The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is once again deploying its air force in support of allied countries that share its strong opposition to Turkey’s attempts to extend its military reach in the Eastern Mediterranean and Libya.
The UAE is sending between two and four warplanes to the Greek island of Crete for joint training exercises with the Hellenic Air Force following talks between senior Greek and Emirati military officials.
The UAE’s air force previously participated in military exercises in Greece in 2019, with Emirati pilots flying alongside their Israeli counterparts, among others.
What’s notable about this deployment, however, is its timing. France has also just sent two Dassault Rafale jets to Crete in a show of support to Greece as its dispute with Turkey over gas and oil exploration and drilling rights in the Eastern Mediterranean and the delineation of maritime boundaries escalates.
Turkey recently sent warships to escort a research ship for a drilling survey in waters claimed exclusively by Greece.
On August 14, one of these warships suffered a minor collision with a Hellenic Navy warship that the Greek side said was an accident. On August 22, Turkish air and naval forces carried out exercises in the Aegean Sea that included F-16 jets in a show of force.
Turkey has a significantly larger air force than the UAE, as well as Greece, that consists of over 200 F-16s and 40 F-4 Phantoms. The UAE has over 70 F-16s and about 60 French-built Mirage 2000s. While smaller, the Emirati fleet flies more advanced F-16s than the Turks: the Block 60 one-seater E and two-seater F variants built especially for the UAE air force.
Turkey and the UAE have been locked in an increasingly bitter cold war in recent years.
Turkey’s incumbent ruling party, alongside its close ally Qatar, is a strong supporter and patron of Muslim Brotherhood groups across the region. The UAE and Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, strongly oppose the Brotherhood and support regimes that suppress it, such as President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s regime in Egypt. Both countries also began blockading Qatar in July 2017. Turkey and the UAE have also been on the polar opposite sides of regional proxy conflicts, most notably the one in Libya.
The UAE’s decision to send some fighter jets to demonstrate its support of Greece in its dispute with Turkey is another example of Abu Dhabi’s consistent opposition to Ankara’s regional policies in this multi-front cold war.
UAE allies Egypt and France also strongly oppose Turkey’s policies in the Eastern Mediterranean and support Greece. These policies also include Turkey’s drilling for natural gas in the Republic of Cyprus’ economic exclusion zone (EEZ) and its agreement with Libya’s UN-recognised Government of National Accord (GNA) to create an EEZ that claims huge swathes of the Mediterranean between their two distant coasts.
Today, it’s still highly unlikely Turkey and the UAE jets will clash. Nevertheless, such a possibility cannot be totally dismissed out of hand so long as both rivals continuously find themselves facing each other down in tense flashpoints like the Eastern Mediterranean and volatile conflict zones like Libya.
The article originally appeared on Forbes.
