The Greek-Turkish Maritime Dispute: Resisting the Future (Contributions to International Relations) 3031155149, 9783031155147

Table of contents :
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Contents
Abbreviations
List of Maps
Chapter 1: The Basic Parameters of the Dispute
References
Chapter 2: The Aegean Dispute in the Context of International Treaties and International Courts’ Judgements: A Critical Appraisal
References
Chapter 3: The Formation of the Dispute in the 1970s and 1980s
References
Chapter 4: The Post-Cold War Era
References
Chapter 5: The Rise of the AKP Party and Turkey’s Grand Strategy in the Twenty-First Century
References
Chapter 6: The 2019–2020 Maritime Borders Delimitation Agreements in the Eastern Mediterranean and Their Implications
References
United Nations Documents
Chapter 7: Energy Geopolitics Revisited: Green Economy Instead of Conflict
References
Chapter 8: A Paradigm Change in the Governance of the Aegean Sea
References
Chapter 9: Conclusions
Author Index
Subject Index

Citation preview

Contributions to International Relations

Andreas Stergiou

The Greek-Turkish Maritime Dispute Resisting the Future

Contributions to International Relations

This book series offers an outlet for cutting-edge research on all areas of international relations. Contributions to International Relations (CIR) welcomes theoretically sound and empirically robust monographs, edited volumes and handbooks from various disciplines and approaches on topics such as IR-theory, international security studies, foreign policy, peace and conflict studies, international organization, global governance, international political economy, the history of international relations and related fields.

Andreas Stergiou

The Greek-Turkish Maritime Dispute Resisting the Future

Andreas Stergiou Department of Economics University of Thessaly Volos, Greece

ISSN 2731-5061     ISSN 2731-507X (electronic) Contributions to International Relations ISBN 978-3-031-15514-7    ISBN 978-3-031-15515-4 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15515-4 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

To my sister-mother Litsa

Acknowledgements

The task of compiling this book has been a meticulous, solitary and highly explorative voyage. Reaching the end of this voyage, I wish to thank all those who have supported my efforts for the realisation of this book by offering multi-faceted assistance. First of all, I would like to thank my friends and colleagues Charalambos Tsardanidis, Panagiotis Tsakonas, Christos Kollias and Kivanc Ulusoy. I also would like to thank the staff of Springer, Lorraine Klimowich, Lakshmanan Radha and Saveetha Balasundaram, because they embraced the project and contributed essentially to its materialisation.

vii

Introduction

As widely known, over history Greece and Turkey have shared an abiding distrust and enmity. Since the foundation of the modern Greek state in the nineteenth century, Greece and what would later become modern Turkey have been rivals, outright enemies and often at war. Deeply ingrained resentments and popular stereotypes, refuelled by over-sensationalised and nationalistically motivated news coverage, still serve as the lenses through which the two peoples perceive and interpret each other’s behaviour. The perception of threat from Turkey has traditionally dominated Greek thinking about the strategic environment, including defence planning. It has also absorbed enormous energy and resources on the Greek side. In broader political terms, a conflict with Ottoman and modern Turkey has been central to the development of Greek nationalism and the evolution of the modern state (Lesser et al. 2001, 20–24). From Greece’s independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1830 until World War I, Greeks and Turks witnessed intermittent periods of savage war and precarious peace with each other. The dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in 1919 was succeeded by yet another Greco-Turkish War in 1920, this time between the Greek Kingdom and the National Turkish Movement led by Kemal Atatürk, which was terminated in 1923 with the Treaty of Lausanne. Mutual NATO membership and shared Cold War fears of Soviet Russia did not stop the two from almost going to war after the outbreak of the Cypriot independence struggle and the Turkish pogrom against the Greek living population in Istanbul in 1955, after the intercommunal riots in Cyprus in 1963–1964 and after the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974. In 1974, armies of the two countries clashed again for short time in the context of the Cyprus problem. The formation of the Aegean dispute in the 1970s and 1980s further aggravated the already precarious coexistence, creating an enduring and intractable dispute over the Aegean Sea souring the Greek–Turkish relationship more than any other issue. This dispute has traditionally taken the form of a frozen conflict, with occasional flare-ups until today in whose context the two countries came several times close to a war, in 1976, 1987, 1996 and 2020, to name a few.

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Introduction

Since the crisis in the Aegean of March 1987, the Greek political system has been overwhelmingly in agreement that holding discussions with Turkey on the maritime dispute is imperative. Talks could, under certain conditions, lead to negotiations. However, Greece would enter talks on the condition that the only issue to be negotiated is continental shelf and Economic Exclusive Zone (EEZ) delineation in the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean Sea. Turkey, on the other hand, would enter into serious negotiations only in order to discuss a wide range of issues which Turkey has been raising since 1973. These include Ankara’s claims on the continental shelf, the demilitarisation of the eastern Aegean islands, the territorial waters and the authority on the Flight Information Region over the Aegean Sea. Moreover, since the mid-1990s Turkey has begun questioning the legal architecture in the Aegean Sea established by the Lausanne Treaty, disputing Greece’s sovereignty over a number of islets, most notably the islets of Imia/Kardak by claiming that the “undetermined” legal status of these isles de facto forms “grey zones” in the Aegean Sea. In recent years, almost all Turkey’s political parties and dignitaries have challenged Greece’s sovereignty over east Aegean and Dodecanese islands from Samothraki to Kastellorizo, alleging that their demilitarisation were a condition to Greece’s territorial sovereignty over them. They also have claimed that, by militarising them, Greece has been threatening the territorial regimes agreed in Lausanne and Paris Peace Treaty thereby posing a threat to international security. Of secondary importance but still on the agenda is also the issue of the exploitation of possible energy resources in the Aegean. Greece has always perceived the dispute as a cardinal security problem, whereas in previous decades Turkey saw it rather as a struggle over resources and less a security problem (Axt et al. 2008, 175). Greece’s and Turkey’s membership in the NATO alliance since 1952 has not calmed these concerns for either country. NATO persistently and deliberately1 has been avoiding to get involved in the Greek–Turkish conflict. Therefore, since 1973–1974 Greece and Turkey have been only formally NATO allies, while it appears that the Greek and Turkish forces were never properly integrated into the overall NATO military command structure. There was ample evidence that they merely seem to function as national forces rather than as allied ones. Even in the 1950s there was a fear of strategic nature circulating among the highest NATO operational and component levels of command. It was estimated that in case of war in the Balkans a Soviet Bloc offensive operation could cut easily the NATO forces off, forcing them to fight different battles in separate sub-theatres because no contact between Greek and Turkish land forces would be maintained. Notably, in the wake of the Cyprus crisis in August 1974, Athens decided to withdraw unilaterally from NATO’s integrated military structure as a protest “against the Alliance’s inactivity” during the Turkish invasion in Cyprus. Almost simultaneously the United States imposed embargo on arms sales to Turkey. Greece stopped taking part in, among

 It is characteristic that NATO does even support applications for studies or research programmes on such a topics. 1

Introduction

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others, the NATO Defence Planning Committee, in joint military drills and sharing information with its allies on the common air defence until its re-integration in 1980. This inherited problem of the NATO integrated military command could never be erased outright. To the contrary, whenever, from 1955 onwards, a crisis in the Greek–Turkish relations occurred, an unwholesome gap between the two countries and their NATO allies was manifested in full display. These crises quickly escalated into serious disputes threatening to disrupt, first, Turkey’s ability to control the only sea connection between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, with its possession of the Dardanelles, and second, the whole NATO’s defence capability in the region (Stergiou 2021, 28). The fact that Greece and Turkey are blessed or cursed to be situated in the Eastern Mediterranean, a geopolitically highly combustible region haunted by numerous ethnic and political conflicts, is an important component of the analysis. Notably, the East Med region has been in geopolitical, geoeconomic and geostrategic terms important throughout history. It is a common area for three different continents – Europe, Asia and Africa  – and the three monotheistic religions  – Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Additionally, there are two very important sea straits in its Eastern basin: the first one is the Dardanelles, through which the Aegean Sea communicates with the Black Sea and the various countries whose coastlines are located in its wider region. The shores of the Aegean constitute a crucial part of this complex. They have been interwoven through a long, shared history and have laid at the centre of the Turkish–Greek encounter in contradictory ways. They have been places of peaceful cohabitation between Orthodox Christians and Muslims, Greeks and Turks but also sites of ethnic antagonism, conflict and disputes (Karakatsanis 2014, 81–82). The Mediterranean Sea is among the world’s busiest waterways. It is estimated that about 15% of global shipping activity by number of calls and 10% by vessel are noted in the wider region per year in the last decade. In the same decade, 13,000 merchant ships made 252,000 calls at Mediterranean ports, totalling 3.8 billion deadweight tons on average per year. Merchant vessels operating within and through the Mediterranean are getting larger and carrying more trade in larger parcels (Chrysochou and Dalaklis 2019, 142). The 2009–2015 discoveries of gas reserves in the Eastern Mediterranean raised expectation about an even greater natural energy endowment that has, temporarily, doubled that political, economic and geopolitical importance of the region and compounded pre-existing conflicts and rivalries morphing an intractable polyhedron. For Turkey, the Aegean Sea is a common maritime area between the two riparian states. For Greece, the Aegean Sea is part of the Greek homeland and therefore any concession against this established perception would be considered national treason. The absence of a commonly accepted legal regime for maritime borders has exacerbated the existing differences. Pending maritime delimitation issues with regard to the delimitation of the continental shelf and the EEZs between the adjacent states turned out to be a source of ongoing tensions, having, however, not created serious problems to the freedom of navigation and consequently to the maritime transport and the respective energy supply routes. The delimitation of maritime

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Introduction

zones is an extremely difficult and contentious political issue because it addresses sovereign rights and economic interests at the same time. Against this background, the licensing search rounds for hydrocarbons or drilling and exploitation of natural gas and oil deposits by some states ignited serious interstate conflicts or rivalries that brought the neighbouring countries to the verge of a war, although energy in itself has not been in most of the cases the main cause of the problems. Things got complicated in the Eastern Mediterranean when, in November 2019, Turkey signed a maritime delimitation agreement with the Tripoli-based internationally recognised government as Turkey found itself boxed into a small area of the Eastern Mediterranean, with Egypt, Cyprus and Greece able to expand their maritime interests and boosting their alliance. Greece’s response with the signing of delimitation agreement of its maritime zone with Egypt and Italy in summer 2020 prompted Ankara’s heavy reaction, resulting in serious tensions in the Aegean Sea. Greece and Turkey waxed for several weeks locked in a stiff standoff the region had not witnessed in 20 years. Since a possible confrontation could destabilise NATO’s southeast flank for good with a considerable risk to spiral into a multinational conflict, great uncertainty prevailed once again in the European Union and the United States. The tension blew off steam by the end of 2020 following up by exploratory talks in 2021 again after a 5-year hiatus marked by grievances over their rival claims to Mediterranean waters to backslide again in 2022 into a state of emergency putting a quick end to some modules of communication and cooperation on law politics issues that were established in 2021. At the same time, Mediterranean has become the hotspot of climate change that is expected to unfold more rapidly in this region than anywhere else (United Nations 2021). Therefore, regardless of the various legal and geopolitical obstacles that have hindered development of the region’s reserves, serious environmental concerns about the impact of the extraction of the hydrocarbons on the regional ecosystem have come in recent years into occurrence. On the occasion of unparalleled wildfires by which Greece and Turkey were inflicted in summer 2021, it became obvious that both countries are faced equally with a survival challenge posed by the ongoing climate crisis. While frictions among the two countries about maritime zones and continental shelf delimitation related to sovereign claims and to some degree with ambitions of finding oil and gas have abounded in recent years nearly provoking large-scale conflicts, the impact of a climate crisis on Turkey and Greece has been extreme. The Mediterranean’s more than half-a-billion inhabitants seem to face highly interconnected climate risks. Moreover, the two countries are expected to face mass migration floods as a result of severe weather phenomena in these parts of the planet. Although the so-called “keep hydrocarbons in the ground” approach appeared to tentatively gain ground, especially in Greece, the high energy prices and the threatening disruption in energy supply caused by the Russian–Ukrainian war in 2022 revived interest in hydrocarbons threatening to reverse this trend and of course to rekindle geopolitical tensions. Subsequently, the book seeks to shed light on the background of these developments. Utilising a multidisciplinary methodology, combining theoretical, legal, geopolitical and historical analysis, the study intents to clarify the various points of

Introduction

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frictions in the Greek–Turkish maritime dispute. Moreover, using, for the very first time, a comparative assessment of hydrocarbons research and exploitation activities’ socio-economic and environmental impact as well as climate change prognosis for the region, the study comes up with some ideas about an alternative paradigm of economic development that, in turn, might be useful at settling the intractable and multilayered Greek–Turkish maritime dispute.

References Axt, H.J., Schwarz, O., Wiegand, S. (2008). Konfliktbeilegung durch Europäisierung? ZypernFrage, Agäis-Konflikt und griechisch-mazedonischer Namenstreit. Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlag. Chrysochou, G. and Dalaklis, D. (2019). Offshore Energy Exploration Activities and the Exclusive Economic Zone Regime: A Case Study of the Eastern Mediterranean Basin. In P. Chaumette (Ed.) Wealth and miseries of the oceans: Conservation, Resources and Borders Richesses et misères des océans: Conservation, Ressources et Frontières (pp. 137–173). GOMILEX. Karakatsanis, L. (2014). Turkish-Greek Relations. Rapprochement, civil society and the politics of friendship. London and New York: Routledge. Lesser, I., Larrabee, S., Zanini M., Vlachos-Dengler, K. (2001). I Nea Geopolitiki tis Elladas [Greece’s New Geopolitics]. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation. Stergiou, A. (2021). Greece’s Ostpolitik. Dealing With the ‘‘Devil’. Series: Contribution to the International Relations. Switzerland AG: Springer Nature. United Nations (2021). Intergovernmental panel on climate change 2021. Available from https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_ WGI_SPM.pdf

Contents

1

The Basic Parameters of the Dispute ����������������������������������������������������    1

2

The Aegean Dispute in the Context of International Treaties and International Courts’ Judgements: A Critical Appraisal ������������   21

3

The Formation of the Dispute in the 1970s and 1980s��������������������������   39

4

The Post-Cold War Era ��������������������������������������������������������������������������   51

5

 The Rise of the AKP Party and Turkey’s Grand Strategy in the Twenty-­First Century��������������������������������������������������������������������   59

6

The 2019–2020 Maritime Borders Delimitation Agreements in the Eastern Mediterranean and Their Implications������������������������   71

7

Energy Geopolitics Revisited: Green Economy Instead of Conflict ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   85

8

A Paradigm Change in the Governance of the Aegean Sea ����������������   97

9

Conclusions����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  113

Author Index����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  119 Subject Index����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  121

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Abbreviations

AKP EEZ EU FIR ICAO ICJ ITLOS NATO OPEC PASOK SAR UNCLOS

Justice and Development Party (Turkey) Economic Exclusive Zone European Union Flight Information Region International Civil Aviation Organization International Court of Justice International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea in Hamburg North Atlantic Treaty Organization Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries Panhellenic Socialist Movement (Greece) Search and Rescue Area United Nations Law of the Sea Convention

xvii

List of Maps

Map 1.1 Map 1.2 Map 1.3

The Aegean islands������������������������������������������������������������������������    4 Kastellorizo island�������������������������������������������������������������������������    5 The Lausanne Treaty���������������������������������������������������������������������  11

Map 2.1 Jurisdictional and geomorphological concept of maritime boundaries��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  25 Map 3.1

Publication of TPAO licenses in North Aegean in 1973����������������  41

Map 4.1

They Grey Zones���������������������������������������������������������������������������  53

Map 6.1 Overlapping claims in the Eastern Mediterranean after the agreements of 2019–2020��������������������������������������������������������  75 Map 6.2 The Mavi Vatan (Blue Homeland) doctrine�����������������������������������  80

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Chapter 1

The Basic Parameters of the Dispute

Though it is quite usual in international conflicts that conflicting parts interpret differently the international law (international treaties, international courts’ rulings and international customs), the case of the Greek–Turkish maritime dispute is perhaps unprecedented in the history of international relations in that regard. The two parties cannot even agree on what they disagree, for example, what are the issues dividing them with markedly different positions both as to the existing disputes between them and as to the legal framework governing the substance of the dispute. For instance, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) in Hamburg that notably was established as a result of the adoption of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) in 1982 with jurisdiction on matters of the law of the sea is out of discussion as Turkey is not a signatory party to the UNCLOS and Greece has excluded from its jurisdiction issues related to the delimitation of maritime zones, according to Article 298 of the Convention.1 Contrary to Turkey, in January 2015, Greece accepted the jurisdiction of the second important international court, the International Court of Justice in the Hague, as compulsory with respect to all legal disputes referred to in Article 36, paragraph 2, of the Statute of the Court, with the exception of (1) any dispute relating to military activities and measures taken by the Hellenic Republic for the protection of its sovereignty and territorial integrity, for national defence purposes, as well as for the protection of its national security; (2) any dispute concerning State boundaries or sovereignty over the territory of the Hellenic Republic, including any dispute over the breadth and limits of its territorial sea and its airspace; and (3) any dispute in respect of which any other party to the dispute has accepted the compulsory  https://www.itlos.org/en/jurisdiction/declarations-of-states-parties/declarations-made-by-statesparties-under-article-298/ 1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Stergiou, The Greek-Turkish Maritime Dispute, Contributions to International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15515-4_1

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1  The Basic Parameters of the Dispute

jurisdiction of the Court only in relation to or for the purpose of that dispute; or where the acceptance of the Court’s compulsory jurisdiction on behalf of any other party to the dispute was deposited or ratified less than 12 months prior to the filing of the application bringing the dispute before the Court.2 For Turkey, this is a tacit acceptance by Greece that it is violating its treaty obligations. The same argument has been used by Greece against Turkey because Turkey does not recognise at all the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice. The third possible solution could be the recourse to the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague International Arbitration Tribunal, but there is another snag in this process of reaching a mutually acceptable solution. The two countries would need to agree on which differences they would be asking the Court to adjudicate. Given the diametrically opposed views on what are the existing legal disputes between the two States, reaching an agreement on this point seems impossible. Greece holds that the only outstanding difference between Greece and Turkey is the delimitation of the continental shelf and has called Turkey to accept the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice in the Hague so that they can take a simultaneous recourse to it to settle the dispute in accordance with the regulations of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).3 Turkey, on the contrary, contends4 that there are various bilateral issues to be tackled on the basis of a bilateral re-negotiation with Greece (package solution) and not through a recourse to the International Court of Justice. These issues are Greece’s sovereignty over some Aegean islands, the delimitation of territorial waters, the continental shelf, Greece’s range of authority in the Aegean airspace5 and hence the search and rescue region, and the issue of the Greek military and defence facilities of the eastern Aegean islands. In the Turkish view, the fundamental source of tension between Turkey and Greece is the Greek perception to regard the entire Aegean as a Greek sea in total disregard for Turkey’s rights and interests as one of the coastal states. Against this background, Turkey, in fact, considers the various aspects of the Aegean maritime

 https://www.icj-cij.org/en/declarations/gr  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. 2 3

1  The Basic Parameters of the Dispute

3

dispute (territorial sea or territorial waters,6 continental shelf,7 airspace, etc.) as interwoven and blames Greece for the various crises due to its unilateral actions in the Aegean (seismic and related activities and planned drilling operations) in the areas Turkey considers as disputed. Thus, in line with the Turkish argumentation, the long-drawn-out negotiations have not yielded any tangible results due allegedly to Greek insistence that the agenda of the negotiations is limited. Moreover, various Turkish experts have expressed the opinion that Greece has followed a legalistic approach to the resolution of the dispute because it considers the international law more favourable to its case and thus has clung to the position that both countries should take their case to the International Court of Justice in the Hague for a binding judgement. Turkey, however, has been arguing that the Aegean dispute is not just a legal problem, but one that engulfs important economic, political and strategic interests, which requires a political settlement. The joint appeal to the ICJ can be only a last resort step (Bahchseli 1989, 132–133). Furthermore, in Turkish argumentation, geography is an important component of the dispute. While the mainland coasts of Greece and Turkey bordering the Aegean Sea on both sides represent roughly equal shares of its total coastline, the overwhelming number of the many Aegean islands belong to Greece. In particular, there is a chain of Greek islands lined up along the Turkish west coast (Lesbos, Chios, Samos, and the Dodecanese islands), some of them in very close proximity to the Turkish mainland. Turkey has been claiming that their current legal status blocks Turkey from extending any of its zones of influence beyond a few nautical miles off its coastline and therefore any delimitation should take into account the existing

 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). 6

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“special circumstances”. The term “special circumstances” has been the ground on which Turkey has developed its legal argumentation towards a future delimitation of maritime zones in the whole Eastern Mediterranean (Map 1.1). First of all, Turkey believes that islands, as a rule, should not be taken into consideration in the delimitation process. In particular the island of Kastellorizo, in close proximity to the Turkish coast, is perceived as an enclave in the Turkish continental shelf, because, in the Turkey’s view, it constitutes a serious legal obstacle to Ankara’s claims regarding the maritime boundaries in the region. Turkey has not been seriously  contesting Kastellorizo’s sovereignty, but it argues that, given its long coastline, it is unfair that Greece should have the right to potentially exploit energy resources in parts of the Mediterranean seabed that lie within sight of Turkey, hundreds of miles from the Greek mainland. Therefore, Kastellorizo should not generate any continental shelf.8 Furthermore, while Turkey recognises in principle

Map 1.1  The Aegean islands

 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. 8

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5

the state’s right to expand its territorial waters to 12 miles, since Turkey itself has made use of that right in the Black Sea and the Mediterranean,9 it does not recognise Greece’s right of extending its territorial waters in the Aegean Sea because it regards it as a claim against Turkey’s national interests. Therefore, since 1995, when Greece ratified the UNCLOS granting 12-mile territorial waters right to islands, it has been threatening Greece with war (casus belli), should the later go ahead with the extension (Gözen and Inan 2009, 153–21) (Map 1.2). Greece, on the contrary, believes that it has been facing for decades a conspicuously permanent revisionist Turkish attitude in the Aegean aimed at unilaterally revising the treaties it has signed in the past, undermining Greece’s sovereignty and cut off Greek islands from the mainland. Turkey’s revisionism has, in Athens’ view, been accompanied by a provocative, bellicose rhetoric and a gunboat diplomacy that runs counter to Turkey’s obligations and commitments in the context of the United Nations. In this respect, it has condemned Ankara’s casus belli threat as a violation of the Charter of the United Nations, which forbids the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state. Furthermore, Greece believes that Turkey arbitrarily raises various issues in the Aegean as outstanding bilateral problems, whereas, according to Athens, the only factually existing issue is

Map 1.2  Kastellorizo island  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). 9

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the pending delimitation of the continental shelf between the coast of Greek islands across from Turkey and the Turkish coast. For Greece, the maritime boundaries between the two countries are clearly delimited: the maritime region of the Evros estuary is delimited on the basis of the Athens Protocol of 26 November 1926. In the adjoining maritime region extending south from Evros to Samos and Ikaria, in the absence of relevant agreements with Turkey, Greece argues, customary law principles should be applied such as the equidistance/median line method of delimitation. South of Samos, between the Dodecanese and the Turkish coast, the maritime boundaries are delimited on the basis of the Agreement of 4 January 1932 and the Protocol of 28 December 1932, between Italy and Turkey, which applies to Greece as the successor state of Italy in the region, which with the Paris Peace Treaty of 10 February 1947 ceded sovereignty of the Dodecanese to Greece.10 In addition to the Italian–Turkish treaty signed in 1932, official letters were exchanged between the two countries, determining the status of the islands, islets and rocks located between the island of Kastellorizo and the coast of Anatolia as well as on the island of Kara-Ada. Greece as the successor state to Italy in the area inherited the respective rights and obligations. Turkey, on the contrary, claims that the Turkish National Assembly never ratified the Italo-Turkish treaty of 1932, which for this reason is not deposited with the Secretariat of the League of Nations and thus Greece’s claimed rights are invalid (Papafloratos 2017, 22–32). On the same trajectory, Greece’s firm position is that this delimitation of the continental shelf must be governed by principle of equidistance/median line between the eastern Aegean islands and the Turkish mainland. Greece also reserves itself the right to extend its territorial waters to 12 nautical miles,11 which in its view is an inalienable sovereign right under customary law, which is the applicable law between the two States despite the fact that Turkey has not joined the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.12 However, apart from the debate on whether it would be truly opportune for Greece to extend its territorial waters to 12  miles, the issue has a  complex legal background. Upon ratifying the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, Greece stated under Article 310 of the convention that it is up to Greece to determine when and how it shall exercise these rights deriving from the Convention,  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-turkishrelations/ 10

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according to its national strategy. This shall not imply that Greece renounces these rights in any way. In this way, the Greek state was endeavoured to preempt any allegations that it has lost this right due to its inaction or it has tacitly accepted the Turkish positions in the Aegean Sea. On the other hand, Turkey has firmly negated the right of Greece to extend its territorial sea in the Aegean on the assumption that this would make the Aegean Sea a Greek lake. Turkey holds that …extension of territorial waters to 12 nautical miles (note: as stipulated in the UNCLOS) will disproportionately alter the balance of interests in the Aegean Sea to the detriment of Turkey. At present, due to its many islands, Greek territorial waters make up about 40% of the Aegean Sea.13 In the case of 12 nautical miles wide territorial waters, the ratio rises to over 70%. In the case of extension of territorial waters to 12 nautical miles, Turkey’s territorial waters remain less than 10% of the Aegean Sea while the size of the high seas falls from 51% to 19%.14 Moreover, various Turkish scholars (Davutoglu 2010, 267–274) have pointed out that this would heavily affect Turkey’s transport and shipping capacity, thereby isolating from the whole region. Not accidentally, at the Final Session of the third United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the head of the Turkish delegation stated with respect to the territorial sea that in the narrow seas, such as enclosed and semi-enclosed seas, on which Turkey is bordered, the extension of the territorial sea in disregard of special circumstances of these seas and in a manner that would deprive another littoral State of its existing rights and interests creates inequitable results. By Decree No. 8/5742 of 1982, Turkey maintained the 12-nautical mile territorial sea limit which previously existed in the Black Sea and the Mediterranean Sea. In justifying the extension of the territorial sea in the Black Sea, Turkey claims that this had occurred on the basis of the principle of reciprocity in relation to its neighbours there, who had already proclaimed a 12-nautical mile territorial sea. However, the extension of the territorial sea to 12 nautical miles in the Black Sea in 1964 (and later confirmed in 1982) by Turkey could in a sense have deprived the Turkish state of its right to be considered as a “persistent objector” of this claim. Holding the status of “persistent objector”, Turkey could, according to the customary international law, achieve some sort of statute of limitation for this right in the areas of its interest. According to the UN International Law Commission this form of objection must be clearly expressed, meaning that non-acceptance of the emerging rule or the intention not to be bound by it must be unambiguous. Turkey, however, has benefited itself from a rule, to which it objects (Papastavridis 2020, 11–16).  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 13

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Concerning the Aegean airspace, another issue that was raised by Turkey and has haunted the bilateral relations for decades,15 Turkey contends that Greece abuses its Flight Information Region (FIR) responsibility to usurp international airspace with a view of attaining de facto sovereignty over the Aegean airspace and reduce the international airspace of the Aegean by 50%. Turkey also accuses Greece of claiming a 10-nautical mile national airspace over territorial waters of 6 nautical miles,16 whereas the Chicago Convention of 1944 on civil aviation requires that the breadth of national airspace has to correspond to the breadth of territorial sea. Since the Turkish and Greek Search and Rescue Regions partially overlap, so Turkey argues, all activities in these areas have to be coordinated by the two countries, in accordance with the 1979 Hamburg Convention on International Civil Aviation and not conducted by Greece alone.17 For that reason, Turkey refuses to submit flight plans to the Greek FIR authorities when moving in international airspace. Greece, on the contrary, argues that its search and rescue area was designated by the 1952 Regional Air Navigation Agreement, signed in the context of the International Civil Aviation Organization (that Turkey regards as pure formality). This rescue area coincides with the Athinai FIR and reflects the geographical reality in the region, given the number of islands scattered around the Aegean Sea, enabling, from an operational point of view, the most effective and prompt provision of services for the protection of human life at sea. Such designation is, in Greek view, also consistent with the international practice according to which the search and rescue area of responsibility for both aeronautical and maritime accidents should coincide with the limits of the corresponding FIR.18 For this reason, Greece considers all Turkish military flights not registered with its FIR authorities as transgressions of international air traffic regulations, when they conduct intrusions in the disputed outer 4-mile belt of Greek airspace and violations of the national airspace when they intrude into the 6 inner belts of the Greek airspace. Routinely Greek air force jets try to intercept the Turkish ones in very costly and sporadically lethal game as the routine interception manoeuvres have led to several fatal accidents in the past. Therefore, Turkey and Greece (the latter mainly in response to Ankara’s moves) interchangeably issued NOTAMs (Notice to

 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  https://www.mfa.gr/en/issues-of-greek-turkish-relations/relevant-documents/search-andrescue.html 15

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Airmen) in the Aegean Sea, claiming the heart of the Aegean for months for military drills and exercises. When a state issues a navigational warning for a maritime area that belongs to or is claimed by another state, that warning does not, per se, violate the sovereign rights of the latter; such an act is of a declaratory nature. The competence of issuing navigational warnings falls within the ambit of duties the coastal state bears in its Search and Rescue Region, which usually coincides with the Flight Information Region. For some scholars,  Turkey’s tactic to transmit navigational warnings for areas that are not within its Search and Rescue Region although the Antalya Station is not authorised to do so, creates risks in terms of the safety of navigation (Ioannides 2020). A very troublesome aspect of the Aegean maritime dispute is the Turkish contestation of the Greek sovereignty over some islands,19 isles and rocks since the mid-­1990s. This contestation was recently expanded so as to engulf the big islands of the eastern Aegean Sea as well due to the existing military facilities there, which Ankara regards as illegal and as an unilaterally move by Athens that annuls Greece sovereignty over them. Since mid 1990s, Turkey has been insisting that there are numerous small islets and rocks in the Aegean with no economic life of their own, the ownership of which is not determined by international treaties and therefore their sovereignty is not indisputably given to Greece. Furthermore, Turkey has been accusing Greece of attempting to change their status with artificial settlement in order to create fait accomplis and to close off the Aegean Sea as a Greek lake. According to the Turkish argument, these islets, while not explicitly retained under Turkish sovereignty in 1923, were also not explicitly ceded to any other country, and their sovereignty has therefore remained objectively undecided.20 The Turkish government has avoided so far stating exactly which islets it wishes to include in this category. On various occasions, Turkish government sources21 have indicated that islands such as Pserimos, Agathonisi, Fournoi and Gavdos that however, do  have Greek residents and infrastructure and hence economic life,  might be included (Giakoumis 1997, 63–90). Turkey holds that the 4 January 1932 and 28 December 1932 Turkish–Italian accords that granted the islands to Italy which, in turn, surrendered them to Greece  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. 19

