Mediterranean at a glance

Although Mesopotamia is accepted as the place where the history of humanity began, the Mediterranean basin, which we can call its geographical neighbor or extension, is also a geography where developments that left traces in the history of humanity both politically, commercially and socially.

We can consider the Mediterranean in two parts as East and West. The midpoint of this divide is the island of Malta. In other words, we can call the Eastern Mediterranean to the east of the island of Malta and the Western Mediterranean to the west. The Mediterranean, as the name suggests (Mediterranean), is a middle sea. It is a body of water at the confluence of southern Europe, northern Africa, and western Asia.

Let's remove the Mediterranean in our minds and make these three continents neighbors over land. So let's suppose that today's Spain and Morocco, France and Algeria, Italy and Tunisia and Libya, Greece and Egypt and Turkey are bordered by broad land borders. I think we would be living in a very different world order right now. Although the Mediterranean is not as wide and wide as the oceans, it is the largest inland sea in the world in terms of the area it covers. Being an inland sea made the Mediterranean discoverable and conquerable.

Now let's take a journey into history and briefly summarize who came and passed through the Mediterranean geography.

One of the most important Mediterranean civilizations we know of in our official readings is ancient Egypt. The religious empire they established in an area extending from the interior of Africa to the shores of the Mediterranean, on the Nile river extension, has also been effective in today's Israel, Palestine and Syria regions.

We can talk about ancient Greece. Places where political life is shaped and which today's systems see as a reference point. Political union, some of which ruled in what is now Greece and some of them in Western Anatolia, the beginning of which was city-states.

We know the Phoenicians, the seafaring and merchant people living around Lebanon. We know the Carthaginians. Those who ruled today's Tunisia and Libya at the height of maritime.

And finally, Rome was a great empire that ruled the whole of the Mediterranean, calling the Mediterranean Mare Nostrum (Our Sea), one end with the British island on the other end Palestine, and also controlling the Iberian peninsula and northern Africa.

After the disintegration of Rome, the hegemony of the Arabs, the representatives of the religion of Islam from Asia, in the Mediterranean geography begins. The Arabs, who captured the North African coasts and Andalusia, especially the eastern coasts of the Mediterranean, controlled the Mediterranean after the Romans.

Afterwards, the Turks, who almost built a wall against the Crusades from the West, turned the Mediterranean into a Turkish lake with the Ottoman Empire they established.

Among the periods we mentioned, we can call the Roman and Ottoman periods as Pax Romana and Pax Ottoman periods in the Mediterranean, as they controlled the whole of the Mediterranean and brought order.

Italian city-states such as the Venetians and the Genoese continued their commercial activities in the Mediterranean in every period. From outside the basin, especially Russia and England's desire to have a say in the region is frequently seen.

Today, we can define the Mediterranean environment in two main axes as the developed west and north coasts and the east and south coasts that are suitable for crisis and conflict environments. The discovery of the existence of rich natural gas and oil deposits in the eastern part has put the status quo in this region, which is already problematic, into a difficult situation.

We can define another axis through religion. The Mediterranean coast is home to Christianity, Islam and Judaism. The intersection point of these three monotheistic religions is the Mediterranean. The eastern and southern coasts are predominantly Muslim. On the northern shores, there are communities representing Catholic and Orthodox Christianity. The point that draws attention here is that despite the sharp religious and cultural differences, the Mediterranean region communities have similar lifestyles.

When the Mediterranean is mentioned, it is impossible not to mention the straits, islands, inland seas and peninsulas.

Suez, Gibraltar and Turkish Straits are important trade passages that connect the Mediterranean geography with other geographies. The Strait of Messina between Sicily and Tunisia and the Corinthian channel separating the Peloponnese from the mainland are also important inland waterways.

In addition to Cyprus and Malta, which became a state, Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia and the Greek islands and Spanish Balearic Islands, which are tourism paradises, can be mentioned as islands.

The most important of the inland seas of the Mediterranean are the Aegean, Ionian and Adriatic seas. The Gulf of Sirte on the Libyan coast is almost the size of an inland sea.

In addition to the Anatolian peninsula extending from east to west, each of the Peloponnese, Apennine and Iberian peninsulas extending north-south is under the sovereignty of a state.

Today, the economic value produced by 23 countries, large and small, that have a coast on the Mediterranean, is between 7 and 8 trillion dollars. About 5 trillion dollars of this value is produced by 3 developed northern coastal countries (France, Spain and Italy). Turkey and Egypt have not yet closed. They are not countries that have reached a sufficient size in terms of their sites. Among the 85 trillion dollar world economy, the US's 20 trillion dollar and China's 14 billion dollar economic size is not very high, with a 10% share in the world economy. Let's not forget that 400 years ago, almost all of the economic activities in the world were in the Mediterranean region.

I wonder if the Mediterranean, which is the world's largest inland sea with an area of 2.5 million kilometers, needs a political union, as it was in the Roman and Ottoman periods, to re-enter the world civilization stage with its 300 million population living on its shores?