Countries in the eastern Mediterranean have reached such a tense point over gas discoveries in the sea that many experts are now talking about a possible war. Here is why this is happening https://www.ft.com/content/e872ed5d-1f64-48ae-8b8d-d6b49476e749

Turkey and Greece have a decades-long dispute over their maritime boundaries that has never been resolved. The Turkish coastline is dotted with Greek islands that Athens believes gives Greece territorial rights, while Ankara disagrees https://www.ft.com/content/e872ed5d-1f64-48ae-8b8d-d6b49476e749

Cyprus is in the middle of the conflict. Ankara wants to protect the Turkish-speaking northern part of Cyprus, but the international community only views the Greek Cypriot side as the legitimate authority for the whole of the island https://www.ft.com/content/e872ed5d-1f64-48ae-8b8d-d6b49476e749

The discovery of the supergiant Zohr gas field off Egypt in 2015 kickstarted interest in the region from some of the world’s largest energy companies https://www.ft.com/content/e872ed5d-1f64-48ae-8b8d-d6b49476e749

The discovery of the Zohr gas field kickstarted an unlikely alliance between Egypt, Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Jordan, Greece, Cyprus and Italy, leaving Turkey, which already had tensions with Athens and Cairo, isolated https://www.ft.com/content/e872ed5d-1f64-48ae-8b8d-d6b49476e749

Tensions in the eastern Mediterranean are also increasingly tangled up with the conflict in Libya, where a civil war after the 2011 toppling of Colonel Muammer Gaddafi has morphed into a proxy struggle between rival international powers https://www.ft.com/content/e872ed5d-1f64-48ae-8b8d-d6b49476e749

What does the international community think of this? The US has called for diplomacy, but is mostly absent from talks. The burden has fallen on the EU, whose members states tend to side with Greece, but don't show much support for economic sanctions https://www.ft.com/content/e872ed5d-1f64-48ae-8b8d-d6b49476e749