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with the 1947 Paris Peace Treaty cannot be used by Greece as a legal basis. The first one does not mention any “Imia Islet”, while the legal procedures concerning the second have never been completed and therefore there is no legally binding document registered with the League of Nations. Moreover, according to the Turkish Foreign Ministry, the fact that Greece approached the Turkish government in 1950 and yet again in 1953 proposing talks with a view to exchanging letters between the two governments ascertaining the validity of the abovementioned two documents between Turkey and Greece shows that Greece also had doubts about their validity. Furthermore, Turkey argues, the definition of “adjacent islets” as stipulated by Article 14 in the 1947 Paris Peace Treaty does not apply to these formations because they are not islets but two rocks.22 Greece contends that the international legal framework that settled the issues of sovereignty in the region after the two World Wars (1923 Treaty of Lausanne and 1947 Paris Peace Treaty) is conclusive and crystal clear. Article 12 of the 1923 Lausanne Treaty determines exactly which islands should remain under the sovereignty of Turkey, for example, Imbros, Tenedos and Rabbit islands and the islands situated less than 3 miles from the Asiatic coast and which are under the sovereignty of Greece, for example, Limnos, Samothrace, Mytilene, Chios, Samos and Ikaria and those beyond the 3 miles boundary. In Article 15 of the Treaty of Lausanne, Turkey renounced in favour of Italy all rights over the Dodecanese islands and the islets dependent thereon, which were ceded to Greece in full sovereignty pursuant to Article 14 of the 1947 Paris Peace Treaty. Regarding the Imia/Kardak islets, Greece maintains that they were ceded to Italy by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, which is confirmed by the fact that in Point 30 of the additional protocol, which was signed in December 1932, they are referred to as one of the points under Italian sovereignty from which the median line dividing the territorial waters between Italy and Turkey shall be calculated23 (Map 1.3). Sovereignty over the Dodecanese, a group of 12 islands that were under Italian sovereignty since 1912, was passed to Greece in 1947. In 1932, Italy and Turkey also demarcated their maritime borders around these islands including the Kastellorizo island and the Imia/Kardak rocks – two islands that were to become the apple of discord – with two different official documents in January and December 1932. Those agreements mention by name all the islands and rockets appertained to each country as well as the breadth of the territorial waters between the two countries to the north, south, east and west. It is worth noting that the method applied in these two documents is the median/equidistance line.24 However, Turkey and Italy have never ratified the December protocol that is also more analytical, presumably due to disagreements about aspects and modalities of the text (Heraclides 2010, 210).  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-turkishrelations/ 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). 22

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Map 1.3  The Lausanne Treaty

Another very thorny issue of the Greek–Turkish maritime dispute is, as already mentioned, the Aegean continental shelf, especially as no delimitation agreement between the two countries exists. As will be analysed in the next chapter, this dispute dates back to the early 1970s. At that time, the two sides laid out their positions  on the issue in the démarches they exchanged. Greece referred to the Continental Shelf Convention of 1958 to substantiate its arguments that (1) islands

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have continental shelves like mainlands, (2) in the absence of an agreement between neighbouring states the median line between the Greek islands of the eastern Aegean and the Turkish coastline should be applied and (3) the Aegean Sea does not fulfil the concept of special circumstances not permitting the application of the median line. Turkey, on the contrary, holds that according to the international jurisprudence, when it comes to the delimitation of maritime boundaries, islands may receive reduced effect, namely, the area accorded to them may be diminished and each delimitation case involving islands is unique. Therefore, it has stated over time that the delimitation should be effected on the basis of equity or equitable principles, taking into account relevant circumstances (regional geography, the configuration of the relevant coasts, the size and position of the islands, etc.) with the aim of achieving an equitable solution. Islands cannot have a cut-off effect on the coastal projection of Turkey because they lie on the “wrong side of the median line between the two mainlands” (meaning in the side that should be appertained to Turkey) and cannot create maritime jurisdiction beyond their territorial waters because “their presence distorts equitable delimitation”. Turkey’s main argument is based on the definition of the notion of “continental shelf” as one implying that distances should be measured from the continental mainland, claiming that the seabed of the Aegean geographically forms a natural prolongation of the Anatolian land mass. This, in turn, would mean that Turkey is entitled to economic zones up to the median line of the Aegean, leaving out the territorial waters around the Greek islands in its eastern half, which would remain as Greek exclaves; Against this background,  the Aegean Sea is  perceived a “semi-­ closed sea” where there are clearly special circumstances rendering the equidistance principle inappropriate (Türmen 2020). In the course of time and under the pressure of tensions, rivalries and crises the two parties enriched their position with some new elements. Given that Turkey is not signatory state to the UNCLOS II of 1982,25 Greece maintains that the equidistance principle and full rights for islands are also rules of customary international law applying to countries like Turkey as well. The process of delimitation does not concern the Aegean open sea as a whole, but only “the underwater prolongation of the Thracian border” and the islands of the eastern Aegean. For Turkey, the Greek claim that the islands of the eastern Aegean generate a full effect on the delimitation is irrational because it deprives a country with almost 3000 miles of coastline of any continental shelf in the Aegean Sea and therefore only a median line between the two mainlands can be considered fair (Heraclides 2010, 168–169). Non-related to the maritime boundaries is the issue of military facilities on the islands of the eastern Aegean. The demilitarisation of islands in the eastern and northern Aegean Sea (Limnos, Samothrace, Mytilene, Chios, Samos and Ikaria and the Dodecanese islands: Stampalia, Rhodes, Calki, Scarpanto, Casos, Piscopis,  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). 25

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Nisiros, Calimnos, Leros, Patmos, Lipsos, Symi, Cos and Castellorizo) has turned out to be a very thorny issue in the Greek–Turkish relationship. In fact, the two countries interpret differently the international treaties pertaining to the status of those islands. The status of the respective islands has been successively shaped by different international treaties: the Lausanne Peace Treaty of 1923, the Montreux Convention of 1936 and the Paris Treaty of 1947, signed between Greece and the Allies, which ceded the Dodecanese islands to Greece. Turkey argues26 that the legal framework determining the modalities of the demilitarisation for the islands is broader and older and goes back to 1913, when the Treaty of London aimed at adjusting the new territorial claims arising out of the conclusion of the Balkan Wars was signed. It also derives from the 1914 Decision of Six Powers (Great Britain, France, Russia, Germany, Italy and Austria–Hungary) regarding the islands ceded to Greece. Furthermore, according to the Turkish argumentation, the Lausanne Peace Treaty just confirmed the 1914 Decision of Six Powers, while the Montreux Convention did not bring any change to the demilitarised status of these Islands. Finally, the 1947 Paris Peace Treaty between Italy and the Allies also stipulates the demilitarised status of the Dodecanese islands ceded to Greece (Article 14, paragraph 2: The above islands shall be demilitarised and shall remain so).27 Hence, in Turkey’s view, Greece has been violating the status of the eastern Aegean islands by militarising them since the 1960s in contravention of its contractual obligations.28 On the other hand, Greece argues that the demilitarisation of the Greek islands of Limnos and Samothrace, along with the demilitarisation of the Dardanelles, the Sea of Marmara and the Bosporus, and the Turkish Imbros (Gokceada), Tenedos (Bozcaada) and Rabbit Islands (Tavcan), which was originally provided for in the 1923 Lausanne Treaty on the Straits, was annulled by the 1936 Montreux Treaty. It further argues that Greece’s right to militarise Limnos and Samothrace was recognised by Turkey by the letter sent to the Greek prime minister on 6 May 1936 by the Turkish ambassador in Athens at the time, Roussen Esref, upon instructions from his government. This position was confirmed    by the then Turkey’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, Rustu Aras, in his address to the Turkish National Assembly on the occasion of the ratification of the Montreux Treaty as it is mentioned in the Gazette  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-onaegean-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 26

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of the Minutes of the Turkish National Assembly, volume 12, July 31/1936, page 309. Regarding the status of Mytilene, Chios, Samos and Ikaria, Greece has been arguing over time that the Lausanne Treaty makes no mention of these islands having been granted demilitarised status. Thus, the Greek government simply commits to not establishing naval bases or fortifications there in accordance with Article 13 of the Treaty by simply retaining there a normal contingent called up for military service. Concerning the Dodecanes islands, Greece maintains that it only retains a National Guard presence there in accordance with the provisions of the 1947 Peace Treaty, while Turkey, as not signatory state to this Treaty, cannot raise any claims. Greece also argues that the demilitarisation obligation has come, in general, under the statute of limitations because it was imposed in the Cold War environment after the decisive intervention of the Soviet Union and echoes Moscow’s political intentions at that point of time. Therefore, it ceased to apply, after the end of the Cold War, as has been the case with the Italian islands of Pantelaria, Lampedusa, Lampione and Linosa, among others that also had been demilitarised upon Soviet demands. Greece also makes reference to its natural right of defence against the continued threats of war by Turkey, the Turkey’s  threat of a casus belli should Greece extend its territorial waters to 12 nautical miles and repeated violations of Greek airspace and territory by the Turkish military aircraft.29 As a matter of fact, negotiations over the state of the Aegean islands began immediately after the Balkan Wars with a view to settling the state of affairs emanating from the imminent dilapidation of the Ottoman Empire. The Treaty of London, signed in 1913 with the aim of adjusting the new territorial claims arising out of the termination of the Balkan Wars, was concluded without the presence of the Ottoman delegation, which withdrew from the conference and without tangible results on the status of the Aegean islands. The Treaty of Athens between the Ottoman Empire and the Kingdom of Greece, signed on 14 November 1913, which formally ended hostilities between them after the two Balkan Wars, barely stipulated that the future of the eastern Aegean islands would be left to the Decision of Six Powers (Great Britain, France, Russia, Germany, Italy and Austria–Hungary) decided later. The Greek arguments were based on ethnic population of the islands and clashed with the Turkish ones, rooted in strategic concern for the security of Asia Minor. The final text of the six powers provided for the restoration of Imbros, Tenedos and Kastellorizo to the Porte (Ottoman Empire), and the Hellenic annexation of the rest of the Eastern Sporades. The great powers devised two separate declarations embodying the peace plan. One was delivered in Athens on 13 February 1914. The other was presented in Istanbul the next day. Indeed, as Turkey claims, the text clearly states that … Les Six Puissances ont également décidé que des quaranties satisfaisantes leur seraient données ainsi qu’ à la Turquie par la Grèce que iles  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 29

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don’t elle gardera la possession ne seront ni fortiiées ni utilisèes pour un but naval ou militaireet qu’ elle prendra des mesures effectives en vue de prévenir la contrebande entre les îles et le Territoire ottoman ….30 However, what Turkey omits is that shortly after the delivery of the declaration the Porte responded negatively to it, refusing to cede Chios, Mytilene, Psara, Lemnos and Samothrace, and claiming that those islands were necessary for the defence of Asia Minor by accepting only the agreement’s provisions for the restoration of Imbros, Tenedos and Kastellorizo. Athens, on the contrary, replied on 15 February, accepting the proposal (Kaldis 1979, 1119–1146). Thus, the status of the respective islands was to be definitely determined by the Lausanne Treaty, signed in 1923 (Articles 12 and 13). Article 12 of Lausanne Treaty states that the decision taken on the 13th February, 1914, by the Conference of London, in virtue of articles 5 of the Treaty of London of the 17th–30th May, 1913, and 15 of the Treaty of Athens of the first-14th November, 1913, which decision was communicated to the Greek Government on the 13th February, 1914, regarding the sovereignty of Greece over the islands of the Eastern Mediterranean, other than the islands of Imbros, Tenedos and Rabbit Islands, particularly the islands of Lemnos, Samothrace, Mytilene, Chios, Samos and Ikaria, is confirmed, subject to the provisions of the present Treaty respecting the islands placed under the sovereignty of Italy which form the subject of Article 15. It also provided that the islands situated less than 3 miles from the Asiatic coast remain under Turkish sovereignty. Although the Treaty takes into consideration the six decision powers, it is confined to the matter of sovereignty and does not make any reference to fortification whatsoever. In Article 13, the Treaty of Lausanne stipulates regarding the islands of Mytilene, Chios, Samos and Ikaria that (1) no naval base and no fortification will be established in the said islands; (2) Greek military aircraft will be forbidden to fly over the territory of the Anatolian coast. Reciprocally, the Turkish government will forbid its military aircraft to fly over the said islands. (3) The Greek military forces in the said islands will be limited to the normal contingent called up for military service, which can be trained on the spot, as well as to a force of gendarmerie and police in proportion to the force of gendarmerie and police existing in the whole of the Greek territory. The status of the islands of Samothrace and Lemnos (ceded to Greece) and Imbros, Tenedos and Rabbit Islands (ceded to Turkey) was determined by that part of the Convention relating to the régime of the straits of the Lausanne Treaty (Article 4), which, in fact, imposed demilitarisation, as it did however for the straits of the Dardanelles and the Bosporus as well. In Article 15, Turkey renounced in favour of Italy all rights and title over the following islands: Stampalia, Rhodes, Chalki, Scarpanto, Kasos, Tilos, Nisyros, Kalymnos, Leros, Patmos, Lipsos, Simi, and Kos, which were then occupied by Italy, and the islets dependent thereon, and also over the island of Kastellorizzo.

30

 See the full text of the declaration in Divani 2000, 544.

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The Montreux Convention, as it is clearly mentioned in its preamble, replaced in its entirety the aforementioned Lausanne Treaty on the Straits and allowed the militarisation of the straits by the Turkish forces. In the special protocol of the Treaty it is stipulated that Turkey may immediately remilitarise the zone of the Straits. In this respect, Ankara immediately proceeded into the remilitarisation of the islands Imvros and Tenedos because they were considered to be crucial for the security of the straits, although there is no reference in the Treaty to those islands, as Turkey today claims.31 In the 1950s, Turkey opposed the construction of NATO military facilities on Greek islands (Leros and Mitilini) by claiming that this violated both the Lausanne Treaty and the Paris Treaty stipulations over demilitarisation of these islands. Greece retorted that since Italy, who possessed the islands until 1947, had been excluded from the restrictions against militarisation in the context of NATO, this could apply to the Greek islands too. After intensive deliberations, NATO reached an agreement with the two countries that the facilities would be constructed but not used in peace times, while the island Leros would be excluded from NATO drills (Stefanidis 2002, 230–232). In the 1960s, Greece transferred troops to various eastern Aegean islands and started fortification works because the Greek state obtained information about alleged offensive moves by Turkey against Greece (Papafloratos 2017, 22–32). The militarisation of the eastern Aegean islands was accelerated after the Cyprus crisis of 1974, when Greece militarised the Dodecanese fearing a Turkish invasion there, similar to what had taken place in Cyprus in 1974. Especially Greece’s militarisation of Lemnos and Samothrace, at the entrance to the straits of the Dardanelles, became a great concern to Turkey. In 1975, Turkey established its Fourth Army based in Izmir on the Aegean coast. The Fourth Army has an amphibious landing force capable, in theory, of seizing Greek islands (US Congressional Research Service’s report for US Congress 1997, 3). When in the late 1970s the issue was raised within NATO during the negotiations for Greece’s re-integration into the NATO military command, the legal counsellor of NATO argued in favour of Greece, but the then general secretary of NATO, Joseph Luns, did not accept it and adopted a rather pro-Turkish stance to this point (Roubatis 1986, 102–103). In many public statements, Turkish officials and Turkish politicians of the whole political spectrum have been stating that demilitarisation provisions remain in force and that by keeping troops on its islands Greece is in violation of international  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-sovereigntyof-greek-islands-is-unquestionable/; https://www.ekathimerini.com/news/1177436/eu-refutes-anyquestioning-of-greek-sovereignty-over-islands/ 31

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treaties. This, Turkey claims, threatens its security, while undermining sovereignty of these islands which was conditional to their demilitarisation under the 1923 Lausanne Treaty. In short, Turkey is seeking to create a dilemma between demilitarisation or having Greek sovereignty challenged.32 Greek officials, in return, have been retorting that security and peace are a concern that every state seeks to ensure by means of the legal instruments of post-war international law, exercising the inherent and inalienable right to legal defence. Demilitarisation has a negative effect on the security of the state, depriving it of the right to defend itself and of the ability to prepare itself for exercising that right. Moreover, they have been accusing Turkey of deliberately disregarding that Greek and Turkish membership of NATO has drastically changed the security situation in the region, rendering the demilitarisation redundant. Turkish law experts, on the other hand, question Greece’s claim to exercise its right of self-defence contained in Article 51 of the UN Charter by arguing that the right of self-defence arises only when there is an armed attack or a serious imminent threat of attack. Turkey has never challenged Greek sovereignty over the eastern Aegean islands. There has never been a threat of an imminent armed attack (Türmen 2020). It is correct that there has not been any Turkish attack on those islands in the conventional meaning whatsoever. However, one could counter-argue  that as long as the casus belli enforced from time to time by verbal  and often very bellicose threats by Turkish politicians continue, the establishment of the Fourth Turkish Army of Smyrna and the large number of amphibious landing forces in the area are in place as well as the illegal occupation of almost 37% of the territory of Cyprus despite numerous calls by all international organisations for termination of this occupation regime and the restoration of the status quo ante still exist, one could feel justified to invoke the militarisation of the islands as a legitimate means for self-­ defence. Apart from the fact that Greece is a NATO country, its operational capabilities cannot seriously threaten Turkey’s disproportionally superior defence capabilities, one could also reverse the Turkish argument about security  regarding the demilitarisation of the Dodecanece islands provided by a treaty that has not been signed by Turkey, by arguing that also  Greece has never attacked Turkey whatsoever. In his letter dated 30 September 2021 to the United Nations (that was reiterated on 17 September 2022 by the new Permanent Representative of Turkey to the United Nations Feridun Sinirioglu) addressed to the secretary-general on “Greece’s continuing material breach of the demilitarisation provisions of the 1923 Lausanne and the 1947 Paris Peace Treaties”, the then Permanent Representative of Turkey, except the historical arguments that have already been analysed against the militarisation of the eastern Aegean islands, refers to the case of Aaland Islands (demilitarised according to the Convention of 1856 on the Demilitarisation of the Aaland Islands,  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. 32

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annexed to the 1856 Paris Peace Treaty). This case, according to the Turkish ambassador, renders legally unfounded Greece’s claim that Turkey cannot invoke the demilitarisation provisions of the 1947 Paris Peace Treaty vis-à-vis Greece because of Turkey’s non-party status: The 1947 Paris Peace Treaty is a demilitarisation treaty in excelsis: it is, owing to its character, one of the classic examples of a treaty instrument establishing an “objective regime”. As is well known, the effect of creating such a regime valid erga omnes is attributed to treaties which confer a special status on territories. This happens why, as the Turkish ambassador mentions, according to the 1920 International Committee of Jurists’ statement of opinion, Sweden, though not a State party to the Convention of 1856, had the legal right to demand that the demilitarisation provisions be respected. By the same token, Turkey, an interested State, has the right to insist on compliance by Greece with the conventional demilitarisation obligations by which Greece is bound.33 In her response to the allegation of Turkey on this matter, Greece’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations,34 except the already analysed historical arguments in favour of the fortification of the Greek islands, cited two different legal cases before the International Court of Justice in the Hague to clarify that borders and territorial sovereignty formed by international treaties cannot be challenged (Cambodia v. Thailand, Judgement of 15 June 1962 and Libyan Arab Jamahiriya/ Chad, Judgement of 3 February 1994). In line with the first hypothesis, “when two countries define a border between themselves”, the primary purpose of the conditions defining borders and territorial sovereignty is “to achieve stability and finality” and “a boundary established by a treaty achieves a permanence which the treaty itself does not necessarily enjoy”. It also refers to “the continuous upgrade and strengthening of the Turkish military forces, the threat of war, but also the issue of recent overflights (note: over the Greek Islands), emphasizing the relevant provision of Article 13 of the Lausanne Treaty that they must be avoided. Finally, it calls on Ankara to put an end to these movements that contribute to regional instability”. The criterion of the militarised status of an island is indeed a very complex issue in the international law. Some scholars have argued that a permanent demilitarised area would be inconsistent with the inherited right of self-defence because, while demilitarised status for an area may bring stability and security to neighbouring states for a time, permanent demilitarisation under a treaty can cause problems if one state develops a military advantage and may wish to reopen hostilities. For this reason, demilitarised zones did expire or evolve into something else as conditions changed, including even some of those established in the 1923 Lausanne Peace Treaty (i.e. the demilitarised Turkish Straits) and in the 1947 Paris Peace Treaty. The security system designed to bring peace and stability to the Aegean is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). After Greece joined NATO on 18 February 1952, the demilitarisation requirements looked  probably outdated. The fact,  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. 33

References

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however, that NATO itself has not adopted this perspective, maintaining a neutrality to the Turkish–Greek disputes regarding demilitarisation of the eastern Aegean islands, has complicated things. Ultimately, because the NATO treaty is designed to provide a security umbrella to protect the European nations, the NATO partners should determine whether the demilitarisation requirements on the eastern Aegean islands have come to an end or not (Van Dyke 2005, 79–83). Regarding the Turkey’s contestation of Greece's sovereignty over these islands, it should be mentioned that at the time of the conclusion of the treaties this argument had some legal value. Meanwhile, however, this argument appears very anachronistic. A militarisation can take place unilaterally if the circumstances that led to the original demilitarisation change (e.g. the case of the Italian islands Panteleria, Lampedusa, Lampione and Linosa decades after the Paris Peace, without any state protesting); secondly, except for a few Turks on Rhodes, the inhabitants of these islands are Greek; thirdly, based on the principles of inviolability of borders and territorial integrity, a change of borders can only take place after an agreement between two states and on the basis of international law (i.e. peacefully). This does not apply to annexations by force such as Northern Cyprus, West Bank of the Jordan River, East Timor, until 1999, etc. (Heraclides 2022).

References Bahchseli, T. (1989). Greek-Turkish Relations since 1955. San Francisco and London: Westview Press. Cassese, A. (2005). Diethnes Dikaio [International Law]. Athens: Gutenberg Clogg, R. 1983. Troubled Alliance: Greece and Turkey. In R. Clogg (Ed.) Greece in the 1980s (pp. 123-149). London and Basingstoke: The Macmillan press ltd. Davutoglu, A. (2010). To Stratigiko Vathos. I Diethnis Thesi tis Tourkias [The Strategic Depth. Turkey’s International Position]. Athens: Piotita Publisher. Divani, L. (2000). I edafiki oloklirosi tis Elladas (1830–1947) [Greece’s territorial integration 1830–1947]. 4th edition. Athens: Kastaniotis Publishing. Giakoumis, P. (1997). Machtpolitik gegen Rechtspolitik, Fall II: Der Konflikt um die Imia – Inseln, ein Angriff auf die terrioriale Integrität dear Europäischen Union? In P.  Giakoumis (Ed.) Griechenland. Aussen-, sicherheits- und europapolitische Aspekte (pp. 63–90). Aachen: Mainz. Gözen, P. and Inan, Y. (2009). Turkey’s maritime boundary relations. In M.  Kibaroglu (Ed.), Eastern Mediterranean countries and issues (pp. 153–211). Ankara: Foreign Policy Institute. Güneş, S. A. (2017). Aegean Sea Territorial Waters Issue. In P. G. Ercan (Ed.), Turkish Foreign Policy. International Relations, Legality and Global Reach (pp.  303–320). Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. Gounaris, E. (2010). To Edafiko Kathestos tis Ellados kai oi Sinthikes sta plaisia tis diplomatikis istorias [The Territorial Status of Greece and the treaties within the diplomatic history]. Athens: Sideris Publisher, Gurel, A. (2016). Offshore gas: An anticatalyst in efforts to reunify Cyprus. In J. Warner, D. Lovell and M.  Kontos (Eds), Contemporary social and political aspects of the Cyprus problem (pp. 58–89). Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Heraclides, A. (2010). The Greek-Turkish Conflict in the Aegean. Imagined Enemies. New York: Palgrave Heraclides, A. (2022). I elliniki thesi apenanti stis tourkikes aitiaseis [The Greek position against the Turkish Complaints]. Efimerida ton Sintakton. https://www.efsyn.gr/stiles/ apopseis/331784_i-­elliniki-­thesi-­apenanti-­stis-­toyrkikes-­aitiaseis

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Homepage of the Greek Foreign Ministry Homepage of the Turkish Foreign Ministry Ioannides, N. (2020). A legal analysis of the latest conundrum in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea, IN DEPTH, 17(5), 11–14. Kaldis, W. P. (1979). Background for Conflict: Greece, Turkey, and the Aegean Islands, 1912–1914. The Journal of Modern History, 51(2), 1119–1146. Oxman, B, (1999). The Application of the Straits Regime under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea in complex geographic situations such as the Aegean Sea. In G. Karabelias (Ed.), The Passage of Ships through Straits. International Conference Proceedings (pp. 25–37). Athens: Defence Analyses Institute. Papafloratos, I. (2017). To Nomiko Kathestos ton Nison tou Aigiou. Oi Apopseis tis Tourkias, oi theseis tis Elladas kai ta ischionta basei tou diethnous dikaiou [The legal status of the Aegean islands. The Turkish views, the Greek positions and the norms of the international law]. Athens: Sakkoulas. Papastavridis, E. (2020). The Greek-Turkish Maritime Disputes: An International Law Perspective, ELIAMEP Policy Paper No. 36. Available from https://www.eliamep.gr/wp-­content/ uploads/2020/07/Policy-­paper-­36-­Papastavridis-­final-­10.07.pdf Roubatis G. (1986). Anatomia ton Ellinonatoikon Scheseon [Anatomy of the Greece-NATO relations]. In G. Valinakis and P. Kitsos (Eds), Ellinika Amyntika Provlimata [Greece’s Defence Problems] (pp. 93–113). Athens: Papazisis Publisher. Stefanidis, I. (2002). Assymetroi Etairoi. Oi Inomenenes Politeies kai I Ellada sto psichro polemo 1953–1961. US Congressional Research Service’s report for US Congress (1997). Greece and Turkey: Aegean Issues — Background and Recent Developments. Washington: US Congress. Türmen, R. (2020). Whose Sea? A Turkish International Law Perspective on the Greek-Turkish Disputes. Institute Montaigne articles. Available from https://www.institutmontaigne.org/en/ blog/whose-­sea-­turkish-­international-­law-­perspective-­greek-­turkish-­disputes 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. 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. Van Dyke, J. (2005). An Analysis of the Aegean Disputes under International Law. Ocean Development & International Law 36(1), 63–117.

Chapter 2

The Aegean Dispute in the Context of International Treaties and International Courts’ Judgements: A Critical Appraisal The international law around the definition of Economic Exclusive Zones, territorial waters or continental shelves is complex and unclear. In particular the delimitation of maritime boundaries between two coastal countries constitutes a problem of considerable complexity and can be subject of different interpretations if unusual geographical realities exist. The legal status of the territorial sea is profoundly different from that of the Economic Exclusive Zone and the continental shelf. As already mentioned, pursuant to the UNCLOS (Part II, Articles 2 and 3) the sovereignty of a coastal state extends beyond its land territory and internal waters to the seabed and subsoil under the water column, as well as to the airspace over the territorial sea. An agreement between states or a judicial decision on the delimitation of their territorial seas is a matter of determining the state border. In contrast, the EEZ and the continental shelf are described as “functional” regimes. This means that coastal states in those maritime zones enjoy certain sovereign rights and jurisdiction determined by the specific purpose of those rights. The rights of state in the territorial sea overlap with some of the rights on the continental shelf. In the superjacent waters (which may be the high seas or the EEZ or also the contiguous zone1) these rights apply to the water column, insofar as they relate to artificial islands, installations and structures on the continental shelf/EEZ, and the safety zones around these. Every coastal state has the right to territorial sea but not every coastal state may have, or may lawfully proclaim, an EEZ as that right depends on whether there are any high seas beyond and directly adjacent to its territorial sea (Vidas 2018, 34–36). The law concerning these questions has developed mainly from the rules adopted in the Continental Shelf Convention of the 1958 United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS I); the rules of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS III2); from state practice reflected in very many boundary agreements; and also from a massive jurisprudence of the International  Pursuant to the UNCLOS (Article 33) as the contiguous zone is described a zone contiguous to the territorial sea of a coastal state in which a state may exercise control necessary to (1) prevent infringement of its customs, fiscal, immigration or sanitary laws and regulations within its territory or territorial sea; and (2) punish infringement of the above laws and regulations committed within its territory or territorial sea. The contiguous zone may not extend beyond 24 nautical miles from the baselines from which the breadth of the territorial sea is measured. 2  Retrieved from http://www.un.org/depts/los/convention_agreements/texts/unclos/unclos_e.pdf 1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Stergiou, The Greek-Turkish Maritime Dispute, Contributions to International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15515-4_2

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Court of Justice (the principal judicial organ of the United Nations), the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague which notably is a non-UN intergovernmental organisation, as well as the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) in Hamburg. The Third Conference on the Law of the Sea, negotiated between 1973 and 1982,3 has been a milestone in the maritime law and is commonly accepted as one of the greatest achievements of the United Nations since its creation and as the universal legal text governing the seas. In blatant contrast to the Geneva Conventions of 1958, that enabled the participating countries to choose their obligations, the UNCLOS incorporated all the regulations related to the sea in a single text on which it was impossible to express any kind of reservation. Thus, the countries that signed and ratified the convention were required to accept each and every provision and stipulation of it, just to avoid the substantial lack of efficiency the 1958 Conventions had hitherto suffered due to the possibility of optional adherence to one or to the other text. The convention managed to allow the extension of state jurisdiction (reflected hitherto in state practice and boundary agreements) at sea without disrupting the balances and fair utilisation of the maritime areas and hence became a central component of durable peace at sea. This is also the result of the UNCLOS dispute settlement mechanism engulfing the International Court of Justice and the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea and the Arbitral Tribunals (Tsaltas and Kaldi-Efstathopoulou 2003, 146–163). Nonetheless, the UNCLOS dispute resolution mechanism lacks effectiveness. Its deficiencies consist in the fact that the mechanism’s operation presupposes that all disputing parties agree by mutual written declaration to the submission of their dispute to the UNCLOS resolution mechanism. But even if such an agreement is achieved, nobody can guarantee that all disputing parties will voluntarily respect and apply the outcome since, as is mostly the case with international courts, there is no “international police” to enforce the execution of the judgements of the International Courts and the Arbitral Tribunals (Koulouris 2020, 263). The international law experts are in agreement that meanwhile maritime delimitation has reached maturity with its three stages. In the first stage, which is the starting point, after determining the coasts relevant for delimitation as well as the area in which the economic zones or continental shelves projected by the coasts overlap, the Court must draw a provisional equidistance line in the case of adjacent coasts and a median line in the case of opposite coasts. The second stage consists of ensuring that this line produces an equitable result in which case the provisional line becomes final, for example, to examine whether certain factors (relevant circumstances) require an adjustment or shift in the provisional delimitation line. Finally, in the third step, the Court ensures that the proposed delimitation is not clearly disproportionate and would thus lead to an inequitable result. This three-step approach is intended to ensure a certain degree of objectivity, predictability and transparency

 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). 3

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in the event that the parties entrust delimitation to an international tribunal (Ndiaye 2015, 506; Schaller 2022, 23). One of the many peculiarities of the Eastern Mediterranean is that it is the littoral region of the world with the most non-parties (Syria, Turkey, Israel) to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS III). We shall now discuss the pending issues in the Greek–Turkish maritime dispute in the light of international treaties and international jurisprudence. The first comprehensive definition of the continental shelf emanates from the Geneva 1958 Convention on the Continental Shelf: the term “continental shelf” is used as referring (a) to the seabed and subsoil of the submarine areas adjacent to the coast but outside the area of the territorial sea, to a depth of 200 metres or, beyond that limit, to where the depth of the superjacent waters admits of the exploitation of the natural resources of the said areas; (b) to the seabed and subsoil of similar submarine areas adjacent to the coasts of islands. The coastal state exercises over the continental shelf sovereign rights for the purpose of exploring it and exploiting its natural resources (United Nations 2005, 311). Article 6 of the convention determines the delimitation method. It maintains that where the same continental shelf is adjacent to the territories of two or more States whose coasts are opposite to each other, the boundary of the continental shelf appertaining to such States shall be determined by agreement between them, which, nevertheless, in the Aegean Sea case is non-existing. In the absence of agreement, the convention goes, and unless another boundary line is justified by special circumstances, the boundary is the median line, every point of which is equidistant from the nearest points of the baselines from which the breadth of the territorial sea of each State is measured. Turkey has laid out its own perception of geography (see above) to substantiate the term “special circumstances” singling out the rest of the article. Apart from the fact that Turkey is not a signatory state, if this observation is right, then this difference cannot be the subject of a bilateral agreement, but it has to be clarified and measured by experts. Notably, the bodies that ex officio are best qualified to judge are the international courts. The UNCLOS Convention of 19824 tried to accommodate a greater variety of political, economic, social and strategic interests, regulating almost every use of the oceans and seas: the breadth of territorial waters, the delineation5 of the shelf, etc. Although the Convention is very clear concerning the delimitation of the territorial sea, it is quite ambiguous on the delimitation of the Economic Exclusive Zones and the continental shelf. More precisely, the UNCLOS stipulates, in Article 15, on the delimitation of the territorial sea between States with opposite or adjacent coasts … that where the coasts of two States are opposite or adjacent to each other, neither of the two States  https://www.un.org/depts/los/convention_agreements/texts/unclos/unclos_e.pdf  According to Article 76, paragraph 10, of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea that the questions involving the outer limits of the continental shelf beyond 200 nautical miles are without prejudice to the question of delimitation of the continental shelf between states with opposite or adjacent coasts. However, the two processes impact each other. 4 5

