Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on Wednesday that any project that disregards Turkey and the TRNC in the Eastern Mediterranean cannot be successful.

Evaluating the US’s withdrawal from the Eastern Mediterranean (EastMed) Pipeline, a planned gas pipeline that would ferry Israeli gas from the Eastern Mediterranean to Greece, the Turkish president said that Washington had withdrawn from the project after realising that it would not serve its interests.

He stressed that “any project that disregards Turkey in the Eastern Mediterranean cannot be successful.”

Saying that the EastMed project is “technically and commercially unfeasible,” Erdogan welcomed the decision by the US to withdraw its support from the project.

Erdoğan repeated that Turkey continued to support cooperation in the Eastern Mediterranean that would allow a fair distribution of the region’s resources.

“We proposed in 2020 to hold a comprehensive conference to discuss these issues but unfortunately we did not receive a reply and so we are now waiting,” he said.