are maritime boundary disputes, claims and counterclaims of sovereignty which were local affairs but in the last five years it has become serious due to the strategic value of the area and the discovery of offshore natural gas reserves which is estimated to be worth trillions of dollars and therefore conflicts over these reserves have began.

Earlier this month, Greek and Turkish vessels collided in the eastern Mediterranean region as both sides called the collision an "accident", however, what followed tells a different story.