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is entitled, failing agreement between them to the contrary, to extend its territorial sea beyond the median line every point of which is equidistant from the nearest points of the baselines from which the breadth of the territorial seas of each of the two States is measured. The above provision does not apply, however, where it is necessary by reason of historic title or other special circumstances to delimit the territorial seas of the two States in a way which is at variance therewith … Regarding the delimitation of the Economic Exclusive Zone between States with opposite or adjacent coasts, as stipulated in Article 74 … the delimitation of the Economic Exclusive Zone between States with opposite or adjacent coasts shall be effected by agreement on the basis of international law, as referred to in Article 38 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice, in order to achieve an equitable solution … Similarly, Article 83 stipulates that … the delimitation of the continental shelf between States with opposite or adjacent coasts shall be effected by agreement on the basis of international law, as referred to in Article 38 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice, in order to achieve an equitable solution …. Article 58 of the UNCLOS defines the rights and duties of other states in the EEZ stating that … all States, whether coastal or landlocked, enjoy, subject to the relevant provisions of this Convention, the freedoms referred to in article 87 of navigation and overflight and of the laying of submarine cables and pipelines, and other internationally lawful uses of the sea related to these freedoms, such as those associated with the operation of ships, aircraft and submarine cables and pipelines, and compatible with the other provisions of this Convention. However, in Article 56 defining the rights, jurisdiction and duties of the coastal state in the Economic Exclusive Zone, the UNCLOS provides jurisdiction to the coastal state among others with regard to the protection and preservation of the marine environment (UNCLOS III, Article 56). In case of a dispute, the Convention requires the states concerned “if no agreement can be reached within a reasonable period of time” to resort to the procedures of the settlement mechanism provided for these questions in the Convention (UNCLOS, Articles 52 and 56). The convention applies only to the case of peaceful use of the sea. In a state of war, the high seas become the theatre of war, to which the rules of naval warfare apply. The coastal waters are either part of the territory of the belligerent states or subject to the law of war in the narrower sense or to the law of neutrality. It is self-evident that the settlement provisions are applicable only if all the states concerned are members of the treaty. Nevertheless, the international jurisprudence over time has indicated that these provisions can, under certain conditions, be binding also for states that have not signed or ratified the Convention since the settlement mechanisms of the UNCLOS are open to non-signatory states. Furthermore, the International Court of Justice as well as the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea adjudicate not only on the ground of the convention stipulations but also according to the general rules of international law (Kimminich and Hobe 2000, 388–389) (Map 2.1). The idea of an equitable solution, as much as it equates to the application of the equitable principles method, is also not very clear. In international relations, the equitable principles first appeared in the Truman Proclamation on the Continental

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Shelf of 1945: In cases where the continental shelf extends to the shores of another state or is shared with an adjacent state, the boundary shall be determined by the United States and the state concerned in accordance with equitable principles.6 As there is no systematic definition of the equitable criteria that may be taken into consideration for an international maritime delimitation, the international jurisprudence has also been ambivalent on the adaptability of those criteria. Both courts and arbitral tribunals, which undertook to resolve various bilateral maritime disputes, have not managed to consolidate fixed rules that would govern the delimitation of the continental shelf in the international jurisprudence, but instead they further complicated the issue with their ambiguous judgements. Their decisions reflect in general their efforts to conciliate the claims of the litigant states rather than to set up a clear jurisprudence on this controversial issue. Beyond that, the principle of equity is quite relative. What seems like an equitable solution for one state, could be a violation of its exclusive rights for the other. Since UNCLOS came into effect in 1994, most of the boundary agreements ended up in a settlement for a single maritime boundary for both the continental shelf and the EEZ.7 Only a small number of agreements ended up establishing

Map 2.1  Jurisdictional and geomorphological concept of maritime boundaries

  Truman Proclamation on the continental shelf. https://iea.uoregon.edu/ treaty-text/1945-presidentialproclamationnaturalresourcescontinentalshelfentxt 7  As a sui generis and newly created zone the EEZ turned out to be highly controversial as there was no jurisprudence able to clarify cases in which UNCLOS would present some gaps and therefore states have come up with a very diverging interpretation of relevant UNCLOS provisions. 6

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individual boundaries for the continental shelf and EEZ, respectively. This development is explained on the basis that previously there was no need to delimit a single boundary when the only extended claim to coastal state jurisdiction validly recognised was the continental shelf. But although the 1982 Convention established the right of a coastal state to claim an EEZ up to 200 miles, together with an identical criterion for delimiting the continental shelf, it appears to overlook the possible impact of this development on the question of delimitation. Furthermore, the majority of boundaries have been settled by agreement and the case law has been applied to disputes in which agreement proved impossible (Versan 2017, 35–38). In the Third Conference on the Law of the Sea the Turkish delegation submitted proposals aimed at attaining an exception to the Aegean Sea to 12-mile rule but not questioning the rule in general. The main trends at the Conference and the package deal approach were not favourable to the position of Turkey. Turkey also made several attempts to limit the marine spaces of islands. Its proposals were met with strong objections from states with islands. As a result, today, Turkey is one of the 16 countries which have not signed the Convention.8 Greek delegation’s efforts to form the archipelagic regime so as to be applied to the Aegean Sea, which would appertain Greece sovereignty over an even greater proportion of the Aegean, did not come to fruition either. The conference’s definition of archipelagos was that states consist entirely of islands (Schmitt 1996, 50). The Mediterranean Sea, with its limited links to other water bodies through the straits of Gibraltar, the Bosporus Straits and the Suez Canal, is generally considered the perfect example of a semi-enclosed sea. The Mediterranean is a relatively small water body and at the same time is in itself a sea of semi-enclosed seas. Each one of these is a semi-enclosed sea, and this geography is shared by 21 coastal states. The practical implications of this geography, with this number of coastal states, are that maritime zones either overlap or could overlap if they are maximised in accordance with the Law of the Sea. Another effect of the geographical projections in the semi-­ enclosed Mediterranean Sea from a macro-regional perspective is to lead to curving hypothetical median and lateral boundary lines, with numerous potential tri-­junction and some quadri-junction points (Chircop 2000, 105–107). Consequently, it shall be tried to infer from the international jurisprudence some basic assumptions with regard to the delimitation of maritime spaces in the Aegean Sea. The Aegean Sea also could be regarded as a semi-enclosed sea, dominated by islands throughout its length, some of them very close to Turkey’s coast. The thorniest issue in the Greek–Turkish confrontation over the delimitation of the maritime boundaries is whether islands generate maritime zones or not, meaning whether the

 Turkey’s attitude is well apprehensible since in the purely hypothetical scenario that a delimitation of the continental shelf of Greece and Cyprus would be conducted solely on the ground of the provisions of the Law of the Sea, the Aegean Sea would become an exclusive Greek lake. See the Seville Map created in 2003 by the University of Seville, following a mandate from the European Commission reportedly for the implementation of the Law of the Sea and the marine environmental protection in the Mediterranean Sea. https://www.keeptalkinggreece.com/2020/09/22/ seville-map-us-turkey-greece/ 8

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concept of the median line or the special circumstances applies or not. Although a tendency has been seen towards restricting islands’ maritime zones or giving only partial effect to their presence due to the existence of “special circumstances”, whatever these might be, the overall entitlement of the islands to continental shelf has not been disregarded (Rozakis 2013, 24–34). However, though the current literature is quite adamant that islands can generate maritime zones, it is also a commonly held perception that they do not generate full zones when they are competing directly against continental land areas (Van Dyke 19969). Article 121 of the UNCLOS III stipulates that all islands have a right to territorial waters, a contiguous zone, an Economic Exclusive Zone and a continental shelf. However, it makes a vague distinction between islands, which are entitled to all maritime zones, and rocks, which are entitled only to territorial sea. In Greek view, the UNCLOS stipulations are undoubtedly in favour of the islands’ capacity to generate all kinds of maritime zones irrespective of their size. Moreover, these provisions have meanwhile attained the quality of customary law norms that bind non-signatory states as well (Gavouneli 2020). Furthermore, Greece pinpoints the fact that Turkey itself has made use of some stipulations of the treaty as the rule of 12 nautical miles of territorial sea in the Black Sea. Turkish law experts believe, on the contrary, that even if some of the provisions of the UNCLOS have reached the status of customary law, Turkey cannot be bound by these norms as it has been judged by the International Court of Justice in the Fisheries case between the United Kingdom and Norway (1951) or in the Asylum case between Columbia and Peru (1950). This applies not only to the disagreement about the islands but also to the 12-mile rule of territorial waters. Moreover, as far as Turkish arguments go, even if the UNCLOS provisions are considered to be a norm of customary international law, they cannot be binding on Turkey because they subsume under the so-called res inter alios acta rule. The fact that Turkey has proclaimed 12 nautical miles of territorial sea in the Black Sea and the Mediterranean does not change this conclusion because Turkey objects to only the implementation of this rule in the Aegean in which special circumstances prevail. Furthermore, some Turkish scholars have over time referred to the international jurisprudence  Van Dyke attempted an ideal-typical delimitation of the maritime boundaries in the Aegean based only on the geography and fully disregarding the existent sovereign rights by drawing a median line between the continental land masses of Greece and Turkey, and then adjusting it somewhat in light of the location of the islands and the proportionality of coasts. In the northern Aegean that has relatively few islands this approach would give Greece somewhat more than half of the maritime space but would also ensure that Turkey has a relatively substantial amount of maritime space. The Greek islands on the “wrong” side (the eastern side) of this line would have 6-nautical mile territorial sea enclaves around them. As one moves south, the number of Greek islands increases, and so the maritime boundary line must move eastward towards Turkey. But Turkey should nonetheless be entitled to some ocean space, sufficient to protect its navigational access from Istanbul into the Mediterranean and its security needs. Again, the Greek islands on the “wrong” (eastern) side of the line would be entitled to territorial sea enclaves around them, but these enclaves should be limited to 6 nautical miles. Further south, in the Sea of Crete, the waters are almost completely surrounded by Greek islands, and the Greek claim to the waters appears to be the strongest. The line would thus move eastwards, closer to the Turkish coast. 9

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underscoring some cases like the so-called North Sea cases, the first judgement of the International Court of Justice dealing with maritime delimitation (Türmen 2020). The respective cases of Netherlands/Federal Republic of Germany and Denmark/ Federal Republic of Germany are indeed considered a milestone in the history of international law, particularly the customary international law, because one of the parties, Germany, had not signed the 1969 Continental Shelf Convention. The Court was called upon to decide what were the applicable principles and rules of international law and not to delimit the areas of continental shelf appertaining respectively to each party. The court judged that the parties were under no obligation to apply either the 1958 Convention, which is opposable to the Federal Republic, or the equidistance method as a mandatory rule of the customary law, which is not. It also judged that the parties were under the obligation to arrive at an agreement (…) taking all the circumstances into account, equitable principles are applied- for this purpose the equidistance method can be used (…) The continental shelf of any state must be the natural prolongation of its land territory and must not encroach upon what is the prolongation of the territory of another state. However, the court acknowledged that in certain geographical circumstances the equidistance method, despite its known advantages, leads unquestionably to inequity (ICJ 1969, 46–50). The notion of natural prolongation, though not very clear, also turned out to be a crucial point of the judgement. The court set out the principle that the land dominates the sea: Since the land is the legal source of the power which a state may exercise over territorial extensions to seaward, it must first be clearly established what features do in fact constitute such extensions. Above all is this the case when what is involved is no longer areas of sea, such as the contiguous zone but stretches of submerged land; for the legal regime of the continental shelf is that of a soil and a subsoil, two words evocative of the land and not of the sea (ICJ 1969, 51). As it has been aptly noted, the continental shelf in legal terms was assimilated with the actual continental shelf in geological or geomorphological terms because it was a fact of nature that justified the right to the legal shelf. Thus, it seemed that delimitation, instead of being the application of the law to the facts, was the application of the facts to the drawing of a natural boundary. Nevertheless, other delimitation criteria such as the equidistance method in certain cases were also accepted as a rule of customary international law for delimitation of territorial waters between adjacent States (Syrigos 1993, 74–76). It must be noted that the court treated a case with three Nord Sea whose coastlines are in fact comparable in length. Therefore, as the court acknowledges that the delimitation is not a question of refashioning geography, whatever the facts of the situation are and that … it is necessary to seek not one method of delimitation but one goal … Furthermore, the court avoided to consider the factor of the unity of possible natural resources deposits, which have been labelled “factual element” of which the states are aware as also of possible ways of solving it (ICJ 1969, 50–52). Another important element in reaching an equitable solution is the presence of islands and their effect on the demarcation line, which, together with the configuration of the coast and the length of the coastline, is presumably the quintessence of the Greek–Turkish maritime dispute. The Nord Sea Cases say nothing about this. In

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the decades that followed, however, there were some other cases which enriched the international jurisprudence on this issue. At this point it should be mentioned that Turkey, which steadily denies islands’ capacity of generating continental shelf and Economic Exclusive Zone, found itself in a very awkward position when in September 2011, in obvious violation of international law, it signed an agreement with the internationally non-recognised “Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC)” on the delimitation of their continental shelf.10 The agreement deals only with the continental shelf and does not provide for the delineation of an Economic Exclusive Zone. In this manner, Turkey was endeavoured to avoid the impression that accepts islands’ right to generate such zones. On the basis of these agreements, Ankara has tried to set a balance, by retaliation, to the asymmetrical situation in the Eastern Mediterranean after the EEZ delimitation agreements signed between the Republic of Cyprus and Israel and Egypt in previous years (Şahin 2019, 26–28). It is obvious that Turkey also tried in this agreement not to minimise the importance of the geological criterion in a future delimitation in the maritime zones in the Aegean Sea (the claim that the Greek islands in the Aegean are located on the continental shelf of Turkey which is the prolongation of the Anatolian land mass). It is true that the geological criterion was very strong earlier as demonstrated in the North Sea cases of 1969. The Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea, however, which was completed in 1982 and which adopted the Convention on the Law of the Sea, rejected geological criteria in favour of a criterion that was solely based on a 200-nautical mile distance of the outer limit of the continental shelf from the land territory of the coastal state. As for states with narrow sea zones, the treaty stipulated a delineation on the basis of an agreement (never unilaterally) which would result in a fair arrangement on the basis of international law. This is reflected in the Nicaragua v, Colombia case of 2012, in which the court rejected Nicaragua’s contention that the Colombian islands are located on Nicaragua’s continental shelf by also emphasising that geological and geomorphological considerations are not relevant to the delimitation of overlapping entitlements within 200 nautical miles of the coasts of States (Ioannides 2014). In this regard, one of the cases of inordinate importance is the 1985 Libya/Malta, first because it was adjudicated after the end of the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea in Montego Bay in 1982, and secondly, because both countries are located in the semi-enclosed Mediterranean Sea. Malta, which of course is not simply an island but an insular state, was granted full effect on the demarcation  Based on the 2011 Turkey-TRNC agreement, the breakaway regime licensed the state-run Turkish Petroleum Corporation to carry out seismic exploration on the proclaimed shelf. However, the blocks covered by these licences overlap with 7 out of the overall 13 blocks farmed out by Cyprus, namely, blocks 1, 2, 3, 8, 9, 12 and 13. Additionally, Turkey claims partial rights to blocks 1, 4, 5, 6 and 7 (Özertem 2016, 365–369). Turkey also used the agreements as legitimation to repeatedly engage in direct military action against foreign companies, conducting exploration activities in Cyprus’ ΕΕΖ, seriously disrupting exploration works. Turkish actions in the Eastern Mediterranean have been condemned by the European Council as “unilateral and provocative activities”. 10

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line without taking into consideration the principle of natural prolongation that fully governed the 1969 North Sea Continental Shelf Judgment. More precisely, the court, by 14 votes to 3, arrived at an equitable result … by drawing, as a first stage in the process, a median line every point of which is equidistant from the low-water mark of the relevant coast of Malta (excluding the islet of Filfla), and the low-water mark of the relevant coast of Libya … (ICJ 1985). In the 1977 Anglo-French case, however, adjudicated by the arbitral tribunal, the latter examined the equidistance/special circumstance rule, the legal and geographical concepts of adjacent and opposite states, as well as the natural prolongation concept and came to different conclusions. After the negotiations between the United Kingdom and France for the delimitation of their respective continental shelves proved unfruitful, the two governments agreed to submit their dispute to an arbitral tribunal. Since the two parties had already reached a partial agreement on the delimitation of the continental shelf in the English Channel, they asked the tribunal to adjudicate on the other non-delimitated part. The tribunal, for its part, pronounced itself non-competent to delimit any seabed and subsoil boundary in the narrow waters situated between the Channel Islands and the coasts of Normandy and Brittany and declared that its decision must be confined to deciding the course of the boundary of the continental shelf in the areas to the north and the west of the Channel Islands insofar as this does not involve the delimitation of the territorial sea of either party (Reports of International Arbitral Awards 1978, 4–5 and 24). In the given geographical circumstances of the Channel Islands region, where the extent of the continental shelf is comparatively modest and the scope for adjusting the equities correspondingly small, the tribunal ruled that the situation demanded a twofold solution. First, in order to maintain the appropriate balance between the two States in relation to the continental shelf as riparian States of the Channel with approximately equal coastlines, the Court decided that the primary boundary between them shall be a median line disregarding the Channel Islands. The second solution provided for a boundary to be drawn at a distance of 12 nautical miles from the established baselines of the territorial sea of the Channel Islands (Reports of International Arbitral Awards 1978, 95–96). Actually the tribunal weighed the “equitable considerations” invoked by the United Kingdom, namely, (1) the political and economic importance of the Channel Islands, (2) their close ties with the United Kingdom and the latter’s security and defence responsibility for them and (3) the fact that the Islands have no possibility of an appreciable area of continental shelf except to their west and north. It decided however that the continental shelf of the Channel Islands should be restricted to a 12-mile enclave which, on the assumption that the United Kingdom later extends its territorial sea to 12 miles, will in effect mean that the Channel Islands will have no continental shelf at all (Brown 1979, 482). In the Atlantic sector of the Channel, however, the Tribunal gave half effect to the Isles of Scilly, of whose only six were at the time inhabited with a total population of 2428 in the census of 1971 (Reports of International Arbitral Awards 1978, 18 and 102). The tribunal ruled that the status of the islands was such that, as with the Channel Islands which was appertained to a larger territorial sea instead of effect on

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the continental shelf, they could not be ignored completely. The conclusions of the Tribunal in the Anglo-French arbitration are only directed to the facts of that particular case, are limited to continental shelf delimitation and are only binding for the two States parties to the arbitration agreement (Berry 1975, 148). In the 1982 Tunisia/Libya case, the International Court of Justice was called upon to settle the dispute over the delimitation of the continental shelf between Libya and Tunisia. The task of the Court was to determine the “principles and rules of Public International Law”, which could be relevant for the delimitation of the continental shelf between the two states as well as whether the delimitation of the continental shelf could be determined on the basis of physical criteria, that is, the natural prolongation of each of the two States. The judges found that there was just one continental shelf common to both States and the extent of the continental shelf area appertaining to each could not be ascertained from criteria of natural prolongation. To the Kerkennah Islands lying off the east coast of Tunisia in the Gulf of Gabès, however, the court decided to give only a half effect on the line of delimitation of the two continental shelves. It is noteworthy that concerning the area close to the coast, the court took into account the way how Tunisia and Libya had assigned their oil concessions in the past (ICJ 1982). Another interesting case pertinent to the Greek-Turkish maritime dispute is that of 2014 between the Republic of Costa Rica and the Republic of Nicaragua on the establishment of single maritime boundaries between the two States in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean, respectively, delimiting all the maritime areas appertaining to each of them, in accordance with the applicable rules and principles of international law. Among others, the Court dealt with the construction of the provisional equidistance line in connection with the placement of base points on the Corn Islands and the placement of base points on Paxaro Bovo and Palmenta Cays. The Court examined whether the islands have a significant number of inhabitants and sustain economic life and therefore satisfy the requirements set forth in Article 121 of UNCLOS for an island to be entitled to generate an Economic Exclusive Zone and continental shelf and whether there are factors calling for the adjustment of the provisional equidistance line in order to achieve an equitable result. With regard to the Palmenta Cays and Paxaro Bovo islands, the Court considered it appropriate to place base points on them for the construction of the provisional equidistance line. In the case of the Corn Islands, the Court concluded that, given their limited size and significant distance from the mainland coast, it is appropriate to give them only half effect (ICJ 2018). In the Eritrea v. Yemen case of 1999, which also has many geographical similarities with the Greek–Turkish maritime dispute, the Arbitral Tribunal decided in favour of the median line between the opposite mainland coastlines. Also in this case the Tribunal took into account in order to award sovereign rights to islands and isles previous offshore petroleum contracts clinched between Yemen, Ethiopia and Eritrea. Eventually, it decided to lend a measure of support to a median line between the opposite coasts of Eritrea and Yemen, drawn without regard to the islands, dividing the respective jurisdiction of the parties. At the same time, it examined carefully the position of every island and islet in the area between the two coasts ascertaining

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whether they are inhabited or not, how large they are and whether they belong to a group of islands or not. Based upon these criteria, the tribunal acknowledged that some should be taken into consideration in computing the boundary line (granting effect on the delimitation)  between Yemen and Eritrea and some not. Under the second category were subsumed mostly the single, small islands and islets (United Nations 2006, 365–369). The same logic prevailed in the 1984 maritime boundary delimitation between Canada and the United States before the International Court of Justice. The court granted full effect to the relatively big and populated islands (the United States’ island of Nantucket and the Canadian island of Cape Sable), half effect to the smaller, uninhabited islets (the Seal Island together with its smaller neighbour Mud Island) and no effect at all to the tiny islets which can be characterised as rocks (International Court Justice Reports 1984). The March 2012 decision of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea in Hamburg in the long-standing Bangladesh/Myanmar maritime border dispute has also been a case at hand with regard to the island’s capacity to generate continental shelf. An important component of the whole decision was the court’s treatment of St. Martin’s Island, a small island belonging to Bangladesh but located directly west of Myanmar. The Tribunal gave full effect to the island when delimiting the two countries’ territorial seas. However, it did not allow Bangladesh to use the island as a base point when marking the equidistance line between the two states’ EEZs and continental shelves, thereby ignoring it in delimiting the EEZ and continental shelf boundaries. It also declined to identify the existence of the island as “relevant circumstance” that should be taken into consideration by adjusting the boundary line (ITLOS 2012). The International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea’s judgement Bangladesh/ Myanmar maritime border dispute was embraced with some degree of warmth by both sides (each of whom could plausibly claim that it had “won” the case). Moreover, the settlement proved to be functionable. The two states have not returned to conflict and have instead been competing to offer the most favourable terms to international energy companies interested in natural gas deposits in the Bay of Bengal. Until then, the undefined status of the continental shelf in the northeastern Bay of Bengal had scared away international investors and energy companies who would otherwise use the opportunity to explore potentially vast new natural gas fields (Watson 2015). The latter case appears to confirm Turkey’s position about the Kastellorizo island, namely, that it should be confined to a 6-nautical mile sea enclave because it is situated in front of the way longer Turkish coast. According to other experts (Ioannides 2020), however, Kastellorizo is not an isolated island but rather forms part of the geographical and administrative complex of the Dodecanese. Hence, a future delimitation could compare the length of the relevant Turkish coast with the sum of the lengths of the coasts of the Greek islands projecting in the relevant area (i.e. Kastellorizo, Rhodes, Karpathos, Kasos) treating it as an indivisible group. Recapitulating the round-up of these cases, one could wonder why Turkey so persistently refused to accept the jurisdiction of an international court or an arbitral tribunal despite the significant number of court decisions about the islands’ effect

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on the delimitation of the continental shelf confirming some of the Turkish claims. It appears that the continental shelf issue is of such vital importance to Turkey that responsibility for its resolution cannot be placed in the hands of others, even if they are presumably equidistant judges. Turkish elites suffer perhaps from the fear that an international judiciary organ could favour Greece, which has a better international reputation than Turkey (especially the Erdogan’s regime that is known for its hegemonic behaviour). International courts mostly use in a different way various criteria (special and relevant circumstances) and hence their results are unpredictable. Apart from this, such courts avoid win–lose decisions and pay attention to their rulings so that both parties can live with, albeit reluctantly (Heraclides 2010, 171–174). The maritime delimitation in the Black Sea between Romania and Ukraine speaks volumes for this. In 2009, the International Court of Justice Tribunal ruled in the case of the dispute between Romania and Ukraine over the continental shelf of the Serpent Island of Ukraine consensually. Romania was appertained almost 80% and Ukraine almost 20% of the maritime zone. The smaller portion, however, includes a disputed gas field with an assuming 100 billion euros worth of reserve (ICJ 2009). Regarding the breadth of the territorial waters,11 it also should be taken into account that according to the UNCLOS III (Section 3, Articles 17 to 32) territorial waters give the littoral state full control over air navigation in the airspace above and partial control over shipping, although foreign ships (both civil and military) are normally guaranteed innocent passage, even military, as, unlike in the national airspace, military vessels are allowed passage in the territorial waters through them.12 International law safeguards such rights, including in the territorial sea of a third State. In particular, Turkey will never cease to enjoy the freedoms of the high seas, enshrined in Article 87 of UNCLOS, which reflects customary law, in the remaining parts of the high seas. Such freedoms are predominantly the freedoms of navigation, overflight, fishing, marine scientific research, etc. The only restriction applies to submarines, which are not allowed to submerge when sailing through foreign territorial waters. As Greek islands make up just 10% of the total Greek territory, if Greek waters were to expand, Turkish warships would not have to follow closely the coast of Asia Minor on their way from the Dardanelles to the Southern Mediterranean as it has been arguably pointed out by respectable Turkish scholars. Turkey’s concern that a potential expansion to 12 nautical miles (22 km) by Greece13 would affect

 Both countries have increased them from the initially agreed 3 nautical miles (5.6 km) at the beginning of the century to 6 nautical miles (11 km) in the decades that followed. 12  The freedom of navigation and the freedom of the seas have been, even from the time of Hugo Grotius, a main pillar of the maritime law. The freedom of mobility for all ships, including warships, is globally guaranteed by UNCLOS although the degree of this freedom varies depending on how close a ship is to the shore. The closer to the shore a ship is, the narrowest this freedom gets. 13  Such a condition would reduce the high seas by half and presumably trigger reactions by other countries like Russia and the United States. 11

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Turkey’s transport and shipping capacity and hence its geoeconomic power, is rather a hyperbole (Giakoumis 1997, 47–61; Papastavridis 2020, 18–19). Adopting the UNCLOS, Turkey could also be guaranteed those rights. The convention provided for that passage is innocent so long as it is not prejudicial to the peace, good order or security of the coastal state; passage of a foreign ship shall be considered to be prejudicial to the peace, good order or security of the coastal state if in the territorial sea it does not engage in any of the following activities: (1) any threat or use of force against the sovereignty, territorial integrity or political independence of the coastal state, or in any other manner in violation of the principles of international law embodied in the Charter of the United Nations; and (2) any exercise or practice with weapons of any kind, etc. It has been contended, however, that the right of innocent passage can hardly be regarded as an adequate guaranty of communications rights and freedoms through waters separating two parts of the high seas because it does not apply to overflight and requires submarines to navigate on the surface, while the coastal state may take action to prevent passage that is not innocent, meaning that innocent passage is subject to unilateral regulatory powers of the coastal state (Oxman 1999, 28). As far as Greece is concerned, the unilateral right to define its territorial waters and its sovereignty over the islands are issues that probably cannot be left to the judgement of the court either. The only thing Greece can pursue after lengthy and extremely unpleasant negotiations with Turkey is an arbitration agreement that will take only the dispute concerning the continental shelf and Economic Exclusive Zone to Hague. It should also be noted that, under the international law, a country cannot expand its territorial waters once the continental shelf and EEZ have been delimited (Rozakis 2020). All things considered one could come to the conclusion that a recourse to the International Court of Justice is very unlikely for both sides. The issue of the demilitarisation of the eastern Aegean islands occurred again in 2021–2022 threatening to completely destroy the already burdened Greek–Turkish relations. Various public statements by Turkish politicians in that year over the sovereignty of some Greek islands have indicated a general political strategy to convert the existence of military facilities on some islands into a sovereignty issue. In the whole international jurisprudence there is only a case in which those kinds of arguments have been advanced, the 2015 Chagos Marine Protected Area case before the Arbitral Tribunal. The dispute pertains the difference between the Republic of Mauritius, former colony of the United Kingdom, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland over the latter’s continuing administration of the Chagos Archipelago as British Indian Ocean Territory. In conjunction with the move towards Mauritian independence, the United Kingdom had formulated a proposal to separate the Chagos Archipelago from the remainder of the colony of Mauritius and retain the archipelago under British control for defence purposes. The British government pledged towards the government of the Republic of Mauritius that, when the islands are no longer needed for the defence purposes of the United Kingdom and the United States, they would be ceded to Mauritius. The Tribunal held that the United Kingdom’s undertaking to return the Chagos Archipelago to Mauritius when no longer needed for defence purposes is legally binding (Reports of International Arbitral Awards 2015).

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Though there is a clear connection between sovereignty and defence, both the exchange of views between the parties and the adjudication do not bear resemblance to the respective aspect of Greek–Turkish dispute that is not a remnant of colonialism. Secondly, as can be inferred from the exchange of views, Mauritius could substantiate its claims with the British Cold War-led commitment to return the islands when no longer needed for defence. This kind of arrangement does not exist in the Greek–Turkish maritime dispute. Regarding the issue of sovereignty of some islands that has been raised by Turkey from 1995 onwards, it should be noted that in most of the courts’ decisions on issues of territorial sovereignty the judges have tended to ignore ancient historical claims and have looked instead at evidence of actual occupation and administration of the islets during recent times, generally focusing only on the last 100 years. This is the case in the Palamas Island dispute between the United States and the Netherlands in the Indian Ocean, in which the Dutch were favoured based on their peaceful and continuous display of authority over Palmas (Reports of International Arbitral Awards 1928). In the Eritrea v. Yemen case of 1999, the Arbitral Tribunal also awarded the waterless, volcanic islets of the Zuqar-Hanish group to Yemen based on its greater showing by way of recent presence and display of authority (Reports of International Arbitral Awards 2006).

References Berry, K. B. (1975). Delimitation and the Anglo-French Arbitration. Australian International Law, Vol 6, 139–152. Brown E.D. (1979). The Anglo-French Continental Shelf Case, San Diego Law review, 16(3), 461–530. Chircop, A. (2000). Maritime boundary-making in the Mediterranean: A necessary premise for regional marine co-operation? In A.  Chircop, A.  Gerolymatos, J.  O. Iatrides (Eds), The Aegean Sea after the Cold War security and Law of the Sea issues (pp. 103–117). Basingstoke: Macmillan Press Ltd. Gavouneli, M. (2020). Whose Sea? A Greek International Law Perspective on the Greek-Turkish Disputes. Institute Montaigne articles. https://www.org/en/blog/ whose-­sea-­greek-­international-­law-­perspective-­greek-­turkish-­disputes Giakoumis, P. (1997). Machtpolitik gegen Rechtspolitik I. Die Frage nach der Ausdehnung der griechischen Territorialgewässer. In P.  Giakoumis (ed.) Griechenland. Aussen-, sicherheitsund europapolitische Aspekte (pp. 47–61). Aachen: Mainz. Gurel, A. (2016). Offshore gas: An anticatalyst in efforts to reunify Cyprus. In J. Warner, D. Lovell and M. Kontos (Eds), Contemporary social and political aspects of the Cyprus problem (pp. 58–89). Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Heraclides, A. (2010). The Greek-Turkish Conflict in the Aegean. Imagined Enemies. New York: Palgrave International Court of Justice (1969). Reports of judgments, advisory opinions and orders. North Sea continental shelf cases (Federal Republic of Germany/Denmark; Federal Republic of Germany/Netherlands), judgment of 20 February 1969. International Court of Justice (1982). Reports of judgments, advisory opinions and orders. Case: concerning the continental shelf (Tunisia/Libyan Arab Jamahxriya), Judgment of 24 February 1982.

