PHILADELPHIA – April 18, 2025 – Middle East Forum (MEF) participated in a high-level panel (video; transcript; report; article) on “Eastern Mediterranean Contributions to Middle East Security” at the Delphi Forum in Greece last week. The discussion highlighted the increasing strategic importance of the Eastern Mediterranean region and the growing threat posed by Turkey’s aggressive policies and support for terrorist organizations.
The panel featured MEF executive director Gregg Roman, research director Jonathan Spyer, Michael Rubin, director of policy analysis at MEF and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and Ian Lesser of the German Marshall Fund. Thanos Davelis from the Hellenic American Leadership Council moderated.
“Turkey’s role in hosting Sunni terror groups is analogous to Iran’s role in hosting their Shia equivalents,” said Roman. “It isn’t only the violent actors that we have to worry about; it’s the Istanbul- and Ankara-hatched influence operations that are planned and launched against the West and Eastern Mediterranean countries.”
Spyer warned about Turkey’s use of non-state actors as tools of its foreign policy: “Many or most of the terrorism in the region today is no longer committed by purely non-state actors. Rather, it’s by terrorists who pose as non-state actors who in fact are operating on behalf of one state or another.”
The panel emphasized the vital importance of the trilateral partnership between Israel, Greece, and Cyprus as a counterbalance to Turkish aggression, with Roman calling for this coalition to be “solidified in a formal defense alliance and defense agreement between these three countries backed by the United States.”
Speakers emphasized the strategic significance of energy infrastructure projects like the Great Sea Interconnector and the East Med pipeline, highlighting Turkish attempts to disrupt these initiatives through its controversial maritime deal with Libya.
Recognizing the Eastern Mediterranean’s critical importance as a nexus between Europe and the Middle East, MEF has expanded its work on regional issues, particularly following Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel and the resulting regional destabilization.
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