Turkey's Erdogan proposes regional conference over East Med issue

UNITED NATIONS -- Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday proposed a regional conference over the maritime dispute in the Eastern Mediterranean.

"I would like to repeat here our call for establishing dialogue and cooperation between coastal countries of the Eastern Mediterranean," Erdogan said in his video remarks to the general debate of the 75th session of the UN General Assembly.

"For this purpose, we would like to propose the convening of a regional conference, including Turkish Cypriots, in which the rights and interests of all the countries of the region are considered," he added.

The dispute over Turkish natural gas explorations off Greek islands in the Eastern Mediterranean has escalated in recent weeks.

Greece considers the explorations illegal. The Turkish government, on the other hand, believes the waters, in which natural gas is being drilled on a trial basis, belong to the Turkish continental shelf.