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International Court Justice Reports (1984). Delimitation of the Maritime Boundary in the Gulf of Maine Area, Judgment. International Court of Justice (1985). Reports of Judgments, advisory opinions and orders. Case Concerning the Continental Shelf between the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya and Malta, Judgment of 3 June 1985. International Court of Justice (2009. Reports of Judgments, advisory opinions and orders. Maritime Delimitation in the Black Sea (Romania v. Ukraine), Judgment of 3 February 2009 International Court of Justice (2018). Maritime Delimitation in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean (Costa Rica v. Nicaragua) and Land Boundary in the Northern Part of Isla Portillos (Costa Rica v. Nicaragua), Summary of the Judgment of 2 February 2018 International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (2012). Dispute concerning delimitation of the maritime boundary between Bangladesh and Myanmar in the Bay of Bengal (Bangladesh/ Myanmar), List of cases: No. 16, Judgment of 14 March 2012. Ioannides, N. (2014). The Continental Shelf Delimitation Agreement Between Turkey and “TRNC”. Blog of the European Journal of International Law. Available from https://www.ejiltalk.org/ the-­continental-­shelf-­delimitation-­agreement-­between-­turkey-­and-­trnc/#:~:text=The%20 delimitation%20agreement,-­According%20to%20its&text=Hence%2C%20as%20the%20 agreement%20provides,allocated%20to%20the%20%E2%80%9CTRNC%E2%80%9D. Ioannides, N. (2020). A legal analysis of the latest conundrum in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea, IN DEPTH, 17(5), 11–14. Kimminich, O. and Hobe St. (2000). Einführung in das Völkerrecht. 7. Auflage. München: Wilhem Fink Verlag. Koulouris, N. (2020). The Exclusive Economic Zone is in reality a sovereign right of a State? The dispute over the Southeastern Mediterranean natural gas fields, The Journal of World Energy Law & Business, 13, 260–269. Ndiaye, T. M. (2015). The judge, maritime delimitation and the grey areas. Indian Journal of International Law 55(4), 493–533. Oxman, B. (1999). The Application of the Straits Regime under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea in complex geographic situations such as the Aegean Sea. In G. Karabelias (Ed.), The Passage of Ships through Straits. International Conference Proceedings (pp. 25–37). Athens: Defence Analyses Institute. Özertem, H. S. (2016). Turkish foreign policy and the energy bonanza in the Eastern Mediterranean, Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies, 18(4), 361–374. Papastavridis, E. (2020). The Greek-Turkish Maritime Disputes: An International Law Perspective, ELIAMEP Policy Paper No. 36. Available from https://www.eliamep.gr/wp-content/ uploads/2020/07/Policy-paper-36-Papastavridis-final-10.07.pdf Reports of international arbitral awards (1928). Island of Palmas case (Netherlands, USA) 4 April 1928. vol. II pp. 829–871 Reports of international arbitral awards (1978). Delimitation of the Continental Shelf between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the French Republic (UK, France), 30 June 1977–14 March 1978, Volume XVIII pp. 3–413. Case concerning the delimitation of continental shelf between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the French Republic Decision of 30 June 1977 – Decision of 14 March 1978. Reports of international arbitral awards (2015). Decision in the matter of the Chagos marine protected area arbitration before an arbitral tribunal constituted under annex vii of the United Nations convention on the law of the sea between the Republic of Mauritius and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Award. March 18, 2015 Reports of International Arbitral Awards (2006). Second stage of the proceedings between Eritrea and Yemen (Maritime Delimitation) 17 December 1999, vol. XXII, 335–410. Rozakis, C. (2013). I Apokleistiki Oikonomiki Zoni kai to Diethnes Dikaio [The Exclusive Economic Zone and the International Law]. Athens: Papazisis Publisher. Rozakis, C. (2020). Is the ICJ the answer or a pipe dream? Kathimerini. https://www.ekathimerini. com/249813/opinion/ekathimerini/comment/is-­the-­icj-­the-­answer-­or-­a-­pipe-­dream

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Şahin, İ. (2019). Energy conflict and cooperation in the Eastern Mediterranean. Center for Middle Eastern Studies Report No. 3. Schaller, Ch. (2022). Streit im östlichen Mittelmeer – Griechenland, Türkei, Zypern Eine seevölkerrechtliche Einordnung. SWPStudie 2. Berlin: Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik Deutsches Institut für Internationale Politik und Sicherheit. Schmitt, M. (1996). Aegean Angst: The Greek-Turkish Dispute. Naval War College Review 49(3), 42–72. Syrigos, E. (1993). Law and Diplomacy and the Aegean Maritime Zones. Doctoral dissertation submitted at the University of Bristol. Truman Proclamation on the continental shelf. Available from https://iea.uoregon.edu/ treaty-­text/1945-­presidentialproclamationnaturalresourcescontinentalshelfentxt Tsaltas, G and Kaldi-Efstathopoulou, M. (2003). To Diethnes Kathestos ton Thalasson kai ton Okeanon. Vol. I Diethneis Politiki, Diethnes Dikaio, Diethnis Organosi. Athens: Sideris. Türmen, R. (2020). Whose Sea? A Turkish International Law Perspective on the Greek-­ Turkish Disputes. Institute Montaigne articles. https://www.institutmontaigne.org/en/blog/ whose-­sea-­turkish-­international-­law-­perspective-­greek-­turkish-­disputes United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea: http://www.un.org/depts/los/convention_agreements/texts/unclos/unclos_e.pdf United Nations (2005). Treaty Series, vol. 499. United Nations (2006). Award of the Arbitral Tribunal in the second stage of the proceedings between Eritrea and Yemen (Maritime Delimitation) Decision of 17 December 1999. Available from https://legal.un.org/riaa/cases/vol_XXII/335-410.pdf Van Dyke, J. (1996). The Aegean Sea dispute: options and avenues. Marine Policy, 20(5), 397–404. Versan, R. (2017). Some political and legal aspects of hydrocarbon exploration & exploitation in the Eastern Mediterranean”. In A. Stergiou, K. Ulusoy, M. Blondheim (Eds.), Conflict & Prosperity. Geopolitics and energy in the Eastern Mediterranean (pp.  32–40). New  York-Jerusalem, Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung - The Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace Hebrew University of Jerusalem in cooperation with Israel Academic Press. Vidas, D. (2018). The Delimitation of the Territorial Sea, the Continental Shelf, and the EEZ: A Comparative Perspective. In A.  O. Elferink, T.  Henriksen, S.  V. Busch (Eds.), Maritime boundary delimitation: the case law. Is It Consistent and Predictable? (33–61). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Watson, S. (2015). The Bangladesh/Myanmar maritime dispute: lessons for peaceful resolution, Center For Strategic and International Studies. https://amti.csis.org/ the-­bangladeshmyanmar-­maritime-­dispute-­lessons-­for-­peaceful-­resolution/

Chapter 3

The Formation of the Dispute in the 1970s and 1980s

The oil crisis in the early 1970s turned out to be a catalyst in the Greek–Turkish relations as it affected both countries severely. In this crucial time of 1973, the Oceanic Exploration company of Denver, CO, which had been granted a licence for exploration of hydrocarbons by the Greek state, announced the discovery of oil in significant quantities off the island of Thasos. Most probably for domestic consumption, the dictators who had been ruling Greece since 1967 declared that the findings were of a commercially significant size, without anticipating the international implications of their claims. Until then the legal status of the Aegean Sea had never been seriously questioned (Kariotis 1990, 6). Exploration work in the Aegean had hybridlike begun in the late 1930s by the Greek state. From the early 1960s onwards, the Greek state stepped up its efforts and granted oil exploration licences to a number of foreign major oil companies (ESSO, TEXACO, BP, Oceanic, etc.). After intensive geological studies producing about 12,200 km of seismic lines, drilling work began in 68 wells. Two fields, the Prinos oil field and the south Kavala gas field, emerged as profitable. Significant hydrocarbon reserves in some other wells (Aitoliko, Zakynthos, Thermaikos, etc.) were also discovered (Zafiropoulos 2012; Lie et al. 2014). According to Alexis Heraclides, these licences provided for explorations in the seabed beyond Greece’s territorial waters. In this area Greece unilaterally delimitated the Aegean continental shelf based on its interpretation of the relevant article in the Geneva Convention on the Continental Shelf (1958) providing for continental shelf to islands. In this regard, Heraclides estimates that Athens somehow hastily concluded that all the islands of the Aegean Sea, including those very close to Turkey, enjoyed “full effect” on the delimitation of maritime zones, and thus that the entire Aegean seabed to the west of its eastern islands could only be Greek. Athens then went onto delimiting the continental shelf de facto. Turkey, however, did not react immediately most probably because until the autumn of 1973 it had not faced an urgent need for alternative sources of supply and did not believe that considerable quantities of oil were to be found in the respective exploration areas (Heraclides 2010, 78–79). In the wake of the oil crisis in November 1973, however, Turkey awarded mineral exploration licences to the Turkish state-run Petroleum Company for explorations in 27 maritime areas of the eastern Aegean Sea. It also published a map in the Turkish Official Gazette showing a delimitation of respective continental shelves in © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Stergiou, The Greek-Turkish Maritime Dispute, Contributions to International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15515-4_3

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the Aegean that did not take into account the presence of the Greek islands. The map used as delimiting method of the seabed between Greece and Turkey a median line equidistant from the Greek and Turkish mainland starting at the mouth of Evros River in the north and extending southwards from the west of the Greek islands of the eastern Aegean. This unilateral delimitation of the continental shelf did not engulf the islands, although some of the exploration areas lay just beyond the territorial waters of the large and populated Greek islands of Lesvos, Chios, Lemnos and Samothrace (Syrigos 2016, 330–332) (Map 3.1) The Greek government lodged, in return, a note verbale on 7 February 1974, questioning the validity of the licences granted by Turkey and reserving its sovereign rights over the continental shelf adjacent to the coasts of the abovementioned islands. It also contended that the continental shelf was required to be delimited between the two States on the basis of equidistance by means of a median line. The Turkish government replied by a note verbale of 27 February 1974, stating that the Greek islands situated very close to the Turkish coast do not possess a shelf of their own and therefore the principle of equidistance was not applicable. In its renewed reply of 24 May 1974, the Greek government supported a delimitation based on the provisions of the 1958 Geneva Convention on the Continental Shelf. In a new reply, the Turkish government expressed readiness to enter into negotiations for the delimitation of the continental shelf between the two countries (The International Court of Justice 1978). The US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who learned about the Aegean crisis via the Turkish Foreign Minister Turan Güneş, began thinking along the lines of a “condominium” between Turkey and Greece in the Aegean, where American interests and companies would also be involved. Turkish policy became US policy, and the United States proposed this officially to the then Greek Dictator Ioannides, but Ioannides’ regime turned down the idea of “sharing the resources of the Aegean Sea”, claiming that the region in need of delimitation was between the Greek islands of the eastern Aegean and the Turkish coastline (Papachelas 2021, 221–242). As has been aptly pointed out, the oil crisis of 1973 established the strategic perception that any nation that can control or influence the flow or price of oil to the industrial world can also influence the commerce and security of nations. Thereby, any Mediterranean island could change the strategic balance if controlled by one antagonist or the other. Within this framework, the oil discovery in the northern Aegean sparked hopes that the whole sea might overlie significant mineral deposits as had been the case in the North Sea in the late 1960s (Katsoulas 2022, 156). In May 1974, Ankara decided to send the oceanographic craft vessel Candarli, conspicuously accompanied by Turkish warships, to the Aegean to conduct exploration in areas which extended further west and south, including an area overlapping with a possible continental shelf around the Dodecanese islands. When Greece filed diplomatic protests, Turkey announced that it would continue exploration and preliminary drilling. Moreover, it granted additional exploration licences by simultaneously submitting to Athens a list of issues to be negotiated, which engulfed, among others, the demilitarisation of the Greek islands, the territorial waters and the Aegean shelf, etc. Athens responded with its own list of issues to be negotiated.

3  The Formation of the Dispute in the 1970s and 1980s

Map 3.1  Publication of TPAO licenses in North Aegean in 1973

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Armed forces of both countries went on alert. The situation further escalated when during a NATO military drill of the same year Turkish ships split out from the NATO formation and conducted drill only with Turkish national military forces, while Turkish military aeroplanes violated Greece’s national airspace. The Cyprus crisis in summer 1974, in the context of which the two countries waged a small-­ scale war, overshadowed the Aegean dispute and defused the tensions temporarily (Hale 2013, 115–116). A fallout of the Cyprus crisis, however, was that on the day of the Turkish military intervention in Cyprus in July 1974, Turkey began contesting the area of control in the Aegean airspace by the Athens air traffic control that had hitherto been approved by the International Civil Aviation Organisation. More precisely, it issued a Notice to Airmen (NOTAM) in an attempt to extend the control of Istanbul FIR to roughly half of the Aegean. Athens reacted by issuing of a counter-NOTAM (1157 of 7 August 1974) calling for the retention of the existing legal regime. This led to the halting of all international flights over the Aegean for 6 years until mid-1980. As a further immediate result of the 1974 Cyprus crisis, Greece left NATO military command and began stepping up the fortifications of its eastern Aegean islands (Axt 1992, 63). In January 1975, after the collapse of the military Junta, the new Karamanlis government in Athens decided to make a proposal to Turkey for a joint recourse to the International Court of Justice over the outstanding delimitation of the continental shelf. The proposal was met positively by the Turkish government in Ankara that, however, formulated as precondition that other issues such as the territorial waters, the delimitation of the continental shelf and the use of Aegean airspace should also be included in the agenda of the bilateral relations. In May of the same year both the foreign ministers and the prime ministers of the two countries met and discussed in a good atmosphere the outstanding problems. The meeting of Karamanlis and Demirel in Brussels by the end of May 1975 was of paramount importance as the two leaders agreed to start negotiations on the problems in the bilateral relations of the two countries, while the continental shelf issue would separately be settled by the International Court of Justice (Karamanlis published archive 2005, 96–98). A year later the negotiations appeared to have reached an impasse. The positions of the two sides, as they had hitherto crystallised (and remained in fact unchanged ever since), reflected on verbal notes, official statements, etc., were diametrically opposite. Greece referred to the 1958 Geneva Convention on the Law of the Sea that grants the islands their own territorial sea and continental shelf, whereas Turkey advocated the supremacy of the jurisdictional right of continental land masses over those of the islands, supporting factually a median line between the Greek and Turkish mainlands completely disregarding the islands. Greece claimed that every point of the median line should be equidistant from the nearest point of the baselines formed by the eastern Greek islands and the Turkish coasts provided that special circumstances do not justify another boundary. In Greek view, the islands did not constitute special circumstances because of their number, size, population and economic life. Further, the right of Greece to explore and exploit the natural resources

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of the Aegean islands is exclusive, a fact which was recognised by the Geneva Convention and the International Court of Justice. Therefore, Turkey did not have the right to undertake these activities, despite the fact that Greece did not explore or exploit these natural resources. Turkey, on the other hand, claimed that the median line/equidistance principle was not part of customary international law. Even within Article 6, the median line/equidistance was considered as being subsidiary to the primary obligation to effect delimitation by agreement. Furthermore, according to the Turkish argumentation, the second requirement was that no special circumstances existed in the delimitation area, a view that had been confirmed in the North Sea cases where the median line/equidistance was regarded not as the sole method of delimitation but simply as one method among others. On the ground of these arguments, in August 1976, out of the blue, Ankara sent a Turkish research vessel to the Aegean. The ship Sismik I (formerly Hora) entered the area between Lemnos and Lesvos which was considered high sea for Turkey, but not for Greece, which sent a strongly worded note denying any responsibility for the consequences of the Turkish action. Turkey replied clearly that since the research was purely scientific a Greek attack on an unarmed ship would amount to a hostile action against Turkey. Once again Greek–Turkish relations came to the brink of war. Four days later, the Turkish ship returned to the harbour in the Turkish mainland where it had sailed off, and a few hours later, Athens decided to appeal simultaneously to the UN Security Council and the International Court of Justice in the Hague (Rizas 2009: 380–381). It seems that the Turkish government was endeavoured to fulfil multiple goals. Since the government of Suleiman Demirel was under strong pressure both by alarming domestic problems and by the Bulent Ecevid-led opposition that was accusing Demirel of following a submissive course  in the Aegean, this resolute stance against Greece helped it to profile as unflinching in the matters of national interest. Furthermore, Turkey most probably intended to increase its negotiating leverage in the discussions for the continental shelf delimitation by promoting the view that the Aegean dispute required a regulation based on political and not legal criteria (Theophanous and Karyos 2020, 2–5). To the dismay of Athens, the UN Security Council avoided condemning Turkey for its actions, calling instead the governments of Greece and Turkey to resume direct negotiations over their differences. It further appealed to them to do everything within their power to ensure that these result in mutually acceptable solutions. It also invited both sides to continue to take into account “all appropriate judicial means, in particular the International Court of Justice”, for the settlement of any remaining legal differences in connection with their present dispute (UN Resolution 395 25 August 1976).1 The statement favoured Turkey by the reference to negotiations and the lack of any condemnation for Turkish actions in Aegean as Greece had pursued, and Greece by avoiding any reference to the demilitarisation of the eastern Aegean islands as

 International Legal Materials, Vol. 15, No. 5 (September 1976), p.  1235, published by the American Society of International Law. 1

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Turkey had pursued and made a reference to the International Court of Justice (Valinakis 1989, 210–214). The Greek unilateral recourse to the International Court of Justice was a much more complex issue and a probably not very well-thought move by the Greek side that should have calibrated the known court’s reluctance to accept unilateral appeals (Roukounas 2008, 331–337). More precisely, as can be inferred from the proceedings of the case published by the International Court of Justice, Greece asked the court to declare that the Greek islands in the area were entitled to their lawful portion of continental shelf and to the delimitation of the respective parts of that shelf appertaining to Greece and Turkey. At the same time, it requested provisional measures indicating that, pending the Court’s judgement, neither State should, without the other’s consent, engage in exploration or research with respect to the shelf in question. The government of Turkey did not file any pleadings, and it was not represented only in the oral proceedings. However, the attitude of the government of Turkey with regard to the question of the Court’s jurisdiction was defined in its separate communications to the Court. On 11 September 1976, the Court found that the indication of such measures was not required and, as Turkey had denied Court’s competence, ordered that the proceedings should first concern the question of jurisdiction. In a second judgement delivered on 19 December 1978, the court found that jurisdiction to deal with the case was not conferred upon it by either of the two instruments relied upon by Greece. The first was the application of the General Act for Pacific Settlement of International Disputes of 1928 which was not accepted by the court due to Greece’s reservation upon its accession to the act. The second was the Joint Communiqué of 31 May 1975 (resulting from the Karamanlis–Demirel meeting in Brussels) and the context in which it was agreed and issued. The court concluded that the Joint Communiqué was not intended to, and did not, constitute an immediate commitment by the Greek and Turkish prime ministers, on behalf of their respective governments, to accept unconditionally the unilateral submission of the dispute to the court. Moreover, in the court’s opinion, the Brussels Communiqué did not furnish a valid basis for establishing the Court’s jurisdiction to entertain the application filed by Greece on 10 August 1976 (The International Court of Justice 1978). Besides the court’s decision, various meetings between the prime ministers as well as the secretaries-general of the foreign ministries of Greece and Turkey took place in the next years. Paying respect to the Resolution 395 of the Security Council, Greece’s and Turkey’s foreign ministers, Caglayangil and Bitsios, met twice in New  York on August and (25 August and 1 October 1976) in a bid to foster the diplomatic dialogue on the continental shelf and on airspace. In November 1976, two distinguished diplomats, Jean Tzounis from the Greek side and Ali Suat Bilge from the Turkish side, met in Berne and signed an agreement, the Berne Agreement, which was to become a milestone in the history of the Aegean dispute. In Greece, the respective document is known as the “Berne Communiqué” (in an obvious attempt to downgrade its significance), and in Turkey as the “Berne Declaration” (in an attempt to upgrade its significance). According to Heraclides, irrespective of its

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designation, the Berne understanding amounts to an agreement under international law (Heraclides 2010, 90). In this understanding the two parties agreed to conduct strictly confidential negotiations during which the two parties undertake to refrain from any initiative or act concerning the Aegean continental shelf that might trouble the negotiations (…) so far as their bilateral relations are concerned, to refrain from any initiative or act likely to throw discredit on the other … The two parties also agreed to study the practice of States and the international rules on the subject, with a view to eliciting such principles and practical criteria as might be of use in the case of the delimitation of the continental shelf between the two countries.2 There also were meetings at Montreux in March 1978 and Washington in May, Ankara in July and Athens in September 1978 for talks related to the continental shelf question. However, these meetings did not bring about any tangible results, although Athens had to accept that some concessions would be inevitable in order to achieve a compromise. In the opposite case, the negotiations with the European Economic Community about a possible admission of Greece into the organisation could derail, as many EEC members were alarmed by the prospect that the Community would get embroiled in the Greco–Turkish dispute (Woodhouse 1998, 310). Ever since, Turkey has been accusing Greece of demanding a recourse to the International Court of Justice in violation of this agreement and the Security Council decision so that it urged both parties to resume direct negotiations with each other immediately (Avar and Lin 2019, 60). During the Greek Socialist administration (1981–1989), the Greek–Turkish dispute ushered into a new phase. Tensions increased dramatically, and the two countries came to the verge of a war that in turn seriously threatened to blow up NATO’s southeast flank. Papandreou apparently believed that negotiations requested by Turkey regarding the status of Aegean were out of question. Greece was content with the existing status quo. Hence, upon taking-over power, the PASOK government cancelled all scheduled diplomatic meetings with Turkey, retaining solely a small modicum of communication with the neighbouring country (Heraclides 2010, 116–117). In January 1985, after the unilateral and illegal declaration of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus in the occupied northern part of Cyprus, Athens officially announced its new defence doctrine that clearly directed the deterrent attention of its armed forces to Turkey rather than to the Northern Communist countries. The fortification of some Aegean islands, to which Athens had resorted from 1984 onwards, was a marked indication of this. Athens argued that the fortification served primarily alliance interests. More precisely, it purported that the fortification extended the strategic depth of northeastern Greece and hence of NATO against a Warsaw Pact threat, thereby posing a formidable obstacle for the free movement of

 http://www.turkishgreek.org/kuetuephane/item/50-bern-agreement-between-turkeyand-greece-11-november-1976 2

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hostile ships to and from Dardanelles and a deterrent against the Soviet fleet. Athens further argued that the undertaking was designed to resist a Soviet attempt to occupy and transform the islands into naval bases. The Karpathos island, in particular, was presented as a likely objective of Soviet strategy. The construction of new airfields on the various islands was justified by offering Greek pilots full control over the Aegean Sea. In the case of an east–west confrontation, the success of Soviet naval operations in the Mediterranean, the argument went, would largely depend on the support received by backfire bombers taking off from Crimean airfields. A partial defence against their effectiveness could be the network of Greek radars located on various strategically located Aegean islands. Furthermore, the Limnos airfield could provide full air support to land operations in Thrace, and that island, along with Samothrace and Lesvos, forms the first of a succession of chokepoints to hinder the passage of the Soviet fleet in the area. If the Soviet Escadra circulating in the Aegean or Eastern Mediterranean attempted to aid Warsaw Pact forces in Thracian land operations, these islands could form the last chokepoint for denying the Soviets access to their destination (Veremis 1993, 184). In April 1987 a very serious crisis in the Greek–Turkish relations broke out when a Turkish vessel started conducting a seismic survey in a disputed area in the Aegean Sea. Athens felt confirmed in its suspicion that Turkey followed a revisionist course aiming at changing the status quo in the Aegean. At the beginning of February 1987, the international oil consortium North Aegean Petroleum Company announced that it was planning to drill east of the Greek island Thasos. Out of fear of a possible confrontation with Turkey, the Greek government passed a law with a view to becoming a shareholder of the company and thus determining the company’s course. On the same day (27 February), the Turkish ambassador in Athens, Nazmi Akiman, lodged an official protest demanding Greece to “respect the Berne Declaration”. In Ankara, the acting Prime Minister Erdem (Turkey’s elected Prime Minister Özal was in the United States for medical treatment) stated that drilling within 10 nautical miles of Thasos violated the Berne Declaration. Athens rejected Ankara’s accusations as legally unfounded, calling on Turkey to submit the case to the International Court of Justice. In Athens’ official statement the Berne Declaration had become inoperative with Turkey’s breaking off of negotiations in September 1981. In March 1987, Ankara escalated the verbal conflict asserting that the entire Aegean Sea outside the respective territorial waters was “disputed territory”, thereby accusing Greece of expansionist plans. Soon after, the Turkish ship Piri Reis accompanied by two warships started carrying out research without informing Athens in an area which, according to international law, belonged to Greece. Simultaneously, it became known that the Turkish government had granted the Turkish state oil company TPAO exploration and drilling licences in the Aegean Sea near Samothrace, Limnos and Lesvos. On 27 March, Papandreou briefed the full cabinet in detail on the situation heralding a tough response against Turkey. Papandreou also stressed that if this was an attempt by NATO or the United States to force Greece to negotiate with Turkey on all issues, the Greek government would not accept it and would inform the Bulgarian government, that is, a member of the Warsaw Pact, in accordance with the existing non-aggression pact between the two countries, about

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Greece’s intentions. Should a conflict arise, the US bases in Greece would also be closed. Moreover, the Greek Foreign Minister Papoulias decided to brief first the ambassadors of the Warsaw Pact countries and the Islamic countries on the situation and only afterwards the NATO countries, which caused considerable irritation in NATO circles. In Ankara, a military spokesperson announced that the research ship Sismik 1 would leave for the Aegean the following day under military protection, and if this were obstructed, countermeasures would be taken without hesitation. The Turkish armed forces along the Evros border, the Aegean coast and Northern Cyprus were put on alert (Richter 2021, 46–55). Simultaneously, Papandreou requested the temporary closing of the American military bases in Greece stoking fears in the United States and NATO about a possible collapse of the southeastern flank of NATO. All major Western countries as well as NATO were mobilised to avert the looming war, putting the Turkish government under pressure. The crisis was solved after an intervention by Peter Carington, the then secretary-general of NATO, and a phone call conversation between Papandreou and Özal. On 28 March, the de-escalation process was initiated as the Sismik 1 ship returned to the Turkish territorial waters without military escort and the North Aegean Petroleum Company announced that it would refrain from drilling outside Greek territorial waters. This also was confirmed by the Greek Foreign Ministry on 28 March 1988 (Rizas 2000, 91–97). Subsequently, in January 1988, at a meeting of the World Economic Forum at Davos in Switzerland the Greek and Turkish prime ministers forged a “no-war agreement” inaugurating at the same time a comprehensive dialogue covering all the issues in the Greek–Turkish bilateral relations, working simultaneously on  confidence-­building measures. This was a watershed in Greek foreign policy. Until then Athens regarded the delimitation of the continental shelf as the only open matter in the bilateral relations with the eastern neighbour. This was followed by what was labelled as “spirit of Davos” (Tsardanidis 2002, 244), a series of agreements on “low politics” issues (tourism, economy and culture), as well as certain gestures of goodwill by both sides. Nevertheless, the so-called spirit of Davos did not last long as neither Greek nor Turkish public opinion responded accordingly. Papandreou himself described the Papandreou Ozal joint communiqué in Davos in January 1988 in Greek parliament as shameful (mea culpa) as it allowed the Turkish side to demand full-fledged negotiations without terms and conditions. Furthermore, in the late 1980s, Turkey launched an impressive modernisation programme for its armed forces (Tsakonas 2010, 34). In May and September 1988, Karolos Papoulias, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Greece, and Mesut Yilmaz, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Turkey, signed in Athens and Istanbul two memoranda3 with which they recognised the obligation to respect the sovereignty and the territorial integrity of each other and agreed on  Memorandum of Understanding signed in May 1988 available from https://www.mfa.gov.tr/ site_media/html/aegean-sea-reference-documents-1.pdf; Guidelines for the preventions of accidents and incidents on the high seas and international airspace signed in September 1988. https:// www.mfa.gov.tr/site_media/html/aegean-sea-reference-documents-2.pdf 3

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confidence-building measures: avoid interfering with smooth shipping and air traffic whenever the two countries conduct military exercises in the high seas and in the international airspace; avoid conducting military exercises during the peak tourist period (1 July–1 September); military and other activities carried out by the ships and aircraft of both countries on the high seas and international airspace would be conducted in accordance with the international law and international custom, instruments, rules, regulations and procedures, etc. The opposition in Greece criticised the Papoulias–Yilmaz agreement because it supposedly did not contain any reference to the sovereign rights of the two countries in the national waters and the national airspace, allowing the questioning of Greek national airspace rights (Rizas 2000, 100–104).

References Avar, Y. and Lin, Y. C. (2019). Aegean Disputes Between Turkey and Greece: Turkish and Greek Claims and Motivations in the Framework of Legal and Political Perspectives. International Journal of Politics and Security 1(1), 57–70. Axt, H.  J. (1992). Griechenlands Aussenpolitik und Europa. Verpasste Chancen and Neue Herausforderungen. Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlaggesellschaft. Guidelines for the preventions of accidents and incidents on the high seas and international airspace signed in September 1988. Available from https://www.mfa.gov.tr/site_media/html/ aegean-­sea-­reference-­documents-­2.pdf Heraclides, A. (2010). The Greek-Turkish Conflict in the Aegean. Imagined Enemies. New York: Palgrave. International Court of Justice. Aegean Sea Continental Shelf (Greece v. Turkey) https://www.icj-­ cij.org/en/case/62 International Legal Materials (1976), American Society of International Law 15(5). Katsoulas, S. (2022). The United States and Greek-Turkish Relations. The Guardian’s Dilemma. London and New York: Routledge Konstantinos Karamanlis Archeio. Gegonota kai Keimena (1997 and 2005)4 [Konstantinos Karamanlis Archive. Incidents and Texts], vol. 8. Athens: Idryma K. Karamanlis-Ekdotiki Athinon publisher. Lie, Ø., Fürstenau, J., Bellas S., Tsifoutidis, G. (2014). A Fresh Look at the Oil and Gas Potential of Greece. Geo EXPRO, 10(6). Available from https://www.geoexpro.com/ articles/2014/03/a-­fresh-­look-­at-­the-­oil-­and-­gas-­potential-­of-­greece Memorandum of Understanding signed in May 1988. Available from https://www.mfa.gov.tr/ site_media/html/aegean-­sea-­reference-­documents-­1.pdf Richter, H. (2021). The conflicts of the Aegean in the 20th century. Peleus Studien zur Geschichte Griechenlands und Zyperns Band 113. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag. Rizas, S. (2009). Managing a conflict between allies: United States policy towards Greece and Turkey in relation to the Aegean dispute, 1974–1976. Cold War History, 9(3), 367–387. Rizas, S. (2000). Apo tin krisi stin ifesi. O Konstantinos Mitsotakis kai I politiki tiw proseggisis Elladas-Tourkias [From the crisis to the détente. Konstantinos Mitsotakis and Greece’s rapprochement policy towards Turkey]. Athens: Papazisis publisher.

