For some time, Israel has stepped up its unilateral actions not only in the territorial domains of the Levant region but also within its maritime zones, increasingly aligning its policies with the Greece-Greek Cypriot administration axis in the Eastern Mediterranean. As evidenced by the recent 10th Greek-Greek Cypriot-Israeli trilateral summit held in Tel Aviv, this apparent anti-Türkiye axis has strengthened its ties, which were initially established in cultural and economic domains. Both the structure of the partnership and the leaders’ speeches indicate that containing Türkiye’s increasing dynamism across multiple fields in the region plays a central role. In particular, the alliance is largely grounded in isolating Türkiye’s energy, maritime and political actorhood in the Mediterranean region, as the parties involved seek to dominate regional hydrocarbon reserves and control potential pipeline routes. These developments directly translate into political leverage.

In this model of alignment, Türkiye’s emerging centrality in Syria and its potentially transformative impact over the Levant region seemed to have urged this anti-Türkiye axis in the East Mediterranean to pressure fragmented states, like Lebanon, into bandwagoning their agenda. Despite the failure of the EastMed project, backed overtly by the anti-Türkiye axis in a way to exclude Türkiye from the Eastern Mediterranean energy equation and to weaken Türkiye and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), the unilateral and subversive actions of the anti-Türkiye trilateral alliance persisted in this region, especially following the changing power balance in the Levant region.

These efforts became particularly observable with two specific cases: First was Israel’s initial full-scale invasion of Gaza and its ensuing military encroachments in Lebanon; second was the fall of the Assad regime in Syria. These two events radically shifted traditional Levantine-based polarizations and competitive dynamics within a region historically characterized by porous borders and intensive societal interactions.

Lebanon in crossfire

While the Hezbollah-Iran axis, along with its indispensable part, that was the Assad regime, was largely weakened, two recent competitive actors resurfaced. One is Israel, regarded as an invasionist, brutal and, most importantly, unrestrained regional force. The other is Türkiye’s complete integration into this Middle Eastern sub-region with the Syrian revolution. Confronted with Türkiye’s counterweiling position and its growing entrenched role in Syria, in addition to its still relentless efforts to exploit some Druze groups in Syrian territories surrounding its occupation area in Syria and its alliance with YPG/SDF terrorism, Israel turned to manipulating Lebanon’s already fractured sectarian dynamics in an effort to empower not only its territorial but also its maritime hegemony in the Levant.

In that sense, it aligned with the Greece-Greek Cypriot axis to urge Lebanon’s newly formed government to ratify the maritime deal, which had remained stalled since its signing in 2007. Eventually, both governments jointly declared the activation of this controversial and illegal maritime deal between Lebanon and the Greek Cypriot administration.

Whereas Lebanon previously refrained from ratifying this agreement, this recent step risks straining its growing ties not only with Türkiye but also with Syria, which has yet to delimit its own maritime borders with the relevant actors. Before this ratification, Lebanon had already moved to resolve its long-standing maritime disputes with Israel in 2022 through U.S. mediation. Then, amid shifting internal power balances and the emergence of a more fragile government structure exposed to Israel-U.S. pressure, the newly founded Aoun-Salam government seemed to view potential cooperation with the anti-Türkiye axis, particularly in the Eastern Mediterranean, as instrumental both for containing Israel’s military actions and for siding with the United States and French policy preferences.

Despite Lebanon’s traditional reluctance to deepen relations with Türkiye, stemming from the presence of certain domestic groups and their decisive influence on Lebanese politics, Beirut avoided directly conflicting with Türkiye’s regional concerns. However, evolving sectarian balances within Lebanese politics, coupled with the rise of several actors lacking a negative perception of Israel and the anti-Türkiye Eastern Mediterranean alignment, gradually transformed Lebanon’s overall political outlook.

Against Türkiye, TRNC

Therefore, the recent declaration on maritime agreement by Lebanon and the Greek Cypriot administration manifests several important points, most notably Lebanon’s gradual shift into a different regional polarization. First, this arrangement appears to violate established legal, historical and geographical rights by discounting the consent of the TRNC and the maritime delimitation agreements completed between Türkiye and the TRNC. The maritime zones and exploration licenses mutually recognized by Türkiye and the TRNC overlap with and contradict the provisions of the Lebanon-Greek Cypriot deal. In other words, these arrangements directly conflict with the maritime boundaries and licensed areas outlined under the recent Lebanon-Greek Cypriot agreement. Despite the emerging coordination among Israel, Greece and Lebanon aimed at constraining Türkiye’s maritime position in the Eastern Mediterranean, Türkiye’s consolidated alliance with the TRNC and its potential pursuit of comparable maritime delimitation agreements with Syria would likely invalidate this recent EastMed-style initiative.

Secondly, it displays that Israel intends to dominate Lebanese politics with the support of primary influential actors such as the U.S. and France, alongside the tacit restraining of certain regional powers, like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which backed the recent Lebanese government to weaken the Hezbollah-Iran axis in the Levant.

Third, Lebanon directly becomes entangled in a new regional polarization while concurrently striving to escape from the previous polarizations. From this perspective, with its maritime deal, Lebanon’s confirmation of the anti-Türkiye Eastern Mediterranean bloc constitutes a strategic miscalculation, as it disregards the legal, political and historical rights of Türkiye and the TRNC in the region. Against this background, the new Lebanese government appears eager to collaborate with another EastMed-style project in the Eastern Mediterranean, once again under the leadership and backing of Israel and Greece.

Fourth, the ratification of the deal clarifies Lebanon’s often overlooked strategic importance not only for understanding regional polarizations, sectarian cleavages in the region and local-regional alliances but also its strategic place in Eastern Mediterranean power reconfiguration. Much like Libya, Lebanon occupies a pivotal place at the intersection of all Eastern Mediterranean maritime borders, as it shares borders with Israel, Syria and the island of Cyprus. Türkiye’s recent reactions to this deal, together with its consistent rejection of unilateral Greek Cypriot actions aimed at excluding the TRNC’s maritime rights, show its resolute stance to counter successive efforts to encircle the Türkiye-TRNC alliance in the Levantine segment of the Eastern Mediterranean.

As reflected in Türkiye’s Libyan initiatives intensified in 2018-2019, recent alignment between the anti-Türkiye axis and their efforts to exploit Lebanon’s recent oscillations as a result of the broader power vacuum tried to be filled by Israel are likely reversed with a diversified set of Türkiye’s countermeasures across different realms.

To conclude, despite its frequent ignorance in primary strategic calculations regarding the East Mediterranean and wider region, Lebanon holds a significant place in energy dynamics, maritime delimitations and trade routes, much like Libya’s emergent pivotal role in Türkiye’s active Mediterranean policy to challenge the isolationist policies in this region. When considering that Libya and Lebanon control different parts of the Mediterranean and are situated at the intersection of strategic maritime zones, Türkiye should extend its stabilizing and constructive efforts to Lebanon, which is essential for Levantine regional order and maritime cooperation in the eastern Mediterranean.