The European Union is preparing sanctions against Turkey for drilling off the shores of Cyprus, according to information from Brussels quoted by the German magazine Der Spiegel.

Turkey continued to provoke Greece with its inflammatory rhetoric, accusing Greece of using inhumane practises against “Turkish minorities” in northern Greece today.

Washington expressed concern at the possibility of Turkey expanding its drilling activities in the Greek continental shelf and in the Aegean Sea, as Matt Palmer, the assistant secretary of state for Eurasian affairs and US special envoy for the western Balkans, said. Mr. Palmer is in Athens for a series of meetings.