 The 2005 edition was made by Kathimerini newspaper and is divided in more volumes than the 1997 one. 4

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Roukounas, E. (2008). O Konstantinos Karamanlis kai i eiriniki epilysi ton diethnon diaforon: I prosfigi tiw Elladas sto Diethnes Dikastirio tis Hagis [Konstaninos Karamanlis and the peaceful settlement of international disputes: Greece’s appeal to the International Court of Justice in Hague]. In K. Svolopoulos, K. Botsiou and E. Hatzivasiliou (eds.), O Konstantinos Karamanlis ston Eikosto Aiona [Konstantinos Karamanlis in the Twentieth Century]. Conference proceedings Vol. II (pp. 331–337). Athens: Konstantinos Karamanlis Foundation. Syrigos A. (2016). Oi Ellinotourkikes 1967–1974. Apo tin Synantisi ston Evro stin Eisvoli stin Kypro [The Greek-Turkish Relations 1967–1974. From the encounter in Evros to the invasion in Cyprus]. In the Hellenic Parliament Foundation (Ed.), I Dictatoria ton Syntamatarchon kai I Apokatastasi tis Dimocratias [The Colonels dictatorship and the restore of Parliamentarism]. Conference Proceedings (pp. 313–336). Athens: The Hellenic Parliament Foundation. The International Court of Justice (1978). Reports of judgments, advisory opinions and orders. Aegean Sea, Continental Shelf Case (Greece v. Turkey) Judgment of 19 December 1978. Theophanous A. and Karyos A. (2020). Maritime surveys in the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean since 1976: some lessons learned. IN DEPTH 17(5), 2–5. Tsakonas, P. (2010). The Incomplete Breakthrough in Greek–Turkish Relations. Grasping Greece’s Socialization Strategy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Tsardanidis, C. (2002). Greek Foreign Policy since the World War II.  In P.  Liargovas (Ed.), Economics, Social and Political Issues (pp. 237–249). New York: Nova Science Publishers. Valinakis G. (1989), Eisagogi stin Elliniki Exoteriki Politiki 1949–1988 [Introduction into the Greek Foreign Policy 1949–1988]. Thessaloniki: Paratiritis Publisher. Veremis Th. (1993). Defence and Security Policies under PASOK.  In R.  Clogg (Ed.), Greece, 1981–89. The Populist Decade (pp. 181–189). United Kingdom: Palgrave Macmillan Woodhouse C.M. (1998). A short history (sixth edition). Chatham-Kent: Faber and Faber. Zafiropoulos, G. (2012). Exploration history and Hydrocarbon Potential of Greece. Institute of Energy for South-East Europe (IENE) workshop 26–27 April 2012. https://www.iene.gr/ workshop-­for-­hydrocarbon/articlefiles/session4/zafiropoulos.pdf

Chapter 4

The Post-Cold War Era

The end of the Cold War brought Turkey into an unexpected geopolitical position. Turkey lost its high strategic importance as a frontier state and bulwark against the Communist bloc but found itself in the middle of war events in its very own geographical neighbourhood, namely, in the Balkan peninsula and the Middle East which increased its geo-strategic importance for NATO and the West. Several developments changing the world energy map in the same period, however, further enhanced its geoeconomic importance as Turkey lies upon significant energy transport lines, both on the north–south and east–west axes. Perhaps for this reason, the advent of the post–Cold War era also brought about  some new threat perceptions in the Greek strategy planners about Turkey. Ankara’s aspiration to become a regional power in the Balkans and Caucasus was seen in Athens with increasing concern (Valinakis 1997, 203). The mid-1990s was a period of renewed tensions between Greece and Turkey. In 1994, the Greek government decided to adopt a new common defence doctrine for Greece and Cyprus. Although the doctrine was defensive rather than offensive, it triggered Ankara’s reaction, leading to violations of Greek airspace by Turkish aircraft and increasingly hostile rhetoric by Turkish politicians with a view of challenging the existing borders in the Aegean Sea (Adamczyk 2017, 127). In January 1996, these tensions culminated in the so-called Imia/Kardak crisis. The Kardak/Imia uninhabited rocks became due to a trifling cause the epicentre of a crisis that brought the two countries to the verge of a high-scale war. It was the first time that Turkey questioned militarily the legal status quo in the Aegean, indicating a qualitative change in its hitherto stance on Greece. The conflict, triggered by a maritime accident on the respective rocky islet, which lies just under 4 nautical miles off Turkey’s Aegean coast, and 5.5  miles from the Greek island of Kalymnos, and ended up in a serious crisis claiming the lives of three Greek soldiers. The media of the two countries quickly over-sensationalised the issue in a purely nationalistic context pushing both governments to adopt an intransigent stance. Eventually, an intervention by Washington defused the crisis. The woods, however, opened by the incident, left the impression in Turkey that Greece might try to claim sovereign rights over the whole Aegean and in Greece that the country was deprived of its own natural right to wield sovereign rights in its territory. In the wake of the Imia crisis, the Turkish government widened its contestation of the Greek sovereignty over small islands and rockets in the Aegean Sea by including a large © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Stergiou, The Greek-Turkish Maritime Dispute, Contributions to International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15515-4_4

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number of other islands and small formations across the Aegean. Since then, Turkish authorities have spoken of grey zones of undetermined sovereignty (Mavridis and Fakiolas 2002, 133–176). In the same year (1996), the Turkish prime minister, Tansu Ciller, pronounced 3000 islands and islets in the Aegean, Turkish territory, warning that Ankara would consider any attempt by Athens to take these islands by force a casus belli. This was the second casus belli after the first one in the event that Greece ever resorted to expanding its Aegean islands’ territorial waters from 6 to 12 miles (Nachmani 2003, 167). Moreover, following the aforementioned Imia crisis of January 1996, at a NATO planning session Turkish naval officers appeared to question Greek sovereignty of the island of Gavdos, south of Crete. Although the Turkish officials referred to Gavdos more in technical rather than in political terms, Gavdos soon was named as one of the 130 islets and rocks with unidentified sovereignty (US Congressional Research Service’s report for US Congress 1997, 4) (Map 4.1). After the Imia/Kardak crisis, several initiatives were undertaken to resolve the Aegean dispute. Soon after the crisis, NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana proposed confidence-building measures (CBMs) based on the May 1988 Memorandum of Understanding between Karolos Papoulias and Mesut Yilmaz, focusing on 1. A moratorium on military exercises between June 15 and September 15. 2. Combat training missions only by unarmed planes. 3. Planes to use identification, friend or foe devices (instead of submitting flight plans) to preclude intercepts, reduce the need to scramble interceptors and decrease the number of mock dog fights. 4. Direct communication between Greek and Turkish air defence operations offices. 5. Establishment of a centre at NATO Command Headquarters in Naples to monitor Aegean airspace operations. However, each of the two countries accepted different measures of the set of proposals, frustrating, thus, the possibility to be adopted as package. Nevertheless, beginning in February 1997, the two sides began a test programme of sending pictures of Aegean activity to NATO headquarters in Naples (US Congressional Research Service’s report for US Congress 1997, 5). The new socialist Greek Prime Minister Costas Simitis, clearly more moderate than his predecessor Andreas Papandreou, decided to take advantage of NATO as a communication and mediation platform to pursue closer ties to Ankara. During the NATO summit in Madrid in July 1997, with the help of US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, the Greek and Turkish foreign ministers Theodoros Pangalos and Ismail Cem held talks in which they agreed on the so-called Madrid Declaration designed to give a new impetus to the bilateral relations. The Declaration mentioned that both countries would pursue efforts to promote bilateral relations based upon. A mutual commitment to peace, security and the continuing development of good neighbourly relations. Respect for each other’s sovereignty.

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Map 4.1  They Grey Zones

Respect for the principles of International Law and International Agreements. Respect for each other’s legitimate, vital interests and concerns in the Aegean which are of great importance for their security and national sovereignty. Commitment to refrain from unilateral acts on the basis of mutual respect and willingness to avoid conflicts arising from misunderstanding.

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Commitment to settle disputes by peaceful means based on mutual consent and without use of force or threat of force.1 Though this agreement was later castigated by some observers  (Ignatiou and Meletis 2020), it was a significant step towards a peaceful modus vivendi in the Aegean Sea. As a result of this initiative that led to an improvement in the relations between Athens and Ankara, some structural bilateral problems within the NATO alliance were resolved after a long time. Turkey agreed to the establishment of a new regional NATO headquarters in Larissa, which became one of the four regional NATO structures in the Mediterranean region, alongside Verona, Madrid and Izmir. It was agreed that the headquarters in Larissa and Izmir would jointly control NATO flights and exercises in the Aegean Sea. In Larissa, the chief of staff should be a Turkish general, while in Izmir a Greek general, with American officers as their deputies. The two countries would again participate in joint NATO military manoeuvres in the Aegean Sea (Adamczyk 2017, 128). In May 1999, following the capture of Öcalan by the Turks outside the Greek embassy in Nairobi in February 1999, which threatened to derail the détente in the Greek–Turkish relations, the new Greek Foreign Minister George Papandreou took up an offer made by his Turkish opposite number, Ismail Cem, for a dialogue on some bilateral issues between the two countries. The dialog shaped up through a series of meetings during the summer and autumn. The agenda was mainly limited to uncontroversial questions (low politics) such as trade, tourism and environmental protection, while the main points of frictions, such as seabed rights and territorial waters in the Aegean, were postponed to a later date. The détente was boosted by the mutual help in the Turkish and Greek earthquakes of 17 August and 7 September 1999, respectively, to which both governments responded rapidly, leading to a dramatic reversal of hostile attitudes in the public opinion (Hale 2013, 196–198). The general cordiality that prevailed in both societies led to various common cultural events but did not settle any of the thorny questions, particularly the long-­ standing disputes over offshore mineral rights and maritime boundaries in the Aegean. However, it facilitated the decisions of the European Council in Helsinki in December 1999 where Greece voted in favour of Turkey’s EU candidacy. Notably, at this summit, the EU elaborated the principles, procedures and institutional frameworks for the resolution of Greek–Turkish disputes. The two parties pledged that they would attempt to settle their disputes peacefully in accordance with international law and submit their differences before the International Court of Justice by the end of 2004 at the latest. Following the Helsinki summit of December 1999, Greece initiated a long-term policy of removing the Turkish threat altogether by bringing Turkey into line with EU norms of behaviour and European-style “rules of  According to Michalis Ignatiou and Nikos Meletis (2020), the agreement was contrived by Washington to satisfy Turkey and clearly favoured Turkish interests as the reference to the respect of territorial integrity was devoid of meaning since Turkey had already made public its reservations on Greece’s sovereignty on some islands. Athens very hastily embraced these proposals because at that time the Simitis administration was focused on preparing the country for accession to the European Monetary Zone. 1

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the game”, a quasi-socialisation of its enemy. The traditional strategy towards Turkey had been proven ineffective. Greece was not able to achieve anything in its relations with Turkey and more than that found it entangled in repeated serious crises, almost escalating into an armed conflict. The new strategic concept was based on the idea that by coming closer to the EU, Turkey would think twice to use its military strength as a threat against the EU member Greece, and, moreover, the process of accession would lead to a transformation of Turkey’s political system (Tsakonas and Tournikiotis 2003, 301–313). The normalisation of the Greek–Turkish relationship also served the objective of the country’s accession to the European Monetary Union with which the Simitis administration had been fully associated. In this respect, military expenditures – a direct corollary of the continuing tension with Turkey – had entailed an extremely heavy burden for the Greek economy that was at the time in the process of macroeconomic convergence to the Eurozone accession criteria (Blavoukos and Bourantonis 2012, 615–616). Indeed, in comparative terms, Greece was at the time one of the most militarised countries in NATO and the EU. Expressed as a share of GDP, Greek military spending had invariably been higher than the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, EU and NATO averages. While, during 1988–2000, the average yearly defence burden in 15 EU countries was 2.1% of GDP, for the 18 members of NATO 2.4% of GDP and in the case of the OECD countries 2% of GDP, the Greek state allocated 4.6% of its GDP to defence. Furthermore, while the defence budgets of most countries shrank during the post–Cold War period, Greek defence spending kept growing in real terms (Kollias, 2004, 99–100). According to the Helsinki agreement, exploratory talks on the territorial waters and continental shelf disputes should begin immediately after the EU Helsinki summit of December 1999. However, the start was delayed. As long they were being held, no progress was reported, and the recourse to the International Court of Justice, envisaged in the agreement, never materialised. Vis-à-vis the confidence-building measures from time-to-time bilateral meetings concerning mainly aeronautical content did take place. According to the former foreign minister of Greece, Evangelos Venizelos, who was involved in the process, the Turkish side insisted on discussing the delimitation of not only the continental shelf, but also the Economic Exclusive Zone, both in the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean, but first in the Aegean and then in the Mediterranean. Greece’s position was the simultaneous discussion of both. Greece was only discussing the delimitation of maritime zones because Athens was of the mind that without a final delimitation with adjacent or opposite countries, these sovereign rights cannot be fully exercised. Neither the “grey areas” nor the “demilitarisation” of the Greek islands were the subject of exploratory talks and meetings (Kathimerini 2020). Finally, in December 2004, at the Brussels European Council, when the start of Turkey’s EU accession negotiations would be decided, the new Karamanlis government opted not to enforce the term of the 1999 Helsinki European Council decision on the referral of the bilateral disputes with Turkey to the International Court of Justice as a condition for the start of Turkey’s EU accession negotiations. According

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to the then outgoing Prime Minister Simitis, while Greece and Turkey had come close to a solution of some thorny issues in the maritime dispute, the following adminstration of Konstantinos Karamanlis remained indifferent to it adopting instead the stance that the pushing deadlines were not helpful (Simitis 2020, 73–104). This practically freed Turkey from the obligation to start its EU accession negotiations after the thorny issue of referral of the Aegean dispute to the International Court of Justice had been settled. It seems that the new Karamanlis government and in particular the new Foreign minister Petros Molyviatis assessed the political cost of a possible compromise that most probably would entail the ruling of the International Court as unbearable. In this respect, the continuation of the the Greek-Turkish maritime dispute was considered a state of affairs on which Greece could take more advantages. It is no coincidence that the Karamanlis administration during the 2004–2006 period chose to carry out exploratory contacts with Turkey in a regime of controlled inactivity and with a view of achieving normalisation of the Greek-Turkish relations rather a solution of the dispute (Tsakonas 2020, 39).  Nonetheless, the bilateral cooperation in economics and energy further progressed. The Helsinki agreement was followed by a remarkable improvement in the Greek–Turkish economic relations, while the contacts on the level of the civil society of both countries multiplied as well. The bilateral trade experienced a huge increase in value from 903 million in 2002 to just under 3 billion US dollars in 2010 (Grigoriadis 2020). In 2005, the two countries fostered their economic cooperation by agreeing on the construction of the Turkish–Greek Interconnector Karacabey-Komotini aimed at bringing for the very time Azeri gas from Shah Deniz Phase I through Turkey to Europe, which was inaugurated in July of that year in the Evros River by then Prime Ministers Karamanlis and Erdogan (Stergiou and Karagianni 2019, 24). The rapprochement had its limits. In October 2005, the Turkish National Security Council reconfirmed the 1995 Casus Belli declaration suspending abruptly the Greek–Turkish friendship and prompting Greek Prime Minister Konstantinos Karamanlis to postpone his scheduled official visit to Turkey twice. Nevertheless, Greece’s support for Turkish accession to the EU remained, while contacts between the two countries continued. In this respect, the visit of Costas Karamanlis to Ankara in January 2008 – the first visit by a Greek premier to Turkey for 49 years – stands out. On a return trip to Athens in May 2010, Tayyip Erdogan initiated a High-Level Cooperation Council with a view of bringing ministers from the two countries into regular consultations. This strategy, aimed at institutionalising the Greek–Turkish cooperation, had been proven fruitful with other countries (Hale 2013, 201). In 2010, Athens and Ankara also agreed to establish a cooperation council and hold a high-level meeting once a year on a rotating basis focused on low politics. However, the lack of visible progress on issues of high politics overshadowed the Cooperation Council’s success. Greece’s efforts to prevent its airspace violations/ transgressions were not met positively by Turkey that, in turn, counterproposed the termination of flying only of aircrafts with missiles. Given the ailing economic situation, Athens had hoped for a solution that would ease its defence spending burden (Raptopoulos 2017, 127–128). This expectation proved false. Moreover, the

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confidence-­building measures never paved the way for a comprehensive solution to the outstanding bilateral issues in the Aegean Sea. The international environment in the Eastern Mediterranean from 2010 onwards did not favour a détente in the interstate relations of all regional actors. Between 2008 and 2012 following 50 years of close and successful cooperation covering energy security, establishment of a regional missile defence system, military exchanges and defence deals, cooperation against Islamic radicalism, etc., the relationship between Israel and Turkey entered into a period of great tension due to a series of diplomatic episodes and confrontations. After the Turkish–Israeli ties became strained, Israel, Cyprus and, by extension, Greece came together to form a defence-economic alliance, thereby undermining vital Turkish interests and ambitions of regional hegemony. After Turkey had suspended all joint exercises with Israel, Greece offered to step in, thereby replacing Turkey as Israel’s strategic defence partner (Stergiou 2015). After the ouster of power of Turkey’s protégé Morsi in Egypt, Egypt also joined this alliance. The Greek–Egyptian relations, however, never acquired the analogous strategic dimensions of the Greek–Cyprus–Israel axis. The energy cooperation was another field of cooperation between the respective countries, but contrary to the commonly led perceptions was not the catalysator. Despite the widespread euphoria about the natural endowment of the region, the East Med gas “bonanza” is rather overestimated. The gas deposits, for those believing that they even could drastically alter the EU’s energy security in the short to medium term, remain, apart from the Tamar and Zohr fields, so far largely undeveloped and exploration proceeds slowly because there is no available export route for the large volumes of gas that could be produced. Given that the gas exports from the area, in the best-case scenario, would reach the amount of 20 bcm probably after many years, and that the EU market consumes more than 400 bcm/y, this perception is rather misguided (Stergiou and Karagianni 2019, 176). As stated very aptly (Grigoriadis 2022), the Cyprus, Greece, Egypt and Israel alliance triggered a retaliatory response by Turkey which should be interpreted as the re-emergence of atavistic encirclement fears that had haunted Turkey since the 1930s. Moreover, as will be analysed in the next chapter, New Turkey’s rising self-­ confidence as an “order-setting” power in the region could not tolerate any exclusionary policies by other neighbours.

References Adamczyk, A. (2017). Greece in NATO: Evolution of Interests in the Context of Changes in the International Environment. Yearbook of the Institute of East-Central Europe, 15(4), 119–140. Blavoukos S. and Bourantonis D. (2012), Policy Entrepreneurs and Foreign Policy Change: The Greek–Turkish Rapprochement in the 1990s. Government and Opposition, 47(4), 597–617. Hale, W. (2013). Turkish foreign policy since 1774. 3rd edition. London and New York: Routledge. Grigoriadis, I. (2020). Greek-Turkish Relations: The Post-Helsinki Era. In K. Featherstone and D. Sotiropoulos (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Modern Greek Politics (pp. 613–628). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Grigoriadis, I. (2022). Between escalation and détente: Greek-Turkish relations in the aftermath of the Eastern Mediterranean crisis. Turkish Studies (published electronically) D ­ OI:https://doi. org/10.1080/14683849.2022.2087509 Ignatiou, M. and Meletis, N. (2020). H Simfonia poy grizare to Aigaio. Apota Imia sti Madriti [The Agreement that rendered the Aegean Sea to a Gray Zone. From Imia to Madrid]. Athens: Pedio publisher. Kathimerini (2020). Ex-FM Evangelos Venizelos warns against ‘nervous actions without strategy. Kathimerini newspaper, September 1, 2020. Available from https://www. ekathimerini.com/opinion/interviews/256408/ex-­fm-­evangelos-­venizelos-­warns-­against-­ nervous-­actions-­without-­strategy/ Kollias, Ch. (2004). The Greek-Turkish Rapprochement, the Underlying Military Tension and Greek Defense Spending, Turkish Studies, 5(1), 99–116. Mavridis, P. and Fakiolas, E. (2002). Crisis Management strategy and the Greek-Turkish Confrontation. The case of Imia. In Chr. Giallourides and P. Tsakonas, Ellada kai Tourkia meta to telos tou Psichrou Polemou [Greece and Turkey after the end of the Cold War] (pp. 133–176). Athens: Sideris Publisher. Nachmani, A. (2003). Turkey: facing a new millennium. Coping with intertwined conflicts. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press. Raptopoulos, N. (2017). Greek-Turkish relations during the Greek crisis: the impact of the crisis on partnerships efforts. In Sp. Litsas and A. Tsiampiris (Eds), Foreign Policy under Austerity. Greece’s return to normality? (pp. 117–140). London: Palgrave Macmillan. Simitis, K. (2020). Helsinki. MIa epitychia pou denolklirithike [Helsinki. A Success not completed]. In P. Tsakonas (ed.), I Stratigiki toy Helsinki. 20+1 Chronia meta [The Helsinki Strategy. 20+1 years later] (pp. 73–104). Athens: Sideris Publisher. Stergiou, A. (2015). Greek–Israeli Defense and Energy Ties: Writing a New Chapter in Bilateral Relations, Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs, 9(3), 417–428. Stergiou, A. and Karagianni, M. (2019). Does Energy Cause Ethnic War? East Mediterranean and Caspian Sea Natural Gas and Regional Conflicts. Newcastle upon Tyne – United Kingdom: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Tsakonas, P. and Tournikiotis, A. (2003). Greece’s Elusive Quest for Security Providers: The `Expectations-Reality Gap. Security Dialogue, 34(3), 301–313. Tsakonas, P. (2020). I Stratigiki toy Helsinki. 20+1 Chronia meta [The Helsinki Strategy. 20+1 years later]. Athens: Sideris Publisher. Valinakis, Y. (1997). Greek Security policy in the perspective of CFSP. In H.J. Axt (Ed.), Greece and the European Union. Stranger among partners? (pp.  199–241). Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft. US Congressional Research Service’s report for US Congress (1997). Greece and Turkey: Aegean Issues — Background and Recent Developments. Washington: US Congress.

Chapter 5

The Rise of the AKP Party and Turkey’s Grand Strategy in the Twenty-First Century Political scientist Samuel Huntington warned in The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996) that Turkey eventually would turn Islamist and leave NATO. In his book The Next 100  Years. A Forecast for the 21st Century (2009), Friedman predicted, based on an analysis of the Turkish economy, that the twenty-first century will see the rise of Turkey as a major power. According to him, historically, Turkey has been the most successful centre of power in the Muslim world. Turkey is not only a major modern economy, but it is by far the largest economy in the region – much larger than Iran, and perhaps the only modern economy in the entire Muslim world. Most importantly, it is strategically located between Europe, the Middle East and Russia (Friedman 2009, 6–7). Both developments are intertwined with the rise of the Islamic Justice and Development political party (AKP) to power in early 2000. As widely known, the 2002 parliamentary elections constitute a watershed moment in the history of modern Turkey. Out of these elections, the then quite moderate AKP party under the undisputed leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdogan emerged as the clear winner. It took no long time until this political earthquake impacted the country’s international relations. Turkey’s foreign policy since the founding of the Turkish Republic and the ascent of Erdogan and AKP party to power had been characterised by stability. There were changes, but these were predictable, slow and deliberate. The ruling coalition of politicians, bureaucrats and the army had not seriously questioned the general direction of the country’s foreign policy. The country remained generally devoted to its pro-Western course as part of the Atlantic Community, while the basis of relations it entertained with the rest of the world was expected to be basically of economic nature. Also, the AKP continued, initially, clinging to the pro-Western foreign policy tradition as a way of avoiding an army intervention in Turkish politics since the memory of the 1997 quasi-military coup was still fresh. This coup had forced the resignation of Islamist Erbacan coalition and its exclusion from the next government, while 6 months later, in January 1998, the Constitutional Court closed down the party of Erbacan (Turan 2015, 138–139). However, Ahmet Davutoglu’s appointment as Turkey’s foreign minister, in May 2009, ushered Ankara’s external relations into a new era (later after the political system changed into presidential democracy, it became prime minister). The academic-­turned-politician Ahmet Davutoglu is considered to have designed the foundations of the new Turkish foreign policy for the twenty-first century. In his © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Stergiou, The Greek-Turkish Maritime Dispute, Contributions to International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15515-4_5

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book The Strategic Depth. Turkey’s International Position (Stratejik derinlik: Türkiye’nin uluslararası konumu. Küre Yayınları, 2001) Davutoglu embraced the known Karl Haushofer’s thesis that Germany had to expand and seek a “vital space” (Lebensraum) that was indispensable to its economy and its growing population, seemingly to justify a potential Turkish expansion. More precisely, Davutoglu conceptualised Turkey’s modern strategic vision as the pursuit of a proactive policy commensurate to its historic and geographic depth, which is amplified by its Ottoman legacy.1 To achieve that aim, Turkey should capitalise on its soft power potential consisting of its historic and cultural links with all the regions which it belongs to, as well as its democratic institutions and thriving market economy. Turkey should, according to Davutoglu, put aside the militaristic image and promote instead conflict resolution, regional economic cooperation which would obviate the need for regional intervention of great powers, in short to embrace a new operational philosophy: zero conflicts with its neighbours. According to Davutoglu, Turkey’s geography, history, culture and economy are elements that make Turkey a candidate for regional leadership as well as a zone of prosperity and stability. Minimising animosities with its neighbours could open new markets for Turkish products and minimise the militarisation of Turkish political discourse, thereby rendering Turkey a more appealing and less risky candidate for EU membership. With regard to the Aegean Sea, Davutoglu argued that Greece’s ownership of the overwhelming majority of the Aegean islands is the most fundamental problem in Turkey’s maritime strategy and serious security gap. He also adopted the traditional Turkish rhetoric of “the existing contradiction between geological facts and geopolitical reality”, meaning that the islands are actually geopolitical extension of Minor Asia and yet their political status, meaning the fact that is part of Greece territory, runs counter to it. Should Greece expand its territorial waters from 6 to 12, Turkey would lose all maritime trade and transport routes. Against this background, so Davutoglu argues by sticking to this legal status and given its gigantic merchant marine, Greece has been following an expansionist policy against Turkey (Davutoglu 2010, 266–274). Davutoglu’s appeasing declarations of transforming Turkey into a soft power in the region by using Ottoman cultural heritage as a means to increase Turkish influence in the Middle East, the Balkans and beyond were met with scepticism, and even with uneasiness by most Greeks and Cypriots. Furthermore, Turkey’s rapid economic ascent to one of the most vibrant among the top 20 world economies in stark contrast with Greece’s deep recession and discredit in the EU over the same period shaped a fearful perception in the Greek society about the new Turkey (Minagias 2010, 25–32).

 Some scholars (Laciner 2009, 201) have argued that neo-Ottomanism, as it was first conceptualised by Öal and later by Davutoglu, is not an aggressive, irredentist, expansionist foreign policy aimed at reoccupying former Ottoman territories. It looks to the imperial Ottoman past as a product of a very different economic and social structure and is primarily a reaction to the Kemalist isolationist foreign policy. 1

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Under Davutoglu’s stewardship, Turkey began tentatively deviating from the traditional foreign policy pattern of previous decades and claiming a more active and assertive role in the region. The Arab Spring had an additional positive impact on Turkey’s international profile. In the new geopolitical environment in the Eastern Mediterranean, neo-Ottoman Turkey began to claim a new role by exploiting the redrawing of the political map and the shift in the traditional balance of power. Undoubtedly, Ankara has evolved into a more autonomous regional actor, a potentially important energy player, a willing mediator in various conflicts, an influential power in the Muslim world and possibly a model for the coexistence of political Islam with democracy (Dokos 2011, 42). The idea that Turkey would set a regional model of a “moderate” Muslim state, which integrates Islam into democracy, found a tremendous echo both in the Arab world and in the West, enabling Turkey to advance as role model and leader within the World Islamic Community. During his visit to Cairo, Erdogan was treated like a “rock star”. In this way. Turkey managed to maintain equal distance with all parties, enjoyed their confidence and mobilised support of the international community. This did not last long as Turkey overrated its capacity to shape outcomes alone (Yavuz 1998, 19–41). Under the AKP administration, Turkey’s foreign policy on the Mediterranean region also went through a re-orientation and was largely shaped during the term in office of Ahmet Davutoglu who conceptualised Turkey’s new strategy on the basis of the resolution of all chronic conflicts in the Eastern Mediterranean, including Cyprus. However, the relations with Greece over the Aegean Sea were treated by Turkey as distinct foreign policy hurdles rather than a part of its regional Mediterranean policy. In other words, Turkey’s foreign policy makers preferred to deal with the issues on the Mediterranean separately instead of constructing a single and unified Mediterranean policy (Görgülü and Dark 2017, 125–128). From 2013 onwards, Ankara began to resort to actions that began to diminish the capital it had amassed in the region the years before. Following the so-called Gezi protests,2 a turning point for Turkish government’s internal and external policies, Turkey’s foreign policy started to radicalise on multiple fronts and at multiple levels. In this year the Erdogan government started applying more conservative and Islamist policies in the country that hardened in subsequent years, burdening its relationship with the West (European Commission 2019). These policies escalated even further after the failed coup in July 2016 when Erdogan took absolute control over his party and his government and moved to purge more than 170,000 public servants from their offices, including army and police officers, teachers, bureaucrats, doctors, academics and many others, because of their alleged links with the masterminds of the attempted coup (Latal and Büyük 2020, 47–63). Furthermore, AKP started to favour traditional, local, nationalist and religious values that referred especially to the legacy of the glorious past of the Ottoman  The Gezi Park civic protests started in May 2021 a sit-in against the government’s plan to eliminate a park but quickly transformed into an unprecedented wave of mass demonstrations across the entire country against the rule of AKP party. 2

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Empire and touched the subconscious of Turkish society with some megalomaniac aspirations and perceptions. Thus, some analysts began labelling Turkey as a revisionist power. The obvious starting point for this debate is President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s repeated critique of the current international order and his insistence on Turkey’s major role in structuring a new order, a trait that has only intensified after the breakout of the global pandemic. Turkey could once again project regional strength, expand its influence over its former imperial subjects in the East and become a global force to be reckoned with (Alaranta 2020, 4). In particular the years 2018–2020 marked a watershed for Turkey’s assertive foreign policy on multiple fronts in the wider Eastern Mediterranean region (Pierini and Siccardi 2021). Apart from the obvious effort by Erdogan to shift attention away from domestic problems to foreign initiatives, the country’s foreign policy became heavily militarised in an attempt to affirm Ankara’s power in its near abroad and fuel a fiercely nationalist narrative. The build-up of the Turkish navy and the simultaneous conduct of naval military drills in three theatres, the Aegean, the Black Sea and the Eastern Mediterranean, not only demonstrated Turkish military planners’ intention to establish Turkey as the predominant naval force in the region,3 but also served the aim of show force and power projection (Öztürk 2021). Other scholars (Personal Communication with Visne Korkmaz) reject the idea that Turkey is a rejectionist power and  prefer to speak about the  new foreign policy doctrine of “strategic autonomy”. This notion has been coined to describe not only the upgrade of Turkey’s military capabilities but also a diversified foreign policy. In the context of the new foreign policy concept NATO is still important but meanwhile a suspicion and some resentments against the West have been established due to the Western policies toward Irak, PKK, Syria and Cyprus.   In September 2019, Recep Tayyip Erdogan appeared in a photograph with a map that depicted nearly half of the Aegean Sea and an area up to the eastern coast of Crete as belonging to Turkey that has been labelled as Turkey’s Blue Homeland. The Blue Homeland, as a concept, has been created by the ex-chief of staff of the Turkish Navy, Commander Cihat Yayci, who latter was dismissed by Erdogan. It has been complemented by the notion of the Blue Motherland, an almost identical term coined by Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar when referring to a 462,000-m2 area in the Aegean, Mediterranean and Black seas.4 Both terms are meant to express the international profile of the New Turkey. The latter is another well-sounding term signifier circulated in various phases of the Turkish history, re-used by the Justice and Development Party’s leaders in 2013 to designate the transition to a new utopia. To varying degrees, the discourse of New Turkey has encompassed contradictory  The same goal served Turkey’s decision to open in 2016 a military base in Qatar and an extensive military training facility in Mogadishu, Somalia, in 2017. In this way, Turkey has managed to establish sea lines of communication extending from its Mediterranean coast through the Red Sea corridor to the Horn of Africa, and from the Horn to Qatar in the Persian Gulf, as well as a foothold for acquiring more economic and political influence in the greater East Africa region. 4  https://www.dailysabah.com/politics/diplomacy/turkey-to-continue-to-protectits-rights-interests-in-blue-homeland 3

