Abstract
This chapter provides a comprehensive analysis of all facets of the Greek–Turkish maritime dispute: the continental shelf, the territorial waters, delimitation of maritime boundaries with emphasis on the role of islands on the delimitation, the Economic Exclusive Zone, the dispute of the Flight Information Region, the militarisation of the eastern Aegean islands, as well as Turkey’s contestation of the sovereignty of the Greek islands. It finally illustrates that Greece and Turkey not only have markedly different positions about the existing disputes but also about the legal framework governing their substance both over issues and areas where a treaty exists and over issues and areas where no treaty or agreement exists.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
- 3.
Homepage of the Greek Foreign Ministry: Issues of Greek–Turkish Relations. https://www.mfa.gr/en/issues-of-greek-turkish-relations/
- 4.
Homepage of the Turkish Foreign Ministry: Background Note on Aegean Disputes. https://www.mfa.gov.tr/sub.en.mfa?e6757b17-acba-4863-bac3-b2ea77d083ad
- 5.
National airspace lends to the sovereign state a large degree of control over foreign air traffic, especially when it comes to the passage of foreign military and other state aircrafts.
- 6.
Pursuant to the UNCLOS (Part II, Articles 2 and 3) the sovereignty of a coastal state extends, beyond its land territory and internal waters and, in the case of an archipelagic State, its archipelagic waters, to an adjacent belt of sea, described as the territorial sea. This sovereignty extends to the airspace over the territorial sea as well as to its bed and subsoil. Every State has the right to establish the breadth of its territorial sea up to a limit not exceeding 12 nautical miles, measured from baselines determined in accordance with the Convention on the law of the sea. No distinction is made between islands and other land territory pertaining this right. In semi-enclosed seas like the Aegean Sea with many islands in close proximity to each other, the effect of extending the breadth of the territorial sea may extend the sovereignty of the coastal state over substantial parts of that sea not previously subject to such sovereignty. With a 12-mile territorial sea, there would be no routes through the high seas (or Economic Exclusive Zone) between the Southern Aegean Sea and much of the Western coast of Anatolia, including the Turkish Straits (Oxman 1999, 25).
- 7.
The continental shelf designates the seabed and its subsoil beyond the territorial waters throughout the entire natural prolongation of the land territory up to a distance of 200 nautical miles from the baselines. The coastal state exercises over the continental shelf sovereign rights for the purpose of exploring it and exploiting its natural resources. The concept of the continental shelf is associated with that of an Economic Exclusive Zone that adds to the existing regulations a water column to the continental shelf, that is, the superjacent waters of the seabed. Unlikely the continental shelf that exists in any case as a quasi “natural” right of the state, the Economic Exclusive Zone is to be declared and accepted by the neighbouring coastal states. If an Economic Exclusive Zone is to be declared, sovereign rights over the continental shelf exist independently of any proclamation (Cassese 2005, 111–112).
- 8.
In 2011, when Turkey declared the region south of Kastellorizo as a national zone for “oil exploration activities” and assigned a Turkish-funded Norwegian research vessel for the task, Greece protested this move by claiming that the area is part of Greek EEZ.
- 9.
In May 1982, Ankara adopted the so-called Territorial Waters Act, No. 2674, the governmental decree no. 8/4747, according to which the breadth of the Turkish territorial waters was extended beyond 6 nm in certain seas, while with 29 May 1982, while adopting a 6 nm limit in the Aegean (Güneş 2017, 307).
- 10.
When the Dodecanese is lands were ceded to Greece in 1947 under the terms of the Paris Peace Treaty with Italy, Turkey did not voice any reaction, perhaps because Turkey was under strong Soviet pressure at the time about the Kars and Ardahan region and also because, by virtue of its wartime neutrality, it did not have the necessary moral leverage which Greece had built up with the Western allies (Clogg 1983, 129).
- 11.
According to Article 3 of the UNCLOS, coastal states may extend their territorial seas up to 12 n.m., provided that there are no overlapping areas of territorial sea between neighbouring states, whether opposite or adjacent to each other, which calls for delimitation pursuant to Article 15 of the UNCLOS. Such right to extend the territorial sea is subject to no exception or qualification, be it temporal (time frame for the extension) or geographical (territorial seas in semi-enclosed sea).
- 12.
Homepage of the Greek Foreign Ministry. https://www.mfa.gr/en/issues-of-greek-turkish-relations/
- 13.
Greece has avoided to declare straight baselines (it uses natural baselines with an interpretative declaration of 1972 when it ratified the 1958 Treaty on the Continental Shelf) that are estimated to increase the coastal zone by about 5% and to establish a Greek national fishing zone at 12 miles despite the fact that the European Commission has urged the member states to do that in 1992 and 2002, and Greece’s neighbouring states have already done so.
- 14.
Republic of Turkey Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Background Note on Aegean Disputes. https://www.mfa.gov.tr/sub.en.mfa?e6757b17-acba-4863-bac3-b2ea77d083ad
- 15.
Even before Turkey raised the issue of the Aegean airspace, the Treaty of Lausanne had precluded the Turkish military aircraft from flying over the islands of Mytilene, Chios, Samos and Ikaria, and reciprocally, Greece was prohibited of military flights over the Anatolian coast.
- 16.
