Dore Gold: The Turkish-Libyan Maritime Agreement and the Struggle over the Mediterranean

See more Diplomatic Dispatch videos: Since it came to power in 2002, the AKP Party, which has ruled Turkey for nearly 20 years, has increasingly become preoccupied with Turkey’s Ottoman past, especially under the leadership of President Erdogan. At its zenith, the Ottoman Empire covered much more territory than the present-day Turkish Republic. It stretched from Algiers in the west across North Africa and the Middle East to Iraq in the east. The Ottomans seized Jerusalem in 1517. The Ottoman patrimony also covered territories from southern Poland in the north to Aden at the tip of Arabia in the south, including the holy cities of Islam, namely Mecca and Medina. Yet the Ottoman Empire steadily contracted over the centuries as it lost successive battles with European powers. It lost Crimea to the Russian Empire. For a time, Egypt fell to the French. The Mediterranean Sea stopped being an Ottoman lake as European navies