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premises, mainly a combination of political Islam and Turkish ultranationalism. Nevertheless, in all its ambiguity and inconsistency, it has also been used as a self-­ explanatory category in order to mobilise greater mass appeal or attract more international recognition and support (Tas 2014). This new narrative is strongly related to Turkey’s role as a successor state of the Ottoman Empire. According to Erdogan’s interpretation of history, Turkey bears a responsibility bestowed upon the Turkish nation by its past. The same way Turkey’s ancestors fulfilled their duty during the past centuries, so the New Turkey will continue to do so not only to help itself but also to establish a more just world order. If there is one underlying theme in these narratives, it is the conviction that the existing (liberal international) order was dysfunctional and unjust before the pandemic and has become increasingly so after it. Erdogan’s deeply felt conviction that, under his presidency, Turkey is destined to become a global power is crucial to understanding Turkish current assertive policies. The conversion of the Hagia Sophia museum into a mosque5 and threats of withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention on combating domestic violence can be at least partially construed as moves to challenge or deny the legitimacy of the current international order (Alaranta 2020). Sunni Islam, whether it is perceived instrumentally or as a fundamental objective of the current AKP administration, is one of the most important aspects of the “New Turkey”. In this respect Ankara has been spending a significant amount of money on the construction of the largest mosques in the Balkans, Eastern Europe and elsewhere in the world. This is the hallmark of a synthesis of religion with nationalism that had been actively used as a tool of foreign policy (Öztürk 2021, 6–7). At the same time, the country has been undergoing an unpresented Islamisation that appears to be a bottom-up rather than a top-down process. Anatolian Turks, who tend to be more conservative and religious, have higher birth rates than the westernised Turks of Istanbul and the Aegean coast. Many now view Kemalist secularism as an imposed political and cultural order that ignores the country’s rich Islamic heritage. The Turkish leadership feels less and less obliged to follow a pro-­ Western course (Karagiannis 2020). Vis-à-vis its foreign policy, Turkey’s foreign policy waxed increasingly aggressive and highly destabilising towards various countries and regions, especially in the Eastern Mediterranean that has been a preferable terrain for Ankara to apply its coercive diplomacy and assertive strategy.6

 The conversion of the Hagia Sophia museum into a mosque was a well-calculating tactical move serving the ideology of New Turkey, especially its religious dimension, because it indicated a restitution of the Caliphate, which could rally Turkey’s Islamist and nationalist supporters once again. On the other hand, Turkey has been accusing Greece of hypocrisy because the latter allegedly has in the course of time acquiesced the demolition of mosques and monuments of important cultural heritage dating back to the 1500s which were converted into cinemas, exhibition spaces, hotels and warehouses. 6  There are numerous official statements by the EU and the United States in recent years labelling Turkish actions as provocative and violating international law or Turkey’s commitments as NATO ally, which Ankara has rejected as unjust and unfair. 5

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Against this background, it is not surprising at all that, despite NATO objections and US warnings, Ankara acquired the advanced S-400 antiaircraft system from Russia, which, in the American eyes, represents a grave threat to NATO and US security.7 In the Turkish view, however, this move has been due to the outcome of the United States’ failure to repeatedly and consistently understand and respect the Turkish people’s concerns. Erdogan was unmistakably clear about … Unless the United States starts respecting Turkey’s sovereignty and proves that it understands the dangers that our nation faces, our partnership could be in jeopardy (…) Unilateral actions against Turkey by the United States will undermine American interests and force Turkey to look for other friends and allies … (Erdogan 2018). In response, Washington cancelled Turkish participation in the F-35 programme.8 Moreover, Erdogan started to use an increasingly aggressive rhetoric against the EU accusing it of being a club of Christian countries spoiling Greece and disregarding Turkey’s vital interests. The process of mutual alienation and growing distrust went so far that for the very first time after World War II American analysts called Washington to re-­ evaluate America’s military dependence on Turkey (Wald 2019). Some went so far as to demand or accept as possibility Turkey’s ousting from the NATO,9 of which Turkey has been a pillar over the years (Center for Security Policy 2018; Flanagan et al. 2020). Ankara’s ties with the EU have also sunk to the level of third-country status, even if Turkey officially retains the status of candidate country. Accession talks have been “effectively frozen”. In the wake of the country’s post-coup purge and democratic backsliding since 2016 as well as Turkey’s behaviour towards Cyprus, associated with EU conditionality on this issue, several chapters of the negotiation package have remained closed. As such, the EU’s approach to relations with Turkey has been teetering in recent years between extremes: signalling the potential for interests-­ based cooperation but also threatening more serious restrictive measures (Paikin and Rose 2021, 1). As its relations with Europe and the United States deteriorated, Turkey began a parallel process of rapprochement with Russia, which, however, was strained  The S-400 missile system may potentially compromise NATO security if integrated into the alliance’s broader air-defence systems and also pose risks to the F-35 fighter stealth features via intelligence collection mechanisms or cyber back doors built into the Russian system. 8  In 2022, the Pentagon started talks with Greece about a possible participation of the latter in the programme. 9  NATO does not have procedures determining the eviction of unwanted members. Membership criteria can only be inferred from the basic principles on which the alliance is built, for example, democracy, individual freedom and the rule of law, and those parts of the Washington Foundation Treaty, which stipulate that the international engagements of the signatories must not stand in conflict with its provisions, in particular those concerning collective defence. In practice, therefore, the other states would have the option of pushing such an unwanted ally out of their circle. That means moving away from cooperation with Ankara, cancelling contacts, withdrawing from joint undertakings and structures organised by Turkey and banning it from their own undertakings, freezing infrastructure projects on Turkey’s territory, etc. 7

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because of their different approach to Syrian and Libyan civil wars. It should be kept in mind that the grand strategies of the two neighbours have been colliding in a number of conflict zones in their vicinity after 1991: Chechnya, Karabakh, Georgia, Ukraine. These qualitative and quantitative changes in Turkish international relations did not happen in vacuum but have been the result of some distinct technological and economic achievements. Its impressive economic growth performance over the past decades has invariable exceeded the world average and was systematically much higher compared to that of other major global powers. For example, during 2000–2019 the average annual growth rate of the Turkish economy was 4.9% compared to a world average of 3.8%. The growing Turkish economy has resulted not only in higher per capita income but has also allowed the allocation of more resources to the build-up of its military strength. Turkey systematically increased its military spending in the last 20  years pursuing an ambitious military build-up programme. Moreover, Turkey has been pursuing an extensive recapitalisation programme for its armed forces that includes an amphibious assault ship/light aircraft carrier. This recapitalisation programme is supported by a strong and steadily growing domestic defence industrial capability. Over the past decades, Turkey has systematically invested in the development of an indigenous defence industry. Thus, the Turkish defence industry has steadily grown in terms of turnover and technological sophistication. Among many others, it produces domestically developed drones, a wide range of wheeled and tracked armoured vehicles, propelled and guided ammunitions and missiles, light and heavy infantry weapons, and surface vessels such as frigates and corvettes (Stergiou and Kollias 2022). Apart from meeting domestic capital equipment needs, the Turkish defence manufacturers have emerged as a major supplier of arms systems in the international arms market. Turkey’s arms industry is bigger and more self-sufficient than ever. Turnover rose from $1 billion in 2002 to $11 billion in 2020. Its army, the second biggest in ΝΑΤΟ, once relied on foreign suppliers for 70% of its needs and now on 40%. Furthermore, Turkish arms and aerospace exports break one record after another. In 2021 it reached the value of $3.2 billion. Especially Turkey’s drone programme has been a bestseller so far (The Economist 2022). The initial spark for the development of the Turkish defence industry was the US arms embargo that was imposed on Turkey from 1974 until 1978 as a consequence of the Turkish invasion of Cyprus. Turkey’s exclusion from arms-selling markets underscored the need for self-sufficiency in weapons and military supplies, although the roots of such an effort date back to the 1960s. This is witnessed by Turkey’s New Defence Concept, designed in the 1970s with a view to diversifying its arms supplies and hence making Turkey less dependent militarily on the United States in the wake of the embargo. At the same time, Ankara proceeded vigorously into building ties with the other Soviet Bloc countries as well, which later evolved into close military cooperation (Stergiou 2021, 121). The armed low-cost drones made with affordable digital technology by Turkey proved game changers in some battlefields as notably wrecked tanks and other

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armoured vehicles as well as air-defence systems in wars in Syria, Libya and Azerbaijan. The notion of the “blue fatherland” also engulfs the vision of transforming the Turkish coastal navy into a powerful ocean-going fleet. At the heart of this plan is the construction of the landing helicopter dock TCG Anadolu. With a length of almost 231 m, a height of 58 m and a displacement between 24,660 and 27,436 tonnes, the TCG Anadolu will be the largest warship ever built in Turkey. The TCG Anadolu is expected to be the world’s first drone carrier. Moreover, Turkey has the second-largest-standing armed forces in NATO, with more soldiers (639,000 military, paramilitary and civilian personnel), tanks (3200), armoured fighting vehicles (9500), artillery (2400) and military aircraft (1067 fighter jets, attack helicopters and transports) than Germany, France or the United Kingdom. Turkey’s navy comprises 194 ships, mostly frigates, corvettes and coastal gunships, but including 12 submarines Turkey controls the Bosporus Straits, Marmara Sea and Dardanelles Straits between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, giving it the capability to contain Russia’s powerful Black Sea Fleet. Furthermore, backed by Qatar, Turkey proceeded into a dazzling “blue-water expansion” mirrored in the ongoing construction of coastal military installations in Sudan on the Red Sea and in Somalia on the Arabian Sea, a quasi-Turkish “string of pearls” (Stergiou-Kollias 2022). An important component of Turkish foreign policy in recent years is its revisionist stance on the Lausanne Treaty and the Montreux Convention that have been the linchpins of the security and legal architecture in the region for about a century. Since the establishment of the Turkish Republic in 1923, the Turkish military and political elites pursued Turkey’s national goals on the basis of the needs of the Kemalist project: the creation of a new, Western-oriented nation and state with clearly defined state borders stipulated in the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923. From 2016 onwards, however, various Turkish politicians and military officers began repeatedly depicting in the media Lausanne as a defeat as a treaty in which Turkey was forced to give away islands that should belong to Turkey such as the Greek islands located in the Aegean Sea close to the Turkish coastline (Pserimos, Agathonisi, Kinaros, Farmakonisi, Oinouses, etc.). The AKP’s populist discourse regarding the “Kemalist legacy” could be interpreted as a way of delegitimising “old Turkey’s national myths” by replacing them with new ones during the creation of AKP’s New Turkey (Christofis et al. 2019, 14–15). Ever since, this rhetoric has been co-supported by the Nationalist Movement Party and Erdogan political ally, especially by its leader Devlet Bahçeli, who has repeatedly threatened Greece with war. The discussion about the revision of the Montreux Convention, an issue closely knit with the Aegean dispute, in combination with the construction of the so-called Bosporus Canal has been another AKP’s stratagem to demonstrate the vision of New Turkey and disconnect it from the Kemalist tradition. Τhe Montreux Convention, signed in 1936, was designed to regulate transit and navigation in the straits of the Dardanelles, the Sea of Marmora and the Bosporus. In Article 2, it is stipulated that in times of peace merchant vessels shall enjoy complete freedom of transit and navigation in the Straits. In Article 5, it is stipulated that in times of war, Turkey being belligerent, merchant vessels not belonging to a country at war with Turkey shall enjoy freedom of transit and navigation in the Straits on condition that they do not

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in any way assist the enemy. Self-evidently, according to the treaty, in times of war, Turkey being belligerent, the passage of warships shall be left entirely to the discretion of the Turkish government. Things are more complicated in times of war when Turkey is not belligerent. While the convention stipulates that warships shall enjoy complete freedom of transit and navigation through the Straits, an array of limitations also laid down in the convention (Articles 19–20–21), Turkey is allowed to laxly interpret circumstances, thereby exerting influence on a conflict.10 During the Cold War, as Greece and Turkey were part of NATO, the military doctrine was to establish three successive lines of defence in the Aegean (Limnos-­ Lesvos; Evia-Cyclades-Ikaria-Samos and Kythira-Crete-Karpathos-Rhodes), so that the Greek ally could intercept anyone who slipped past Turkey through the strait (Stearns 1992, 53). Moreover, Turkey used the straits for gaining diplomatic leverage. Johnson’s involvement in the intercommunal violations of 1963–1964, combined with former President Kennedy’s decision to withdraw the Jupiter missiles from Turkey in the wake of the Cuban missile crisis, precipitated Turkey’s disenchantment with the United States. This, in turn, led to a Turkey–USSR rapprochement. Turkey began acting independently from American policy until the late 1970s. Since the Soviet government had long sought some sort of accommodation with Turkey, the Soviet–Turkish détente developed quickly, allowing the Soviet Union an easier passage through the straits (Nicolet 2001, 294). The Turkish view of the Black Sea or Bosporus Straits is quite unique. Turkey has initiated the term Turkish Straits, regarding the Sea of Marmara that lies between the straits of Istanbul and the Canakkale as internal waters, which, in turn, increases the jurisdiction of Turkey beyond the recognised rights for passage and navigation. The status of the Straits was seriously questioned again in the aftermath of the Cold War due to the increasing maritime traffic from the Black Sea and the Caucasus to the Aegean and the Mediterranean Sea and vice versa as a result of the increasing trade volume between these seas. Firstly in 1994 and later in 1998 and 1999, Turkey adopted domestic regulations regarding the passage and navigation of civil vessels through the straits due to environmental and security considerations (Inan 1999). These regulations, however, have been the subject of strong criticism by scholars who have made the assertion that the authors intended to introduce unilaterally a much more restrictive regime in the straits than “Freedom of Transit and Navigation” laid out in the Montreux Convention, while simultaneously claiming loyalty to it. In this regard, an example is Article 24 of the 1994 Regulation that gives the Turkish authorities the right to half temporarily (but with any indication to the duration) the maritime traffic not only in case of force majeure or major collisions with fires and human casualties. Turkish authorities can, for example, invoke some petty reasons such as sports, scientific activity, drilling and pursuing criminals, thereby granting the authorities great flexibility to suspend the traffic. Therefore some Black Sea states protested diplomatically against the regulations. They also have disputed  League of Nations, Treaty Series, Treaties and International Engagements registered with the Secretariat of the League of Nations, No 405, Convention regarding the regime of the straits signed at Montreux, 20 July 1936. 10

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Turkey’s move to use the terminology for innocent passage, described for the passage of ships through territorial waters, and not the terminology used for international navigation, no matter whether these straits have been declared territorial sea or internal waters by the coastal state (Kotliar 1999). In this context, in 2011, the Justice and Development Party government announced its plan to build a 45-km-long canal running parallel to the Bosporus Strait, and in June 2021, announced the start of constructing the first bridge over the so-called Canal Istanbul, which was presented as a megaproject to turn Turkey into a logistics centre with a key geopolitical leverage over the Black Sea region and transportation routes connecting Central Asia, Caucasus and Europe. The new mega project, financed by Gulf capital coming mainly from Qatar, emphasises once again Turkey’s recent assertiveness and search for leverage over the developments in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Inevitably, the construction of a new canal opened the discussion over a possible revision of the Montreux Treaty, which but requires the consent of all signatory states. In April 2021, 104 retired generals and admirals in Turkey published a statement claiming that the canal planned to be made in Istanbul would jeopardise Turkey’s sovereign rights over the straits with the Montreux Convention. They also stated that the canal to be opened would adversely affect the defence of the Bosporus, isolate Thrace from Turkey and turn Istanbul into an island. The Turkish government heavily reacted to this statement. The chief public prosecutor also launched an investigation. Ten of the generals and admirals were detained (Eldem, 2021). The 28 February 2022 Turkey’s decision to close the Bosporus and Dardanelles Straits to warships of all nations, allegedly exercising Ankara’s right under Article 19 of the 1936 Montreux Convention, rendered the straits to a strategic factor in the war between Russia and Ukraine. However, Turkey might have exceeded its legal authority and discretion provided by the Montreux Convention to close the straits to warships of all nations no matter whether they are parties of the conflict or not, especially if it is in apprehension of an “imminent danger of war”. But closing the straits to neutral warships that are neither party to the Russia–Ukraine conflict nor pose a threat to Turkey appears to be Erdogan’s smart strategic gambit of gaining influence on the war, taking into account that the Montreux Convention contains stipulations that apply differently to states that border the Black Sea, such as Russia and Ukraine, than to naval vessels of states outside the Black Sea. Given the vague formulation of the respective articles of the convention, Turkey can argue that it is legitimated to close the straits to warships of all nations because some neutral states are likely to aid one of the belligerents, thereby escalating the risk of conflict at Turkey’s doorstep indirectly threatening Turkey with “imminent danger of war”. Nevertheless, the right of neutral warships to transit the straits is also guaranteed in Article 20. In this fashion, Ankara can regulate the supply to the conflicting parties and hence impact the outcome of the war (Kraska 2022). As Şaban Kardaş very aptly argued, Turkey’s moves did not take place in vacuum: their increasing frequency can be placed in the context of an assertive strategic orientation, centred on the militarisation of foreign policy instruments and a coercive diplomacy that relies on a credible threat that eventually rests on material

References

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capabilities and the will to employ them (Kardaş 2020). In this respect, it is no surprising at all Ankara’s announcement in early October 2022 that intends to strengthen its forces in the Aegean (the army of the Aegean of Fourth Army) based in Izmir and covering the west coast of Anatolia at a depth of 400 kilometers with approximately 100.000 men. 

References Alaranta, T. (2020). Turkey and the post-pandemic world what kind of revisionism? Finnish Institute of International Affairs studies, vol. 116. Available from https://www.fiia.fi/en/ publication/turkey-­and-­the-­post-­pandemic Davutoglu, A. (2010). To Stratigiko Vathos. I Diethnis Thesi tis Tourkias [Original Title The Strategic Depth. Turkey’s International Position]. Athens: Piotita Publisher. Dokos, Th. (2011). Mediterranean 2020. The Future of the Mediterranean Security and Politics. The German Marshall Fund of the United States. Mediterranean Paper Series 2011. Available from https://www.eliamep.gr/wp-­content/uploads/2012/01/Thanosdokos.pdf Center for Security Policy (2018) Sanction Turkey, An Ally No More. Secure Freedom Minute. Available from https://centerforsecuritypolicy.org/sanction-turkey-an-ally-no-more/. Christofis, N., Baser, B. & Öztürk, A.  E. (2019). The View from Next Door: Greek-Turkish Relations after the Coup Attempt in Turkey. The International Spectator, Italian Journal of International Affairs, doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/03932729.2019.1570758, 1–20 Eldem, T. (2021). Canal Istanbul: Turkey’s controversial megaproject, SWP Comment No. 43. Available from https://www.swp-­berlin.org/en/publication/ canal-­istanbul-­turkeys-­controversial-­megaproject/ Erdogan, R.T. (2018). How Turkey Sees the Crisis With the U.S. The New York Times, August 10, 2018. Available from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/10/opinion/turkey-­erdogan-­trump-­ crisis-­sanctions.html European Commission (2019). Countries insights, Political criteria, Key findings of the 2019 Report on Turkey. Available from https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ COUNTRY_19_2781 Flanagan, St., Larrabee, St. , Binnendijk, An., et. al. (2020). Turkey’s Nationalist Course Implications for the U.S. - Turkish Strategic Partnership and the U.S. Army. RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, Calif. Friedman, G. (2009). The next 100 years. A forecast for the 21st century. New  York, London, Toronto et al.: Doubleday. Görgülü A. and Dark G. (2017). Turkey, the EU and the Mediterranean: Perceptions, Policies and Prospects. In A.  Ehteshami, D.  Huber and M.  C. Paciello (Eds), The Mediterranean Reset: Geopolitics in a New Age (pp.  124–138). E-book published by the Global Policy. Available from https://www.globalpolicyjournal.com/projects/gp-­e-­books/ mediterranean-­reset-­geopolitics-­new-­age Huntington, S. (1996). The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. New York: Simon & Schuster. Inan, Y. (1999), A Turkish View on the Current Regime of the Turkish Straits. In G. Karabelias (Ed.), The Passage of Ships through Straits. International Conference Proceedings (pp. 87–99). Athens: Defence Analyses Institute. Karagiannis E. (2020). Five Reasons Why the West Will Lose Turkey. BESA Center Perspectives Paper. Available from https://besacenter.org/wp-­content/uploads/2020/07/1647-­Why-­West-­ Will-­Lose-­Turkey-­Karagiannis-­final-­1.pdf Kardaş, S. (2020). Understanding Turkey’s Coercive Diplomacy. German Marshall Fund paper No. 7. Available from https://www.gmfus.org/news/understanding-­turkeys-­coercive-­diplomacy

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Kotliar, V. (1999). The Russian View on the Regime of the Black Sea Straits. In G. Karabelias (Ed.), The Passage of Ships through Straits. International Conference Proceedings (pp.  101–108). Athens: Defence Analyses Institute. Kraska, J. (2022). Can Turkey Legally Close Its Straits to Russian Warships? It’s Complicated. Foreign Policy. Available from https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/03/01/ turkey-­b lack-­s ea-­s traits-­r ussia-­s hips-­u kraine-­w ar/?utm_source=PostUp&utm_ medium=email&utm_campaign=News%20Alerts&utm_term=40041&tpcc=News%20 Alerts Nicolet, C. (2001). United States Policy towards Cyprus, 1954–1974: Removing the Greek-Turkish Bone of Contention. Peleus monographies series vol. 9. Mannheim/Möhnesee, Germany: Bibliopolis. Laciner S. (2009). Turgut Özal period in Turkish foreign policy: Özalism. USAK Yearbook 2009, 153–205 Latal S. and Büyük, H.  F. (2020). Political Influence in Southeast Europe in Current Turkish Foreign Policy. In C. Hagemann (ed.), Southeast Europe in Focus. Reality check series: Turkey. vol. 5 (pp. 47–63). Südosteuropa-Gesellschaft online publications. https://www.sogde.org/de/ publikationen/southeast-­europe-­in-­focus/ League of nations, Treaty Series, Treaties and International Engagements registered with the Secretariat of the League of Nations, No 405, Convention regarding the regime of the Straits signed at Montreux, July 20, 1936 Minagias, Ch. (2010). I Geopolitiki Stratigiki kai I stratiotiki ischis tis Tourkias [Turkey’s geopolitical strategy and military power]. Athens: Tourikis publishing. Öztürk, A. E. (2021). Turkey’s Post-2016 Foreign Policy Drivers: Militarisation, Islam, Civilisation and Power’, ELIAMEP Policy paper 58. Available from https://www.eliamep.gr/wp-­content/ uploads/2021/03/Policy-­paper-­58-­Erdi-­Ozturk_final.pdf Paikin, Z. and Rose, C. (2021). Turkey and the Eastern Mediterranean Geopolitical Europe’s pathway to strategic autonomy? CEPS Policy Insights, No PI2021-09. Pierini M., Siccardi F. (2021) Understanding Turkey’s Direction: Three Scenarios. Carnegie Europe Article. Available from https://carnegieeurope.eu/2021/12/09/understanding-­ turkey-­s -­d irection-­t hree-­s cenarios-­p ub-­8 5936?utm_source=carnegienewsletter&utm_ medium=email&utm_content=buttonlink&mkt_tok=MDk1LVBQVi04MTMAAAGB gBdJ8MVTgrU_iOPdKwvSLVh2sxproGU0po3Eq7oOgoF2rSOuH9Ei47MYOh9KzO epr-­3IRa3aDdQWFHYsngCXpKZQttWGt_NldHW6vS3a_70 Stearns, M. (1992). Entangled Allies. US policy toward Greece, Turkey and Cyprus. New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press. Stergiou, A., Kollias, Ch. (2022). The Political Economy of Turkish Foreign Policy. Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies, 24(1), 42–59. Stergiou, A. (2021). Greece’s Ostpolitik. Dealing With the “Devil”. Series: Contribution to the International Relations. Switzerland AG: Springer Nature. Tas, H. (2014). What does the ‘New Turkey’ stand for?. Open Democracy Newspaper. Available from https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/what-­does-­new-­turkey-­stand-­for/ The Economist (2022). Drones of their own. Turkey is the arms industry’s new upstart, Feb 12th 2022 edition. Available from https://www.economist.com/europe/2022/02/12/ turkey-­is-­the-­arms-­industrys-­new-­upstart Turan, I. (2015). Reorienting Turkish Foreign Policy: Successes, Failures Limitations. In S. Litsas and A. Tzimpiris (Eds.), The Eastern Mediterranean in Transition. Multipolarity, Politics and Power (pp. 133–146). Surrey-England: Ashgate. Wald “Chuck” Charles (2019). Pull US Troops Out of Turkey. Breaking Defense. https://jinsa.org/ pull-­us-­troops-­out-­of-­turkey-­former-­eucom-­deputy/ Yavuz, H. (1998). Turkish Identity and Foreign Policy in Flux: The Rise of Neo-Ottomanism. Critique. Journal for Critical Studies of the Middle East, 7(12), 19–41.

Chapter 6

The 2019–2020 Maritime Borders Delimitation Agreements in the Eastern Mediterranean and Their Implications In November 2019, Turkey submitted to the United Nations a series of claims about its potential Economic Exclusive Zone in the Eastern Mediterranean which are in conflict with Greek claims to the same areas. These claims engulf a sea zone extending west of the southeastern Aegean island of Rhodes and south of Crete. Greece rejected them as legally unfounded, incorrect, arbitrary and violating Greece’s sovereignty. In the same month, Turkey signed a bilateral agreement [called officially Memorandum of Understanding (MoU)] with the internationally recognised Libyan Government of National Accord in Tripoli on the Turkish–Libyan maritime boundaries in exchange for a security pact involving military trainers and advisers as well as deliveries of military  equipment by Turkey. As this agreement contradicts the Greek and Cypriot claims of their maritime rights in the region, it further aggravated the already burdened Turkey–Cyprus–Greece relationship. Moreover, the provisions of the respective agreement brought Turkey into conflict with many Arab countries reflecting a broader regional struggle between advocates and opponents of political Islam in the region. For Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, the agreement was a blatant violation of UNCLOS and of previous understandings between rival Libyan parties. Egyptian media, in particular, highlighted the Turkish–Libyan agreement as an unacceptable intervention in Arab–Libyan affairs, as harm to the Arab nation and as an action that requires a response from the Arab League (Lindenstrauss et al. 2019). The Turkish parliament ratified the memorandum in record time, just a week after the signing. Turkish officials denied any connection between Turkey–Libya military cooperation and this maritime pact, calling a mere coincidence the fact that Erdogan and Serraj signed it on the same day they inked the security cooperation deal. Many analysts, however, regarded the clinching of the deal as a gateway for increasing Turkish military support to the Libyan government. Also, opposition parties that voted in favour of the maritime deal in the Turkish parliament subsequently criticised the government for linking it to its decision to send Turkish troops to Libya. The European Union, the United States, Russia, Egypt, Cyprus, Malta, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Serbia, Israel and the Arab League denounced the agreement not only as a violation of the International Law of the Sea and Article 8 of the Skhirat Agreement which prohibits the Libyan prime minister from solely clinching international deals without the consent of all the cabinet members (International Crisis Group 2020, 8–11). © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Stergiou, The Greek-Turkish Maritime Dispute, Contributions to International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15515-4_6

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Especially the fact that the heads of state and governments of the EU member states, who met on December 12, declared that the agreement was null and void on the grounds that it violated the rights of third countries infuriated Turkey. Reflecting Turkey’s official view some Turkish scholars have argued that the EU acted as an international court, exceeding its competence on the Eastern Mediterranean, thereby violating the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (Yorulmaz 2020, 5). The Libyan parliament in Tobruk, which had been elected in 2014 and sought refuge in Eastern Libya during the civil war and was in fundamental opposition to the internationally recognised Libyan government in Tripoli, refused to approve of the agreement (Die ZEIT 2020). After a decade of abortive efforts to conclude maritime boundary delimitation agreements with Egypt and Libya that would challenge Athens’ assignment of large maritime jurisdiction areas to Greek islands and Cyprus, Ankara had reached its objective. Ever since, Turkey can at least invoke a single agreement in its competitions with antagonistic energy interstate projects in the region, which do not include Turkey. The accord established a virtual maritime axis between Dalaman on Turkey’s southwest coast and Darnah on Libya’s northeast coast (the opposite coasts are 18 kilometres long), which, however, lie far from the Libyan government’s practical area of control. In Ankara’s view, by drawing this line the emerging Cyprus– Egypt–Greece–Israel maritime bloc was factually dismembered (Cagaptay 2021, 63). The delimitation is specious. The agreement established an 18.6-nautical mile maritime boundary between Turkey and Libya, denying full-fledged Greek islands, not just rocks, such as Crete, Kasos, Karpathos, Kastellorizo and Rhodes, including most prominently Cyprus, any continental shelf or EEZ, thus restricting their maritime entitlements to a 6-nm territorial sea. This means that it granted them, without exemption or variation according to their position or to their size as it it has been usual  in similar cases in the international jurisprudence  (see Chap. 2), a extremely limited effect on the process of delimiting.1 On the other hand, in order to achieve the desired delimitation result, Ankara has relied on uninhabited Turkish islets, which have been assigned full effect in determining the EEZ.2

 According to Ankara, the agreement is in accordance with the court decisions that create the international jurisprudence and international law, including the relevant articles of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. All parties are in essence aware that islands cannot have a cut-off effect on the coastal projection of Turkey, the country with the longest continental coastline in Eastern Mediterranean, that the islands which lie on the wrong side of the median line between two mainlands cannot create maritime jurisdiction areas beyond their territorial waters and that the length and direction of the coasts should be taken into account in delineating maritime jurisdiction areas. https://www.mfa.gov.tr/site_media/html/Turkish-Foreign-Policy-on-MaritimeBoundary-Energy-Issues-in-the-Eastern-Mediterranean.pdf 2  The boundaries of the continental shelf and the Economic Exclusive Zone in the Mediterranean between the Republic of Turkey and the government of National Accord – State of Libya begins at “Point A” (34Q 16′ 13.720″N – 026° 19′ 11.640″E) and ends at the Point B (34 ~ 09′ ⋅07.9″N – 026° 39′ 06 3″E). The text of the memorandum is available from https://www.un.org/depts/los/ LEGISLATIONANDTREATIES/PDFFILES/TREATIES/Turkey_11122019_%28HC%29_ MoU_Libya-Delimitation-areas-Mediterranean.pdf 1

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In addition to the Turkey–Libya Memorandum, Ankara stepped up its actions vis-à-vis its claims in the Eastern Mediterranean by sending two letters to the United Nations in November 20193 and March 2020,4 in which it unilaterally delineated the outer limits of the Turkish continental shelf in the Eastern Mediterranean as follows: the median line between the Turkish and Egyptian coastlines was determined to a point in the west of 28°00′00″E, in accordance with the outcome of presumed  delimitation agreements in the Aegean Sea, as well as in the rest of the Mediterranean – among all relevant States – in accordance with equitable principles. Since this is the method Turkey deems to be the most suitable one, Ankara rejected with this move all the pertinent agreements concluded by Cyprus in the respective maritime areas. In this manner, Ankara tried to establish ipso facto the legal framework legitimising its hydrocarbon activities in the Cypriot EEZ as they would lie entirely within the Turkish continental shelf. In his response letter to the United Nations, the Greek Permanent Representative to the United Nations denounced the agreement as illegal, arguing that Turkey and Libya have neither overlapping maritime zones nor common boundaries;  In his opinion the agreement disregards the presence of the Greek islands in that maritime area, including the island of Crete, and their right to generate maritime zones by virtue of Article 121 of the UNCLOS; and it was not endorsed by the House of Representatives of Libya, as required by Article 8 par. 2 (f) of the Libyan Political Agreement of 2015, approved by the United Nations Security Council through Resolution 2259.5 In a second letter to the General Assembly on 19 March 2020 the Permanent Representative of Greece to the United Nations noted that …the delimitation agreement blatantly violates the rules of the international law of the sea and disregards the sovereign rights of Greece and other States in the region … In addition, the above geographical coordinates, as such, are fictitious, illegal and arbitrary, as they violate the right of the Greek islands in that maritime area to generate maritime zones as any land territory, a rule clearly stipulated in article 121(2) of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which reflects customary international law ….6 It is obvious that the exchange of arguments between the two countries reflects their confrontation in the Aegean and their long-standing arguments about island’s effect on the delimitation of continental shelf and Economic Exclusive Zones. The only difference is that this time time the differences were played up at the level of the whole Eastern Mediterranean area. Furthermore, there is another intricacy of the  United Nations General Assembly A/74/550: Letter dated 13 November 2019 from the Permanent Representative of Turkey to the United Nations addressed to the Secretary-General. 4  United Nations General Assembly A/74/757: Letter dated 18 March 2020 from the Permanent Representative of Turkey to the United Nations addressed to the Secretary-General. 5  Permanent Mission of Greece to the United Nations Ref No. 90.2.2/3065 New York, 9 December 2019. https://www.skai.gr/sites/default/files/attachments/2019-12/3065%20Letter%20SC%20 Libya%203.pdf 6  United Nations General Assembly A/74/758, Letter dated 19 March 2020 from the Permanent Representative of Greece to the United Nations addressed to the Secretary-General. 3