The delimitation of national airspace claimed by Greece is unique as it does not coincide with the boundary of the territorial waters. Pursuant to the Decree of 6 September 1931 in conjunction with the Law 5017/1931 it extends to 10 nautical miles. A country’s airspace rights usually coincide with its territorial sea rights. Greece claims a six-mile sea limit. Therefore, other countries, including the United States, recognise Greek airspace as only 6 miles (US Congressional Research Service’s report for US Congress 1997, 1).
- 17.
Republic of Turkey Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Background Note on Aegean Disputes. https://www.mfa.gov.tr/sub.en.mfa?e6757b17-acba-4863-bac3-b2ea77d083ad
- 18.
- 19.
According to a known law expert (Van Dyke 2005, 79–83), a useful criterion for awarding territorial sovereignty is the width of the territorial water. Turkey can, thus, claim that it should have sovereignty over those unnamed islets that are within its six-mile territorial sea or, if its territorial sea is less, because of an adjacent named Greek island, over those within the median or equidistance line drawn between uncontested Turkish and Greek territory.
- 20.
By claiming that the status of these islands has remained objectively undecided, Turkey creates a leeway favourable to the Turkish interests because the law that can be applicable in this case is the law of succession. Since the previous legal entity that possessed those islands was the Ottoman Empire, Turkey as the successor state should inherit them.
- 21.
Retired rear admiral Cihat Yayci , architect of the “Blue Homeland” doctrine and its maritime borders pact with Libya’s Tripoli-based government (see next chapters), has publicly said that Turkey’s continental shelf extends to the medial line of the Aegean Sea, while questioning Greek sovereignty over 152 islands.
- 22.
Republic of Turkey Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Background Note on Aegean Disputes. https://www.mfa.gov.tr/sub.en.mfa?e6757b17-acba-4863-bac3-b2ea77d083ad
- 23.
Homepage of the Greek Foreign Ministry. https://www.mfa.gr/en/issues-of-greek-turkish-relations/
- 24.
See the agreements and the letters exchanged between the Turkish Foreign Minister Teufic Rustu and the Italian Ambassador in Ankara Pompeo Aloisi on 4 January 1932 (Gounaris 2010, 314–323).
- 25.
Although Turkey participated in the negotiations on the Law of the SEA, carried out under the auspices of the UN, it has not signed the convention (UNCLOS) that emanated from them, primarily due to its dispute with Greece over maritime boundaries in the Aegean Sea (Gurel 2016, 69).
- 26.
Republic of Turkey Ministry of Foreign Affairs: Background Note on Aegean Disputes: The Demilitarized Status of the Eastern Aegean Islands. http://www.mfa.gov.tr/background-note-on-aegean-disputes.en.mfa
- 27.
The treaty elaborates on the terms “Demilitarisation” and “Demilitarised” to be deemed to prohibit, in the territory and territorial waters concerned, all naval, military and military air installations, fortifications and their armaments; artificial military, naval and air obstacles; the basing or the permanent or temporary stationing of military, naval and military air units; military training in any form; and the production of war material. This does not prohibit internal security personnel restricted in number to meeting tasks of an internal character and equipped with weapons which can be carried and operated by one person and the necessary military training of such personnel.
- 28.
In this regard, Turkey regards all the military exercises conducted by the Greek state around these islands as provocative actions and escalatory steps against Turkish interests. https://www.kathimerini.gr/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/TourkikoYpex.pdf
- 29.
Hellenic Ministry of Foreign Affairs: Τurkish claims regarding the demilitarisation of islands in the Aegean Sea. Issues of Greek – Turkish Relations – Relevant Documents. https://www.mfa.gr/en/issues-of-greek-turkish-relations/relevant-documents/turkish-claims-regarding-the-demilitarization-of-islands-in-the-aegean-sea.html
- 30.
See the full text of the declaration in Divani 2000, 544.
- 31.
In February 2022, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu announced that Ankara would ask the parties to the Lausanne and Paris treaties to take a stand on how Greece is doing regarding the demilitarisation status of the islands. Cavusoglu’s call was the latest move by Ankara in a long series of challenges to Greek sovereignty, including the submission of its claims in official documents to the United Nations and constant overflights in the Aegean by Turkish fighter jets. Immediately, both the United States and the European Union refuted any questioning of Greek sovereignty over islands. https://www.ekathimerini.com/news/1177356/state-department-states-that-sovereignty-of-greek-islands-is-unquestionable/; https://www.ekathimerini.com/news/1177436/eu-refutes-any-questioning-of-greek-sovereignty-over-islands/
- 32.
Since 2020, Turkey has issued many navigational telexes (Navtex) covering large swathes of the Aegean Sea, claiming that these were in response to Greece’s militarisation of the eastern Aegean islands of Chios, Samos, Samothrace, Lemnos, Ikaria and Patmos which poses a threat to its national security.
- 33.
UN General Assembly, Security Council, Seventy-sixth session, Seventy-sixth year, agenda item 78 (a). Letter dated 30 September 2021 from the Permanent Representative of Turkey to the United Nations addressed to the Secretary-General.
- 34.
United Nations . Letter dated 25 May 2022 from the Permanent Representative of Greece to the United Nations addressed to the Secretary-General. Ref. No. 40.1.184/AS 8447.
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Stergiou, A. (2022). The Basic Parameters of the Dispute. In: The Greek-Turkish Maritime Dispute. Contributions to International Relations. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15515-4_1
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