NEW EASTERN OUTLOOK 🌐 (@NEO_Journal)

🇬🇷🇨🇾🇮🇱🎯🇹🇷Eastern Mediterranean: A New Military Axis Against Turkey ➿➿➿➿➿➿➿➿➿➿ For years, Eastern Mediterranean tensions were mostly about who owned the gas beneath the seabed. That framing no longer fits. What began as a trilateral platform for coordinating energy has hardened into a genuine security bloc—built without Turkey at the table and directed against Turkish interests. ✏️Salman Rafi Sheikh is a research analyst of international relations and Pakistan's foreign and domestic affairs. ➡️The shift became explicit at a December 22 trilateral summit in Jerusalem, where leaders committed to deepening joint defense cooperation. Framework agreements now include a trilateral Joint Action Plan and a bilateral Greece-Israel Military Cooperation Program for 2026. Greece has purchased roughly $750 million in Israeli PULS rocket systems and is negotiating to buy Achilles Shield—an Israeli-linked air-defense project embedding Israeli technology into Greek and Cypriot force structures. Beneath headline purchases sits an interlocking technical architecture of anti-drone systems, radar fusion, and sensor networks now active across the eastern Aegean and Cypriot airspace. If Washington continues to prioritize Gaza and Iran while treating the Eastern Mediterranean as a secondary theater, it will effectively be endorsing a NATO fault line by neglect. ➡️Israel's expanding diplomatic footprint has already touched a region where Turkey has real equities: it became the first country to recognize Somaliland, where Turkey has maintained a military base since 2017. Turkey's position rests on the "Blue Homeland" concept—asserting Turkish claims across the Aegean, Eastern Mediterranean, and Black Sea—already producing a 2019 maritime boundary agreement with Libya. Ankara is reportedly now seeking a comparable arrangement with Syria. Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan has asked what strategic logic could justify Greek or Cypriot military cooperation with Israel beyond containment of Turkey—neither country has offered a convincing answer. 🟦Turkey is the only major Eastern Mediterranean power left outside a rapidly consolidating bloc. Cem Gurdeniz, one of Blue Homeland's architects, has described the trilateral's approach as indirect containment—narrowing Turkey's strategic space until Ankara accepts a reduced role. NATO's silence is the more urgent story: Turkey and Greece are both alliance members, yet Washington has allowed a bloc built by three of the region's most capable militaries to consolidate against a fellow NATO ally without serious mediation. Cyprus is where this contest is most likely to be tested first—the one flashpoint where rival sovereignty claims, naval assets, and integrated air-defense systems are already stacked on top of one another. Whether the wider order recognizes Turkey's documented position or continues to treat it as mere bluster will determine whether this remains a contest fought through statements and exercises, or hardens into something harder to walk back. READ MORE #EasternMediterranean #Turkey #Greece #Cyprus #Israel #Geopolitics #NATO #BlueHomeland ✅@NewEasternOutlook