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agreement that has been a steady controversial issue in the Greek–Turkish maritime dispute: whether Turkey and Libya, which are both non-signatory parties to the UNCLOS and the 1958 Geneva Convention, are bound by them or not and what should be the effect of each state of affairs on the validity of the agreement. There are divergent opinions among the law experts on this matter. Libya never made public its objection to islands enjoying an EEZ and continental shelf. On the contrary, in the Libyan–Malta continental shelf case before the International Court of Justice, Tripoli had accepted the provision that the entitlement to continental shelf is the same for an island as for mainland and no distinction falls to be made between an island State and an island politically linked with a mainland State. Libya argued, however, that an island may be treated in a particular way in the actual delimitation of overlapping maritime areas between a mainland and an island territory. Turkey, as a matter of fact, used Turkish islands and rocks as baseline points for the construction of the purported “equidistance line between the Turkish and Libyan coasts” in the Memorandum, which for Greece is contradictory in itself. Some experts distinguish between claiming or accepting that islands have their own continental shelf and EEZ and using islands and rocks within 12 nm of the mainland coast as baseline points for construing the equidistance line between two mainland coasts. In the latter case, they argue, islands and rocks are treated no different from low-tide elevations situated wholly or partly at a distance not exceeding the breadth of the territorial sea from the mainland. However, any such agreement can modify customary international law solely between the signing parties and may not affect the enjoyment by other States of their rights or the performance of their obligations under customary international law. Against this background, it has been contended that the MoU as such does not infringe upon the sovereign rights of Greece and does not violate the law of the sea for the simple reason that it cannot produce any legal consequences for third States (Talmon and Lobo 2020). According to the existing jurisprudence, however (cf. Gulf of Maine judgement 1984), delimitation is not a unilateral act. It requires the agreement of all interested parties. Without an agreement, unilateral acts or claims have no legal value. Similarly, bilateral agreements between Turkey and Libya or Greece and Egypt (it will be analysed later) have a binding effect only on the states that signed them but have no legal effect on other coastal states (Türmen 2020) (Map 6.1). In January 2020, the prestigious  Scientific Research Service of the Federal Parliament of Germany issued a legal opinion on the Turkey-Libya Memorandum entitled International Law Assessment of the Turkish-Libyan Agreement on the Delimitation of their Maritime Spheres of Interest in the Eastern Mediterranean. The Scientific Service immersed into all thorny questions raised through the agreement: whether the Memorandum constituted a binding international treaty in terms of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties; whether a recognition under customary law of the maritime zones of islands also has a legally binding effect on states that have not ratified UNCLOS and whether the agreement can enter into force in conformity with international law. In the first question, the Scientific Service opined that the MoU is clearly a binding international treaty in terms of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties but  regarding the third thorny issue opined

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Map 6.1  Overlapping claims in the Eastern Mediterranean after the agreements of 2019–2020

that the rejection of the agreement by the Libyan parliament casts doubt on whether the MoU will enter into force in conformity with international law. Vis-à-vis the second question, the Scientific Service opined clearly in favour of maritime zones of islands under customary international law, and hence as a result of the customary law application of Article 121 paragraph 2 of the UNCLOS, Turkey cannot validly claim that it is not bound by the UNCLOS regime, which also grants islands an EEZ, because it has not ratified the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Furthermore, the legal opinion of the Scientific Service is that since the Turkish–Libyan MoU of 27 November 2019 effectively negates the Greek EEZ southeast of the island of Crete and Turkey “claims” its own EEZ extending to the coasts of Crete and Rhodes at the expense of the Greek EEZ, it violates the maritime zones of the Greek islands recognised under customary law and thus cannot produce any legal consequences for third States (German Bundestag-Wissenschaftlicher Dienst 2020, 7, 12–18). In obvious response to the Turkey–Libya agreement, in June 2020, Italy and Greece agreed to delimitate their maritime zones, including their future Economic Exclusive Zone.7 The 268-nautical-miles-long delimitation line follows the previous delimitation of the continental shelf agreed in 1977. The new agreement also contains a reference that both countries recognise the relevant provisions of UNCLOS which did not exist at the time. It is based on 16 points starting northwest   See the text in Greek and English language at https://www.taxheaven.gr/news/50249/ katateohkan-sth-boylh-oi-symfwnies-me-italia-kai-aigypto?output=printer 7

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of the island Othoni and ending southwest of the Peloponnese in continental Greece. In three areas Greek and Italian islands generate limited effect on the line of the delimitation. This practically means that, instead of following the median line, the delineation was shifted at the expense of one or the other state according to the existence of the islands. Greece could gain an island’s effect but not the cut-off effect it claims in the Aegean Sea. Furthermore, the two countries agreed to limit but not cancel the effect of Strofades and the Diapontioi Islands and to swap some plots. They also agreed to apply the principle of equidistance in a “creative” way, which was interpreted as diplomatic flexibility by Italy and Greece. The coordinates were acknowledged in a way that would not cause complications with the delimitation of Economic Exclusive Zones with neighbouring states, that is, Albania, Libya and Malta (Grigoriadis and Belke 2020). During the ratification process in the Greek parliament, the Greek minister of foreign affairs, Nikos Dendias, used the opportunity to announce an extension of the Greek territorial waters to 12  nm in the Ionian Sea. The announcement that is overtly directed to Turkey, suggesting that Greece has not abandoned the option of extending its territorial waters to 12 miles in the Aegean Sea, came after communications with the Italian and Albanian governments (representing neighbouring coastal states). In the same context, in August of 2020, after 15 years of negotiations, Greece and Egypt signed an agreement in Cairo,8 delimiting partially their maritime boundaries in the Eastern Mediterranean. Also, this agreement makes a clear reference to the UNCLOS to which the two parties agreed to adhere. The agreement contains also the stipulation allowing the two parties to begin negotiations with a third state sharing maritime borders with both parties, after informing and consulting with the other party before reaching an agreement with the third party. In Article 2 it is stated that where natural resources extend to the Economic Exclusive Zones of both parties, the two countries would cooperate to reach an agreement on the modalities of exploitation of these resources. The agreement does not refer to the continental shelf regime. The agreed boundary derives from a straightforward delimitation of opposite EEZs based on the median line. However, Greece and Egypt did not agree on a strict median line, which is the basic position of Greece about delimitations, but an adjusted median one. The resulting maritime area, allocated to each state, is at a ratio of about 9:11 favouring Egypt (Yiallourides 2020). The text and accompanying map in the Greece–Egypt agreement indicate that some Greek islands have been considered in the maritime boundary delimitation as base points. The boundary on the Greek side has been based exclusively on islands’ coasts as it is manifested in the delineation along Crete and partly around Rhodes (see map 6.1). Apparently, Athens sought to achieve a legal precedent in the region that can subsequently be used against Turkish claims in the Eastern Mediterranean. The agreement creates a corridor in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea between the 26th and

  See the text in Greek and English language at https://www.taxheaven.gr/news/50249/ katateohkan-sth-boylh-oi-symfwnies-me-italia-kai-aigypto?output=printer 8

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28th meridian, which begins at the Greek islands of Crete and Rhodes in north and extends until the coast of western Egypt in the south. The borderline defined in the agreement divides this corridor into two parts and excludes the sea areas east of this corridor, lying south of the Greek island Kastellorizo/Meyisti (directly opposite the Turkish south coast) all the way long to the Egyptian coast, most probably out of fear of Ankara’s reaction. The boundary line has been drawn through the very zone that Turkey and Libya also claimed for themselves in accordance with their Memorandum of Understanding. A look at the nautical chart of the Eastern Mediterranean makes clear that both maritime zones largely overlap. Thus, there are two international legal agreements between four different States that partly extend their spheres of interest to the same sea area (Wissenschaftliche Dienste des Bundestages 2020). The announcements of the Greek and Turkish ministries on the respective agreement illustrate this confrontation. In the official statement of the Greek Foreign Ministry, it is stated that … Our agreement today confirms and secures the right and influence of our islands on a continental shelf and in an Economic Exclusive Zone. (…) This agreement has been concluded in the framework of International Law. It respects the provisions of International Law and of the Law of the Sea. (…) The agreement between Greece and Egypt is the exact opposite of the illegal, null and void memorandum of understanding between Turkey and Tripoli. Following the signing of today’s agreement, the null and void Turkey-Libya agreement has ended up where it belonged from the very first moment: in the rubbish bin ….9 The Turkish Ministry, on the contrary, retorted that the agreement infringes upon Turkey’s and Libya’s rights in the Eastern Mediterranean, Turkey does not recognise it and deems it null and void. ...The said agreement is therefore not binding upon Turkey, and its signing will not result in a waiver of Turkey’s inherent rights as stated in the Turkey’s note verbale dated 14 August 2020. Greece, by signing the said agreement, overlooked Turkey’s genuine initiatives and continued to act unilaterally in violation of Turkey’s sovereign rights and interests (…) The supposedly-­ delimited area lies within the Turkish continental shelf as declared to the United Nations (…) Egypt, who surrendered an area of 11.500  km2 with the so-called agreement it signed with the Greek Cypriot Administration in 2003, once again suffers losses at the expense of the Egyptian people with this move (…) This so-called agreement also attempts to usurp the rights of Libya (…) It is without a doubt that Turkey will not allow any activity at the area in question and will resolutely continue to defend its legitimate rights and interests as well as those of the Turkish Cypriots in the Eastern Mediterranean ….10 Some Turkish scholars have argued that Greece, by signing the partial delimitation of its EEZ with Egypt, has officially accepted that it takes into account the other  https://www.mfa.gr/en/current-affairs/top-story/statement-of-the-minister-of-foreign-affairsnikosdendias-following-the-signing-of-the-agreement-on-the-delimitation-of-eez-betweengreece-and-egypt-cairoaugust-2020.html 10  http://www.mfa.gov.tr/no_-165_-yunanistan-ilemisir-arasinda-sozde-deniz-yetki-alanlari-anlasmasi-imzalanmasi-hk.en.mfa 9

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countries’ claiming rights in the region. They also maintain that Greece had to make concessions by agreeing to an adjusted median line in favour of Egypt in order to enshrine its two largest islands’ rights (by starting the delimitation of the maritime boundary from Crete and Rhodes as base points) into the delimitation process (Lika 2020). This is certainly true. On the other hand, Greece succeeded not only in enshrining the islands as reference points in the agreement but also in concluding an agreement on the basis of the UNCLOS. As already elaborated in Chap. 3, this does not coincide with Turkey’s perceptions of the future legal maritime boundaries architecture in the Aegean. Only a few days after the signing of the Greece–Egypt Agreement, Greece and Turkey came close to a serious armed clash. In July 2020, Turkey had announced plans for a seismic survey south and east of the Greek island of Kastellorizo with the research vessel Oruç Reis issuing a Navtex covering parts of the Greek, Egyptian and Cypriot waters, prompting strong reactions both in Greece and internationally. Consequently, in August, Turkey dispatched its naval forces to the region around Kastellorizo, and Turkish armed jets conducted low overflights and dogfights with their Greek counterparts above the island. The Greek armed forces were placed on high alert, and as a result the two countries were for several months locked in a stiff standoff the region had not witnessed in 20 years. The crisis nearly ended up in a war when a Greek and Turkish frigate collided with each other. The collision between Greek and Turkish frigates was the worst confrontation between the two NATO allies since the Imia/Kardak crisis of 1996.11 Greece officially complained to the Turkish Foreign Ministry, while Germany’s Foreign Minister Heiko Maas warned Turkey of consequences (Germany was holding the EU presidency at the time), while Athens threatened to invoke the Mutual Defence Clause (Article 42) of the EU’s Lisbon Treaty for military assistance. Once again a possible confrontation threatened to destabilise NATO’s southeast flank for good and escalate to a multinational conflict, embroiling the European Union, the United States and possibly other countries as well. The same situation had taken place in summer 2019 when Turkey had sent a research vessel, the Oruç Reis, to explore contested waters close to Kastellorizo. After Greece’s protest the European Council agreed to further downgrade relations with Turkey, endorsing the Commission’s proposal to reduce the pre-accession assistance to Turkey and inviting the European Investment Bank to review its lending activities in Turkey. In October 2019 the Council agreed to establish a framework regime of restrictive measures targeting natural and legal persons responsible for or involved in illegal drilling for hydrocarbons in the Eastern Mediterranean and invited the High Representative and the Commission to present proposals to this effect. After the  In November 2008 there was another small incident when the Norwegian oceanographic ship Malene Ostervold, accompanied by a Turkish frigate, attempted to conduct an underwater exploration in the contested sea region 80 nautical miles south of Kastelorizo, in the Dodecanese. A Greek gunboat patrolling the area asked the two ships to stop their research and leave the area. Athens officially protested to the Norwegian government, which accepted to ask the Norwegian ship to leave, defusing in this manner the situation. 11

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tensions in summer 2020, however, very much to Greece’s chagrin, the European Council of December 2020 decided to postpone the sanctions and explore the possibility of implementing a “positive agenda” with Turkey. Although France, Greece and Cyprus were pushing for a harder stance towards Ankara, other countries were not convinced about the usefulness of a new round of sanctions (Lecha 2021, 4–5). In order to justify its actions, Turkey came up with the argument, formulated in a note verbale dated 14 August 2020, that the area where Oruç Reis, the seismic survey vessel, was operating lies entirely within the Turkish continental shelf, though there is no agreement on the continental shelf between Greece and Turkey. As a legal basis for this claim Ankara used a note verbale it had lodged to the United Nations first in 2004 and lastly on 18 March 2020 referring to the Turkish–Libya Memorandum of Understanding of 27 November 2019. On this ground, Ankara contended that the Turkish naval presence in the area did not aim at an escalation, but at providing protection for the activities of Oruç Reis, which were unlawfully attempted to be interrupted by the Greek navy vessels.12 On 17 October 2020, Turkey passed a law that expanded its Search and Rescue Area (SAR) to cover all the territories it claims as part of its Blue Homeland. In the Eastern Mediterranean Sea, the “new” Turkish SAR responsibility area expands southeast of the islands of Rhodes and all along the west of Cyprus. Ankara registered these coordinates at the United Nations following the maritime boundaries agreement with Libya. The response of the Greek Foreign Ministry was prompt, labelling the expansion as “illegal” and having the potential of endangering lives13 (Map 6.2). Eventually, in fall 2020 (most probably after an intervention of German Chancellor Merkel), the tensions were slightly defused and the war was averted. In October 2020, the European Council deplored renewed unilateral and provocative actions by Turkey in the Eastern Mediterranean, including recent exploratory activities.14 In November and December 2020 the Council extended the existing framework for restrictive measures in response to Turkey’s unauthorised drilling activities in the Eastern Mediterranean while strongly condemning again “Turkey’s unilateral actions, provocations and escalated rhetoric against the EU, EU Member States and European leaders”. In return, in November 2020, the Turkish parliament passed a legislation allowing some state-owned energy companies established in overseas jurisdictions to move home with a view to shield the industry from the threat of sanctions by the European Union should Turkey continue its search for hydrocarbons in contested Eastern Mediterranean waters (Kozok 2020).  United Nations General Assembly, A/74/990, Note verbale dated 14 August 2020 from the Permanent Mission of Turkey to the United Nations addressed to the Secretary-General; United Nations General Assembly Security Council A/74/997–S/2020/826, Letter dated 21 August 2020 from the Permanent Representative of Turkey to the United Nations addressed to the Secretary-General. 13  https://www.ekathimerini.com/news/258214/greece-turkish-search-and-rescue-area-illegal/ 14  European Council, EUCO 15/20 CO EUR 11, CONCL 7, Subject: European Council meeting (15 and 16 October 2020). 12

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Map 6.2  The Mavi Vatan (Blue Homeland) doctrine

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This bellicose atmosphere prompted an array of actions that fuelled new tension among the two countries such as the purchase of new weapons and the signing of a new Mutual Defense and Cooperation Agreement between the United States and Greece in 2021 that was met by an aggressive rhetoric in the Turkish media, followed up by analogous statements of Turkish politicians. The arrival of American forces in Greece as a result of the US–Greek defence agreement was slammed as having the aim of launching an attack on Turkey. These are only a few of the many examples that could be mentioned here to enlighten the deep mistrust in the Greek and Turkish military and political elites that refuels the geopolitical antagonism, impedes any solution to the thorny issues, haunting the bilateral relations, and any viable interethnic rapprochement. In the first half of 2022, Athens briefed the secretary-general of the NATO on massive airspace violations and overflights by Turkey over small and big Greek islands and about its decision to freeze the confidence-building measures with Turkey, which had mutually been agreed one  month earlier! For its part, Ankara continued to invest in the “Blue Homeland” doctrine by using aggressive rhetoric against Greece accusing Athens of trying to create precedents and engaging in provocative actions in the Aegean Sea. Ankara seems to be convinced that the current legal and geopolitical architecture in the eastern Aegean does not dovetail with Turkey’s goals to have full control over the maritime and air routes connecting Dardanelles Middle East and North Africa. Current Greece’s national airspace, its islands’ territorial waters and military installations are perceived by Ankara as insurmountable obstacles to its geostrategic and geoeconomic plans.15  Thus, Ankara’s actions in the Eastern Mediterranean are by no means the outcome of the Erdogan administration’s effort to rally voters around the flag ahead of the upcoming elections. Therefore, in early October 2022, Turkey and Libya stepped up their cooperation and signed a maritime deal along the lines of the maritime borders deal signed by the two countries in 2019. The new agreement provides for oil and gas exploration in Libya’s waters creating a new circulus vitiosus. As it was the case with the maritime delimitation deal, also the new one was rejected by the rival administration and the Libyan Parliament rejected the deal.16 For this reason, the next two chapters are dedicated to the analysis of a new kind of geopolitical thinking and the formulation of an alternative paradigm in the way the two countries should approach the Aegean Sea and its resources.

 A recent survey conducted by Friedrich Ebert Stiftung noted that “many Turkish respondents, 56%, believe that some territories beyond [Turkey’s] borders actually belong to Turkey”. This is one of many worrying findings, some of which are, indirectly but clearly, of concern to Greece and Cyprus (Friedrich Ebert Stiftung 2022). 16  https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2022/10/turkey-and-libya-sign-maritime-hydrocarbons-deal. 15

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References Die ZEIT Newspaper online (2020). Parlament stimmt gegen Militärabkommen mit der Türkei. January 4, 2020. Available from https://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2020-­01/ libyen-­tuerkei-­militaerabkommen-­militaerische-­zusammenarbeit-­fajis-­al-­sarradsch. Cagaptay, S. (2021). A Sultan in Autumn. Erdogan Faces Turkey’s Uncontainable Forces. The Washington Institute for Near East Policy Focus No. 167. Available from https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-­analysis/sultan-­autumn-­erdogan-­faces-­turkeys-­uncontainable-­forces Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (2022). Security Radar 2022: Navigating the disarray of European Security. Available from http://library.fes.de/pdf-­files/bueros/wien/18981.pdf German Bundestag-Wissenschaftlicher Dienst (2020). Seevölkerrechtliche Bewertung der türkisch-libyschen Vereinbarung über die Abgrenzung ihrer maritimen Interessenssphären im östlichen Mittelmeer, File number: WD 2 – 3000 – 143/19. German Parliament edition. Grigoriadis, I. and Belke, L. (2020). UNCLOS and the Delimitation of Maritime Zones in the Eastern Mediterranean. ELIAMEP Policy Brief No. 131. Available from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/344291219_UNCLOS_and_the_Delimitation_of_Maritime_Zones_in_ the_Eastern_Mediterranean International Crisis Group (2020). Turkey Wades into Libya’s Troubled Waters. Europe Report N°257. Available from https://www.crisisgroup.org/europe-­central-­asia/ western-­europemediterranean/turkey/257-­turkey-­wades-­libyas-­troubled-­waters Kozok, F. (2020). Turkey to Repatriate Overseas Energy Firms Amid Sanction Threats. Bloomberg November 20, 2020. Available from https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-­11-­20/ turkey-­to-­repatriate-­overseas-­energy-­firms-­amid-­sanction-­threats Lecha, E. S. (2021). The EU and the Eastern Mediterranean: how to deal with Turkey. CIDOB notes internationals, No. 251. Available from https://www.cidob.org/en/publications/publication_series/ notes_internacionals/251/the_eu_and_the_eastern_mediterranean_how_to_deal_with_turkey Lika I. (2020). The Greece-Egypt maritime agreement and its implications for the Greek-Turkish dispute in the Eastern Mediterranean, SETA analysis No. 67. Available from https://setav.org/ en/assets/uploads/2020/09/A67En.pdf Lindenstrauss, G., Feuer, S. and Winter, O. (2019). The Perils of the Turkey-Libya Maritime Delimitation Deal. INSS Insight No. 1238. https://www.inss.org.il/publication/ the-­perils-­of-­the-­turkey-­libya-­maritime-­delimitation-­deal/ Talmon, S. and Lobo, M. (2020). The intricacies of maritime boundary delimitation: Germany’s one-sided response to the Turkey-Libya MoU on delimitation of the maritime jurisdiction areas in the Mediterranean. German Practice in International Law. Available from https://gpil.jura. uni-­bonn.de/2020/03/the-­intricacies-­of-­maritime-­boundary-­delimitation-­germanys-­one-­sided-­ response-­to-­the-­turkey-­libya-­mou-­on-­delimitation-­of-­the-­maritime-­jurisdiction-­areas-­in-­the-­ mediterranean/ Türmen, R. (2020). Whose Sea? A Turkish International Law Perspective on the Greek-­ Turkish Disputes. Institute Montaigne articles. https://www.institutmontaigne.org/en/blog/ whose-­sea-­turkish-­international-­law-­perspective-­greek-­turkish-­disputes Wissenschaftliche Dienste des Bundestages (2020). Das griechisch-ägyptische Abkommen vom 6. August 2020 über die Abgrenzung ihrer Ausschließlichen Wirtschaftszonen im östlichen Mittelmeer. Sachstand WD 2 – 3000 – 074/20. German Parliament edition.

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United Nations Documents “Memorandum of Understanding between the Government of Republic of Turkey and the Government of National Accord-State of Libya, on de-limitation of the maritime jurisdiction areas in the Mediterranean”. Available from https://www.un.org/depts/los/ LEGISLATIONANDTREATIES/PDFFILES/TREATIES/Turkey_11122019_%28HC%29_ MoU_Libya-­Delimitation-­areas-­Mediterranean.pdf Letter by the permanent mission of Greece to the United Nations Ref No. 90.2.2/3065 New York, 9 December 2019 https://www.skai.gr/sites/default/files/attachments/2019-­12/3065%20 Letter%20SC%20Libya%203.pdf United Nations General Assembly A/74/550: Letter dated 13 November 2019 from the Permanent Representative of Turkey to the United Nations addressed to the Secretary-General. United Nations General Assembly A/74/757: Letter dated 18 March 2020 from the Permanent Representative of Turkey to the United Nations addressed to the Secretary-General. United Nations General Assembly A/74/758, Letter dated 19 March 2020 from the Permanent Representative of Greece to the United Nations addressed to the Secretary-General. United Nations General Assembly, A/74/990, Note verbale dated 14 August 2020 from the Permanent Mission of Turkey to the United Nations addressed to the Secretary-General United Nations General Assembly Security Council A/74/997–S/2020/826, Letter dated 21 August 2020 from the Permanent Representative of Turkey to the United Nations addressed to the Secretary-General Yiallourides, C. (2020). Some Observations on the Agreement between Greece and Egypt on the Delimitation of the Exclusive Economic Zone. Blog of the European Journal of International Law. Available from https://www.ejiltalk.org/18969-­2/?utm_source=mailpoet&utm_ medium=email&utm_campaign=ejil-­talk-­newsletter-­post-­title_2. Yorulmaz, R. (2020). Impact of the memorandum with Libya upon the Eastern Mediterranean Equation. Center for Middle Eastern Studies (ORSAM) policy brief No. 105.

Chapter 7

Energy Geopolitics Revisited: Green Economy Instead of Conflict

Affordable access to energy resources has been one of the key challenges for European states’ domestic and foreign policy since the Second Industrial Revolution in the nineteenth century. The competition for energy reserves has ever since been tightly linked with power politics, geopolitical rivalries and deep historical animosities concerning the development of the oil industry in the first place. Energy as a commodity is often the vector around which mutual interests of friendly and not-so-­ friendly states meet and is therefore associated with multifaceted geopolitical rivalries and geoeconomic calculations. Security energy supply is not just about countering a wide variety of threats; it is also about the relations among nations, how they interact with each other and how energy impacts their overall national security (Yergin 2011, 306–508). In the traditional energy geopolitical discourse, control over energy resources is conceptualised as a means not only to fortify the security and prosperity of the holder but also to reduce energy dependence on other states, which might be seen as a political threat. Concerns over the continued ability to secure energy supplies from an increasing list of inaccessible, high-risk or less reliable parts of the world coincide with the use of energy supply as a part of the policy arsenal along with other economic tools, military power and diplomatic tactics (Verrastro and Ladislaw 2007, 95–104). In the past, fossil fuels seem to have been the primary link between energy and conflict as control and transport of oil and gas drove political unrest, wars over territory and interventions by powerful countries in order to secure their supply chains. Ever since World War II, the industrialised countries have relied on crude oil as fuel for their economic development and growth. Among them, the United States have been for most of the time the largest producer and exporter, while other developed countries, such as Japan or European countries, had few domestic sources, which, in turn, rendered them dependent on cheap Middle Eastern petroleum. Unlike many other commodities, oil is located only in certain geological regions of the world, making it more susceptible to political manipulation by those who have control over it (Mingst 2008, 277). Therefore, for decades, the geopolitics of energy has been largely synonymous with the geopolitics of oil and gas. The early, exclusive focus on petroleum as the most important strategic and internationally traded commodity has shaped discussions on energy security amongst international security experts. The geopolitics of © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Stergiou, The Greek-Turkish Maritime Dispute, Contributions to International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15515-4_7

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petroleum has grown out of the supply–demand balance, which affects power relations between exporters and importers, energy security and the military clout of major powers. According to the mainstream geopolitical view, the high pace of extraction and consumption of oil and gas, driven by population growth and accelerated by economic growth in emerging economies, is expected to be leading to the depletion of the world’s reserves and hence inevitable geopolitical tensions (Overland 2015, 3517–3518). Therefore, resource nationalism and the increasing number of state-owned petroleum companies have made the international energy markets less predictable and intransparent, while policies that have been implemented to address energy insecurities may also have adverse impacts on international security. China’s energy diplomacy in Africa resorting in some cases to exchanging weapons for oil is a well-known example of this (Dolata 2017, 55). From this perspective, it is worth noting that security of critical economic and energy infrastructure has become a key element in the agenda of the EU and NATO, clearly manifested in official texts and declarations.1 The focus on how oil and gas shape the way states develop, interact with one another, form alliances and wage war has made a certain amount of sense. Oil and gas still account for more than half of global energy consumption and therefore are playing heavily in the international political agenda. In the energy economics, there are two main schools of thinking pertaining to the development of fossil natural resources, the proponents and the rejectionists. The proponents of the exploration and exploitation of hydrocarbons argue that efficient management of hydrocarbons can entail long-lasting prosperity for a society. Revenues emanating from the monetisation of hydrocarbons can, if utilised efficiently, generate advantages to both, diversification of the economy and the development of the processing industry, thereby stimulating employment. Of all the resource-rich nations, Australia, Botswana, Canada, Chile, Malaysia, Denmark (Greenland) and Norway are considered to be the most successful ones in terms of their economic growth and diversification of their economies. The economists who argue in favour of the extraction and development of hydrocarbons, with the exemption of some isolationist US economists who completely disregard the environmental impact of controversial methods of extraction of gas, such as franking, might have on the planet, do not underrate the ecological factor. However, they assert that it is impossible to substitute the majority of hydrocarbon  In its watershed document about its strategic priorities, the EU has engulfed already in 2016 climate change and energy insecurity as the main threats to be addressed together with terrorism, hybrid threats and economic volatility (European Union 2016). In 2021 EU Council’s Conclusions on Climate and Energy Diplomacy, the nexus between climate change, security and defence is also manifested (Council of the EU, 2021). Also, the so-called REPowerEU Plan, presented by the European Commission in March 2022 as a response to the hardships and global energy market disruption caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, implies the political-strategic aspect. It is designed to transform Europe’s energy system and end the EU’s dependence on Russian fossil fuels, which are used as an economic and political weapon and cost European taxpayers nearly €100 billion per year. Available from https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ IP_22_3131 1

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resources with alternative power resources in the near term. They acknowledge the responsibility of energy companies for climate change and the value of the renewable energy, but they argue that nothing less than a surplus in the energy balance derived by an ecological-friendly extraction of existing hydrocarbons can boost efforts to shift away from fossil fuels and replace oil and coal with renewable energy sources (Bacon and Kojima 2011; Hellenic Hydrocarbons Resources Management SA 2020; Yergin 2011, 438–647; Litvinenko 2020). The “rejectionist approach” is based on economic and environmental arguments as well. Their economic arguments, based on historical experience, are related to the side effects of the monetisation of hydrocarbons such as the overheavy reliance on commodity exports that, in the long term, tend to affect economic growth and competitiveness of other businesses and economic sectors prompting inflationary pressure on salaries and prices caused from the increased public income (Dutch disease).2 In their well-known study about the so-called “resource curse”, Sachs and Warner showcased that in the long term nations drawing a large share of GDP per capita from raw material exports have slower growth rates than countries whose raw materials constitute a smaller share of exports. Especially in developing countries the rapid economic growth from the monetisation of hydrocarbons and the followed creation of boomtowns have been interlinked with various social problems such as the increase in immigration, social disorganisation, economic inequality and increase in crime rates. Above all, the rejectionists warn about the environmental hazards on- and off-­ shore exploration and drilling of hydrocarbons are associated with. In this regard they commonly pinpoint the damages to the ecosystems: harm to animal populations, particularly migratory birds and marine mammals, harm to vegetation and the ground; pollution from oil spills due to accidents or reloading and transporting oil; and repercussions on human health: safety risks for neighbouring communities and oil industry workers (Homer-Dixon 1999; Colgan 2014: 198–205; VanDeveer 2013; Frankel 2010; Sachs and Warner 1995). Some other scholars (Saurin 1996, 88) have pointed out that environmental degradation is not principally a consequence of accidents, errors and misunderstandings but a consequence of the structured and systematic usage of sources required by a certain mode of production.  In recent years a new geopolitical school of thought has come into emergence, which has taken a critical stance on the traditional geopolitical hermeneutic tools. According to this new approach, geopolitics, geoeconomics, regional and national politics need to be underpinned by an understanding of the fundamental ecological independencies that rule the earth’s systems. These dependencies are vital to understanding today’s natural disruptions and the critical importance of ecological integrity for global security. This is not just a matter of carbon dioxide emissions but also of environmental stewardship to protect and sustain human activity. According to the same approach, the health of the Earth’s larger ecosystem depends on the health

 The phenomenon was first observed in connection with large Dutch finds of natural gas in the late 1950s and their long-term repercussions on the Dutch economy. 2

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of local ecosystems. The macro level communicates with the micro, and vice versa. These assumptions are corroborated by international organisations dealing with the global climate change which have irrefutably documented that the use of fossil fuels is the principal cause of greenhouse gases driving up the temperature of the planet. Climate change, they warn, will create severe flooding and droughts which will devastate many countries’ food production, lead to the spread of various illnesses and cause hundreds of thousands of deaths per year, particularly for those living in the developing world (Pascual 2008). The proponents of the environmental approach focus on the ecosystem rather than the state’s security or economic growth. They believe that the extent of the destruction that humanity has done to nature has led to the entry of a new geological age, the Anthropocene. According to this view, what needs to be done is to exit carbon-intensive sectors gradually and accelerate the transition to a green economic order. By doing so, conflicts over the ownership of fossil resources would become more and more unnecessary, and energy security could be achieved. They also argue that mankind is facing “an environmental crisis unprecedented in human history and the largest mass extinction since the time of the dinosaurs is impending, as carbon dioxide levels reach levels not seen in three million years”. They also assert that the biggest, if not the only, cause of environmental degradation is the global dependence on fossil fuels (oil, natural gas, coal) (İşeri 2021). In the context of the “green theoretical school” of international relations environmental degradation is perceived as violence because the latter is defined as an act or process preventing people from realising their potential. In line with this assumption, environmental degradation prevents the achievement of “positive peace”, which is a situation where there is not just the absence of war, but the presence of justice. From a green perspective, peace also involves establishing a harmonious relationship between human beings and other living entities, whereas achieving security requires nothing less than a change in worldview. The scarcity of resources can generate conflicts between states, particularly where there are existing disputes about territory and ownership and control of resources. The increasing scarcity of renewable resources is also linked to the rise in violent conflict within countries with significant implications for relations between states (Steans and Pettiford 2005, 216–222). Proponents of the renewables also hold that the urgency of climate change means that low-carbon transitions are needed in large sociotechnical systems such as energy and transportation. Polluting fossil fuel-based systems are no longer environmentally or socially desirable. On the contrary, low-carbon transitions that shift one sociotechnical system to another are urgently required. From the same perspective, the transition from the hydrocarbon energy dependency to the renewables will mostly benefit the poor countries, whereas the transition from fossil fuels to a less polluting and more environmentally friendly energy system coincides with greater energy security (Martiskainen et al. 2020). Some other experts have made use of the term “Climate of Insecurity” to describe the different ways that climate change has exacerbated problems of inequality,

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injustice and insecurity, triggered an agricultural crisis and caused mass migration (Rabinowitz 2020). Jeremy Rifkin, in his famous book The Third Industrial Revolution. How Lateral Power Is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World, went a step further, arguing that the deployment of renewable energy can lead to a “Third Industrial Revolution” and democratise the international energy system (Rifkin 2011, 37). On the other hand, sceptics retort that some renewable energy sources (i.e. bioenergy in its various forms)3 are as unevenly distributed in geographical terms as hydrocarbons are, and hence they might entail international trade and energy dependencies between “haves” and “haves-nots”. Moreover, the entanglement between renewables and rare earth elements (lithium, graphite, cobalt, gallium, etc.) generates a new pattern of energy dependencies (Högselius 2019, 56–58). Though the production of the renewables is decentralised, some of the minerals and metals renewable energy technologies require are rare and the pursuit of their acquisition could also lead to conflict. Clean energy minerals and metals, similar to fossil fuels, are concentrated in certain geographical areas, and may be subject to similar contests over their control, especially in states with weak institutions and rule of law. The weaponisation of minerals essential to these technologies in trade disputes can also not be ruled out (Freeman and Bazilian 2018). Apart from that, renewable energy is still very expensive and very difficult to be stored. Emerging economies, in particular, electricity systems, need substantial numbers of conventional power plants to ensure security of supply. Experts estimate that even with the use of new technologies like battery storage and demand response, it would be difficult or unaffordable to fulfil all electricity needs with a power system that relies only on renewables (International Energy Agency 2020b). So far efforts to reduce the amount of fossil fuels humans use, a process widely known as decarbonisation, have focused on managing demand and urging countries to move towards an energy mix less dependent on oil, gas and coal. In geopolitical terms, this development is expected to be unfolding at the expense of states that depend on fossil fuel exports or remain heavily relied on the use of hydrocarbons. Decarbonisation could destabilise many oil- and gas-producing countries, especially the so-called rentier states with undiversified economies, if they are not offered realistic alternatives for economic development able to generate analogous state income. This large-scale socio-economic and political instability, in turn, may have region-wide ripple and tremendous spillover effects. That way, given its highly differentiated geographical and technical nature in comparison to coal, oil and natural gas, renewable energy makes up a game changer in interstate relations. While fossil fuel resources are fixed and finite, renewable energy sources are abundant and intermittent; while fossil fuels rely on large centralised production and processing installations, many transport modalities (pipelines, tankers, rail, road) and efficient storage options (refineries, storage hubs, harbour facilities, depots, cylinders) well-suited for long-distance (global) trade,

 Large-scale fuel corps cannot grow everywhere. Some regions have clear advantage over others.

3

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renewable energy production lends itself more to decentral generation, involves rare earth materials in clean tech equipment and their distribution is highly regionalised. Thus, the transition towards renewables will reshape strategic realities, conflict among countries and certainly entail a shift from oligopolistic to more competitive markets. On the other hand, as already mentioned, increasing competition for rare earth materials and clean tech know-how between countries is also highly likely (Scholten 2018, 1–4). Climate action and decarbonisation processes are also likely to have a broader effect on trade relations, finance and investment flows, scientific cooperation, official development assistance, as well as efforts to promote conflict prevention and peacebuilding. Controlling the value chains of low-carbon technologies is crucial for competitiveness, economic development, energy sovereignty and security. Therefore, decarbonisation implies a fundamental change in the way economies and societies work and therefore needs to be supported by an analogous foreign policy. Unless countries do not work together to support decarbonisation processes beyond their own borders (e.g. implementing the Paris Agreement), destabilising effects of fossil fuel phase-out and decarbonisation cannot be prevented (Tänzler et  al. 2020, 19–20). Nevertheless, the geopolitics of renewable energy has received relatively little attention so far, especially when considering the far-reaching consequences of a global shift to renewable energy. The fact that the geopolitics of renewable energy differs considerably from that of oil and gas has rendered it difficult to apply familiar frameworks and concepts of classical geopolitics to the changing global energy landscape. Most of the academic and policy work on renewable energy to date has focused on how to achieve the transition to a low-carbon future, not on the impacts of a successful or failed transition on global politics. Yet, energy transition has the potential to lead to the emergence of new players in the international system, maybe causing greater multipolarity, as the players will be most probably more decentralised compared to those players in the old system driven by fossil fuels. Countries with reserves of important industrial minerals might become more powerful; parts of the world with major mineral reserves, such as the Arctic and the South China Sea, will rise in strategic importance; countries that control technologies and know-­ how on minerals and technologies for renewable energy will also acquire a strategic advance in the upcoming energy system (O’Sullivan et al. 2017, 46–47). The extent of these relations is down to the speed and the modus of the ongoing transformation of the global energy system. A thesis that seems to resonate well with defence and security experts is that climate change could provoke the emergence of the so-called “threat multipliers” as it can worsen scarcity of food and water, increase poverty and hence aggravate risks of conflict and political instability (UN COMMISSION DE CONSOLIDATION DE LA PAIX 2021). As a matter of fact, the growth of renewables has been meteoric in the last decade and has outpaced hydrocarbons in many cases. The main renewable energy sources are bioenergy, geothermal, hydropower, ocean, solar and wind. Among these, solar energy and wind power are undergoing very rapid growth, while the others are growing at a more moderate tempo. Solar and wind are called variable renewable

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energy sources because their capacity to generate power varies with the weather and the time of day. Despite the rapid growth of the renewables, considerable uncertainty still surrounds the energy transition that is taking place (Global Commission on the Geopolitics of Energy Transformation 2019). When the International Energy Agency, known for its support of fossil fuel companies, published its latest (2021) report with the title “Net Zero by 2050 A Roadmap for the Global Energy Sector” (The International Energy Agency 2021) various experts labelled it as “a knife in the heart of the fossil fuel industry” (İşeri 2021). The agency calls for an end to oil and natural gas exploration activities as well as coal extraction and extended investments in clean energy to compensate for the necessary radical transition of increasing electricity generation from wind and solar more than eight times by 2050: … At a global level, renewable energy technologies are the key to reducing emissions from electricity supply. Hydropower has been a leading low-emission source for many decades, but it is mainly the expansion of wind and solar that triples renewables generation by 2030 and increases it more than eightfold by 2050 in the NZE. The share of renewables in total electricity generation globally increases from 29% in 2020 to over 60% in 2030 and to nearly 90% in 2050. To achieve this, annual capacity additions of wind and solar between 2020 and 2050 are five-times higher than the average over the last three years. Dispatchable renewables are critical to maintain electricity security, together with other low-carbon generation, energy storage and robust electricity networks … (The International Energy Agency 2021). The global energy system is in transition to a new energy order characterised by the emergence of contradicted phenomena such as the shale revolution that rendered the United States to a net gas exporter, the gradual shift towards low-carbon sources and renewables and volatile hydrocarbon prices with extreme hikes and slashes, as was the case in 2021 when the world lived through the first major energy crisis of the clean-power transition. The 2021 energy price crisis has dealt a serious blow to the efforts of promoting the transition to the green economy as the price hikes affected both states’ budgets and the most vulnerable citizens. The planet has faced volatile energy markets and supply squeezes for decades. What’s different now is that the richest economies are also undergoing one of the most ambitious overhauls of their power systems since the dawn of the electric age. The transition to cleaner energy is thought to make those systems more resilient. However, in the realm of this fundamental change, the world’s energy system has become strikingly more fragile and easier to shock. Thus, the next several decades could see more periods of energy-driven inflation, fuel shortages and lost economic growth as electricity supplies are vulnerable to shocks and there is no easy way to store energy from renewable sources. Apart from it, power consumption is projected to increase by 60% by 2050 as the world phases out fossil fuels and switches to cars, stoves and heating systems that run on electricity. Continued economic and population growth will also drive consumption higher as will the increasing digitalisation of production and services (Baker et al. 2021). The recent climate crisis and increasing environmental concerns have highly politicised these energy-ecological considerations, thereby creating a desire for a

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greener economy, that is, worldwide pressures and policies for improved energy efficiency, more renewable energy and less dependence on fossil sources. Environmental organisations and environmental activism constitute already an influential actor in energy geopolitics, especially when it comes to the materialisation of new projects, nuclear plants or the construction of oil and gas pipelines (Högselius 2019, 93–96). Even in the United States, where the “shale revolution” is still unfolding, thanks to which the United States became the main exporter of liquefied natural gas globally, there is a strong tendency in favour of renewable energy and energy savings as an alternative source of energy supply competing with all non-renewable sources (Austvik 2018). The United Nations’ intergovernmental panel on climate change (United Nations 2021) has also warned that the usage of fossil resources has brought humanity under existential risks such as the climate crisis. According to its report Climate Change 2021, The Physical Science Basis Summary for Policymakers, climate change is already affecting every inhabited region across the globe with human influence contributing to many observed changes in weather and climate extremes. Oil demand in the next 10 years will diminish but not disappear, and natural gas demand will continue to increase robustly. The world’s transportation systems and national economies depend overwhelmingly on supplies of oil. Therefore, hydrocarbons will be still important in the global energy mix. Given, however, that fossil fuels are the source of nearly three-quarters of greenhouse gas emissions, a growing number of industrialised economies have taken steps to shift away from the use of fossil fuels and increase the share of renewable sources (biofuels, geothermal, hydropower,4 solar and wind power) in their energy mixes, and this is expected to make many countries energy self-sufficient in the long run (International Energy Agency 2020). Nevertheless, there is no consensus on how the desired Energy Transition will be achieved. Is it to be a transition to a “lower-carbon energy” system, to “deep decarbonisation”, to a “zero carbon energy” system with no human-related emissions at all or to a “net zero carbon” system, in which emissions are cancelled out by mechanisms that absorb the carbon? Energy transitions have been there in the past as well. But while previous energy transitions were primarily driven by technology, economics, environmental considerations, and convenience and ease, the current transition is characterised by a mixture of politics, policy and activism (Yergin 2020, 287). Energy experts are also in disagreement about the strategic technologies the energy transition might include. While there is more or less consensus about photovoltaic cells and inverters cars with highly efficient combustion, hydrogen mobility for rail, buses and freight, electricity storage systems using hydrogen, there is vivid

 Some countries, such as Albania, Ethiopia, Lesotho, Norway, Paraguay and Tajikistan, already obtain all or almost all of their electricity from hydropower (Global Commission on the Geopolitics 2019). 4

References

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dissensus about nuclear power and natural gas.5 While German environmentalists reject it categorically and the German state is poised to forego nuclear energy (Energie Wende) pushing the EU to the same direction (Fischer 2017, 317–328), in France there is a general support for it as vehicle of the energy transition (Eyl-­Mazzega and Mathieu 2019). Except the climate change, another key driver of the current transition in the electricity sector has been the collapse in the price of renewable energy technologies. Costs of solar and wind power have dropped dramatically, helping renewable energy make significant inroads into the global energy mix. The price of wind and solar electricity has fallen by up to 90% in the last decade. Most importantly, solar and wind electricity prices are at levels below that of fossil fuel-based electricity in 80% of the world and continue to fall.6 In 2019 three-quarters of new investment in electricity went into renewables, the utilisation rates of coal generators fell to 53%, while fossil fuel demand for electricity fell by 1%. Sales of alternative fuel vehicles, while still small as a percentage of total vehicle sales, have climbed sharply, especially in China. Simultaneously, investment in renewable energy gained momentum around the world and in some cases overtook fossil energy investments (Bond 2020). The eventful years 2021 and 2022, however, turned things upside down. The supply chain disruptions and the Russian-Ukrainian war highlighted the importance of hydrocarbons once again. The energy price crisis has dealt a serious blow to the efforts of promoting the transition to the green economy, as the price hikes affected both state's budgets and the most vulnerable citizens. It seems that the industrialised countries are technologically still in a position to free themselves from their addiction to fossil fuels. Unilateral dependance on Russian gas has exacerbated this. Now, Europe is paying two to three times more for gas than Asian nations.  

References Austvik, O.  G. (2018). Concepts of Geopolitics and Energy Security. IAEE Energy Forum, Second Quarter 2018. Available from https://www.academia.edu/36243674/ Concepts_of_Geopolitics_and_Energy_Security Bacon, R. Kojima, M. (2011). Issues in Estimating the Employment Generated by Energy Sector Activities. Washington DC: World Bank. Available from https://openknowledge.worldbank. org/handle/10986/16969

 Amid strenuous opposition among the member states, in February 2022 the European Commission decided to include nuclear energy and gas in its sustainable finance taxonomy. After months of debate and political lobbying, the EU’s executive arm presented a draft for low-carbon, green investments and sent it to member states for consideration. https://www.euractiv.com/section/ energy-environment/news/eu-puts-green-label-for-nuclear-and-gas-officially-on-the-table/ 6  However, this is not the case with other materials these technologies necessitate. The World Bank has estimated that up to 200 million tonnes of iron, 100 million tonnes of aluminium and 30 million tonnes of copper might be required for wind, solar and battery storage alone (World Bank 2017). 5

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Baker, D. Stapczynski, S., Murtaugh D., Morison, R. (2021). Global Energy Crisis is the First of Many in the Clean-Power Era. Bloomberg, October 5, 2021. Available from https://www.bloomberg.com/ news/articles/2021-­10-­05/global-­energy-­crisis-­is-­the-­first-­of-­many-­in-­the-­clean-­power-­era Bond K. (2020). The Energy Transition – The Time is Now. Carbon Tracker. Available from https:// carbontracker.org/the-­energy-­transition-­the-­time-­is-­now/ Colgan JD (2014). Oil, Domestic Politics, and International Conflict. Energy Research & Social Science, 1: 198–205. Available from doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2014.03.005. Council of the EU (2021). Climate and energy diplomacy. Delivering on the external dimension of the European Green Deal. European Union (2016). Shared Vision, Common Action: A Stronger Europe. The Global Strategy for the European Union’s Foreign and Security Policy. European Commission (2022). REPowerEU presentation. Available from https://ec.europa.eu/ commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_22_3131 Eyl-Mazzega, M.-A. and Mathieu C. (2019). Strategic Dimensions of the Energy Transition: Challenges and Responses for France, Germany and the European Union. Études de l’Ifri, Ifri. Available from https://www.ifri.org/sites/default/files/atoms/files/eyl-­mazzega_mathieu_ energy_transition_ue_2019.pdf Dolata, P. (2017). Energy Security. In R.  Dover/H.  Dylan/M.  Goodman (Eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Security, Risk and Intelligence (pp. 47–61). London: Palgrave. Fischer, S. (2017). Die deutsche Energiewende in der Europapolitik. In K. Böttger and M. Jopp (Eds), Handbuch zur deutschen Europapolitik (pp. 317–328). Bonn: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung. Frankel, J. (2010). The Natural Resource Curve: A Survey. HKS Faculty Working Paper. https:// dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/4454156 Freeman M., Bazilian, M. (2018). How Renewable Energy Could Fuel Future Conflicts. Georgetown Journal of International Affairs. Online journal available from https:// w w w. g e o rg e t ow n j o u r n a l o fi n t e r n a t i o n a l a ffa i r s . o rg / o n l i n e -­e d i t i o n / 2 0 1 8 / 1 0 / 8 / how-­renewable-­energy-­could-­fuel-­future-­conflicts Global Commission on the Geopolitics of Energy Transformation (2019). A New World. The Geopolitics of the Energy Transformation report. Available from www.geopoliticsofrenewables.org. Hellenic Hydrocarbons Resources Management SA (2020). Hydrocarbon Exploration in Greece: The role of Hellenic Hydrocarbons Resources Management. Study edited by K.  Oikonomopoulos. Available from https://www.greekhydrocarbons.gr/news_files/hhrm_ book_2020_eng.pdf Homer-Dixon, Th. (1999). Environment, Scarcity, and Violence. New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Högselius, P. (2019). Energy and Geopolitcs, London and New York: Routledge. İşeri, E. (2021). Turkey’s energy policy: Indigenous at home, Blue Homeland in the world. BIA News Desk. Available from https://m.bianet.org/bianet/ environment/245085-­turkey-­s-­energy-­policy-­indigenous-­at-­home-­blue-­homeland-­in-­the-­world International Energy Agency (2020). Renewables 2020. Analysis and forecast to 2025. Available from https://www.iea.org/reports/renewables-­2020 International Energy Agency (2020b) Secure, Sustainable and Affordable Power Systems in Emerging Economies, 2020. Available from www.iea.org. Litvinenko, V. (2020). The Role of Hydrocarbons in the Global Energy Agenda: The Focus on Liquefied Natural Gas. Resources, vol. 9; doi:https://doi.org/10.3390/resources9050059 Mari Martiskainen, Benjamin Sovacool and Andrew Hook, ‘Temporality, consumption, and conflict: exploring user-based injustices in European low-carbon transitions’, Technology analysis & strategic management, 33(7), 2020, doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/09537325.2020.1841895 (accessed October 2021). Mingst, K. (2008). Essential of International Relations. Fourth Edition, New York and London: W.W. Norton and Company.

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O’Sullivan, M., Overland, I., Sandalow, D. (2017). The Geopolitics of Renewable Energy, working paper published by the Center on Global Energy Policy Columbia University and the Geopolitics of Energy. Project Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs Harvard Kennedy School. Available from https://www.belfercenter.org/sites/default/files/files/publication/Geopolitics%20Renewables%20-­%20final%20report%206.26.17.pdf Overland, I. (2015). Future Petroleum Geopolitics: Consequences of Climate Policy and Unconventional Oil and Gas. In J.  Yan (Ed.), Handbook of Clean Energy Systems (pp. 3517–3544). Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Pascual, C. (2008). The Geopolitics of Energy: From Security to Survival. Brookings Institution report. Available from https://www.brookings.edu/research/ the-­geopolitics-­of-­energy-­from-­security-­to-­survival/ Rabinowitz, D. (2020). The Power of Deserts: Climate Change, the Middle East and the Promise of a Post-Oil Era. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Rifkin, J. (2011). The Third Industrial Revolution. How Lateral Power is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World. New York: Palgrave Macmillan Sachs, J., and Warner A. (1995). Natural Resource Abundance and Economic Growth. NBER Working Paper 5398. Saurin J. (1996). International relations, social ecology and the globalisation of environmental change. In J. Vogler and M. Fimber (eds.), The environment and international relations (pp. 84–107). Routledge: London and New York. Scholten, D. (2018). The Geopolitics of Renewables—An Introduction and Expectations. In: D.  Scholten (ed.), The Geopolitics of Renewables. Switzerland AG: Springer International Publishing. Steans, J. and Pettiford, L. with Dietz T. (2005). Introduction to International Relations. Perspectives and Themes. Second edition, Harlow-England: Pearson. Tänzler, D., Oberthür, S., Wright, E. (2020). The geopolitics of decarbonisation. Reshaping European foreign relations. Berlin: Adelphi research gemeinnützige GmbH The International Energy Agency (2021). Net Zero by 2050 A Roadmap for the Global Energy Sector report (May 2021). Available from https://www.iea.org/reports/net-­zero-­by-­2050 Verrastro, F. and Ladislaw, S. (2007). Providing energy security in an interdependent world. The Washington Quarterly, vol. 30, 95–104. United Nations (2021). Intergovernmental panel on climate change 2021. Available from https:// www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGI_SPM.pdf UN COMMISSION DE CONSOLIDATION DE LA PAIX (2021). Available from https:// www.un.org/peacebuilding/fr/news/climate-­c hange-­r ecognized-­% E2%80%98threat-­ multiplier%E2%80%99-­un-­security-­council-­debates-­its-­impact-­peace World Bank (2017). The growing role of minerals and metals for a low carbon future. World Bank report 117581. Available from https://elibrary.worldbank.org/doi/abs/10.1596/28312. Yergin, D. (2011). The Quest. Energy security and the remaking of the Modern World. New York: The Penguin Press. Yergin, D. (2020). The new map. Energy, Climate and the clash of Nations. New York: Penguin. VanDeveer, S. (2013). Still Digging: Extractive Industries, Resource Curses, and Transnational Governance in the Anthropocene. Transatlantic Academy Paper Series. Washington: German Marshall Fund.

Chapter 8

A Paradigm Change in the Governance of the Aegean Sea

 The Eastern Mediterranean will be the first region of the world to witness the tectonic geoeconomic and geopolitical challenges caused by the ongoing climate change which have been analysed in the previous chapter. While frictions among the countries of the region about maritime zones and continental shelf claims abounded in recent years nearly provoking large-scale conflicts, the impact of the climate crisis on the same countries has been extreme, especially in 2021, when Greece and Turkey battled record-breaking blazes. In 2021 in Greece there burned as many acres as in the 8 years 2013–2020. Specifically, based on the data of the European Forest Fire Information System, during 2021, 84 forest wildfire incidents were recorded in Greece, which burned a total area of more than 1300,000 ha. This “performance” is the worst of the 2008–2021 period, with the total area burnt in 2021 approaching the sum of the burnt areas of the 8-year period 2013–2020. Turkey experienced similar phenomena in the same period.1 The Mediterranean’s more than half-a-billion inhabitants seem to face highly interconnected climate risks. The Mediterranean Basin is perceived to be particularly vulnerable to the interconnected challenges stemming from climate change and environmental degradation. Reasons for concern include sea-level rise-related risks, land and marine biodiversity losses, risks related to drought, wildfire, alterations of water cycle, endangered food production and health risks in both urban and rural settlements from heat and altered disease vectors. Temperatures are going up 20% faster than the global average, and this is already having real and serious consequences across the basin with sea-level rises expected to exceed 1 m by 2100, impacting one-third of the population in the region (WWF Mediterranean Marine Initiative 2021). The region is already experiencing dramatic changes and hardships attributable to climate change. The lack of resources caused by droughts leads to mass migration to the cities, civil wars, crossing borders to other countries, ethnic conflicts and tensions. Even before the Arab Spring turbulences, long droughts contributed to significant population displacements and growing political discontent. For example, although the causes of the Syria Civil War are similar to those of other Middle East countries shaken by political uprisings in the last decade, the chain of events that led  https://www.capital.gr/epikairotita/3605903/meteo-to-2021-kaikan-tosa-stremmatastin-ellada-osa-kata-tin-oktaetia-2013-2020 1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Stergiou, The Greek-Turkish Maritime Dispute, Contributions to International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15515-4_8

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to the outbreak of civil war can be traced to the 5 years of drought from 2006 to 2011, which started a wave of migration to the cities provoking tensions there (Rabinowitz 2020, 5–6). In the future, the region is expected to be among the regions most affected by climate change, particularly when it comes to precipitation and the hydrological cycle. As some experts on Climate and Environmental Change have warned, due to anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases, climate is changing in the Mediterranean Basin, historically and projected by climate models, faster than global trends. The annual mean temperatures on land and sea across the Mediterranean Basin are 1.5  °C higher than that during pre-industrial times, and they are projected to rise until 2100 by an additional 3.8–6.5 °C for a high greenhouse gas concentration scenario. This will have chain reactions in various fields since the climate change impacts water resources in combination with demographic and socio-economic drivers, reducing runoff and groundwater recharge, water quality, increasing conflicts among users, ecosystem degradation and groundwater salinisation in coastal aquifers. Furthermore, crop yield reductions are projected for the next decades in most current areas of production and for most crops (Cramer et al. 2020). The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has labelled the region as a “climate change hotspot” expecting the warming across the Mediterranean to be about 20% higher than global averages in the decades to come as the region is hit with devastating heatwaves, which in turn trigger water shortages, loss of biodiversity and risks to food production. According to the report an increase of 10–20 days per year of maximum daily temperature exceeding 35 °C, a typical, critical threshold for crop productivity and analogous increase in agricultural, ecological and hydrological droughts, is expected by the mid-century in the Mediterranean areas. Moreover, streamflow droughts and fire weather conditions are projected to become more severe and persistent in the region (United Nations 2021). Mediterranean’s summer climate is known to be affected by the South Asian summer monsoon through the monsoon–desert teleconnection. In the future, rainfall is expected to increase not only over South Asian area but also over the East Asian summer monsoon and equatorial Atlantic regions and also affect the Mediterranean climate in the future. The atmospheric circulation changes in the Mediterranean in the future could impact the marine system as well (Kim et al. 2019). The economic costs of droughts could exceed the costs of earthquakes or floods. Food security is a particular threat as the projected increase in drought events will affect the agricultural sector in the Mediterranean region, especially wheat exports and livestock production. Warming in combination with overfishing may cause more than 20% of exploited fish and marine invertebrates to go locally extinct by 2050. The economic risk is particularly high for tourism. It has been projected that climate change is going to put a strain on Mediterranean tourism, which is the region’s most important industry (Sokou 2022). Moreover, the expected changes in temperature are predicted to affect the energy consumption during both extreme warm and extreme cold weather conditions which may happen together with water scarcity during the same period. Since a lack of water usually reduces the energy

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production by hydroelectric plants, new challenges might occur in the near future like a disparity in power supply. (Flouros 2022, 121-122). All this considered, one should feel justified to wonder why the countries of the region are involved in a geopolitical competition to secure control of fossil fuels or to extend their Economic Exclusive Zones at the expense of their neighbours instead of prioritising the fight against the common existential threat. Climate change is a particularly pressing threat for the Mediterranean and is shared by all states of this region, irrespective of their present socio-economic or political standing (Dessì et al. 2021, 16–17). As correctly argued, decision-makers of the involved states are not aware of the fact that the main security threat to the common fate of the people living in the region is sustainability and do not act to address the “survival dilemma” for the well-being of the whole region. For this, it is required that decision-makers move beyond narrow security perspectives and immediately work on joint, renewable energy projects for the construction of a sustainable East Mediterranean region (Iseri 2020). Certainly, there are no easy answers to this question. Green economy instead of exploitation of hydrocarbons appears to be a possible solution to the ongoing climate crisis that unfolded in full display in summer 2021 in countries like Germany, Turkey and Greece. However, unless this new economic paradigm is carefully designed in a way that makes it appealing to the broadest part of the society, the transition is doomed to fail. Apart from history- and security-related animosities and hostilities, the Mediterranean region is not a homogeneous region in economic terms but consists of countries with very different levels of economic and social development. Some of them are highly industrialised with high-energy intensity, some have service-driven economies with low-energy intensity and others have been grappling with poverty, unemployment, poor infrastructure and a lack of access to basic services, like reliable energy supply. Due to these divergences the task of conceiving a common energy and climate approach, even if all of the other political and security antagonism are put aside, is cumbersome. In the long term, gas, like oil, will increasingly struggle to compete with solar, wind and battery storage technologies which are continuing to fall in cost and appear attractive because they provide greater employment, reduced import dependence and lower foreign exchange costs than imported gas (Stern 2017, 1–4). Before this happens, the transition to a carbon-neutral economy will be hitting especially hard the most vulnerable segments of society. Carbon efficiency would require old, inefficient equipment to be discarded and additional investment to be made so that Gross Domestic Product becomes less carbon-intensive. The poor and the suburban middle class spend more of their income on energy than the rich and the urban professionals do, and often lack the means to buy a new, efficient heating system or to insulate their house. And, because working-class jobs tend to be more carbon-­ intensive, factory workers and truck drivers will be hurt more than designers and bankers (Pisani-Ferry 2019). Greece and Turkey are pretty far behind in terms of realising their capacity for renewable energy development despite their high potential in solar, wind energy

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supply and geothermal resources2 and despite some recent initiatives towards creating an energy mix based on low-carbon technologies. On the contrary, both countries have resorted with zeal to new exploration of hydrocarbons. In the wake of the devastating economic crisis that inflicted Greece from 2010 onwards, the possibility of discovery of oil and gas has unleashed an unprecedented hydrocarbon frenzy within the Greek society, featuring future oil and gas revenues as the spearhead of the long-desired economic recovery. Indeed, many experienced energy experts have argued that drilling for oil and natural gas reserves in Greece may not only increase the country’s revenues, create new job opportunities and technological innovations but also end its dependence on oil and gas imports, on which it spends billions of euros each year (Mezartasoglou et al. 2020, 9–10). Greece is a country heavily dependent on hydrocarbons and reliant on Russian gas for nearly 40% of its annual energy consumption of about 6 billion cubic metres. Despite efforts of diversification of the energy mix, natural gas continues to support the country’s power production at a growing rate, while the fuel’s share in the area of industrial and domestic consumption is also expanding. Since the overwhelming majority of the hydrocarbons used in the Greek energy market are imported, the discoveries of gas reserves in the Southeast Mediterranean excited Greece’s interest in exploration of gas. Against this background and given that the investment needed to bring the deposits into production is huge, the Greek government granted licences for exploration and exploitation of hydrocarbons to Greek and foreign companies (French, American, Spanish) in various continental and maritime parts of its territory. During the period 2014–2019 the parliament ratified 11 lease agreements for concession of exploration and operation rights. According to the official announcements, the concessions in the northern Ionian Sea and mainland Western Greece were expected to yield crude oil deposits, with natural gas appearing further south, as indicated by the results of drilling in the past decades. Climate change and EU energy policies (the so-called European Green Deal envisaging total decarbonisation by 2050) forced the new government to adopt a new course towards hydrocarbons. Climate change is a particularly pressing threat for the Mediterranean and is shared by all states of this region, irrespective of their present socio-economic or political standing (Dessì et al. 2021, 16–17). In December 2019, the Greek government announced a very ambitious National Plan for Energy and Climate3 in order to abide by the European Green Deal and the  Greece, for example, is rich in geothermal resources due to active extensional tectonics and volcanic activity. The country has high enthalpy fields in the islands of the Aegean volcanic arc – mainly Milos and Nisyros  – and extensive geothermal fields concentrated in Northern Greece – specifically in Central and Eastern Macedonia and Thrace, but also in Chios and Lesvos in the islands of the Eastern Aegean. Thus, efficient use of geothermal heat could cover a big part of energy demand in those areas (Coumidis 2022). 3  The ending of Greece’s reliance on lignite (the main domestic energy source) is scheduled to be achieved by 2028 and renewable energy sources (RES) are projected to reach the 65% of electricity production in 2030, becoming the main national energy source in Greece. https://greeknewsagenda.gr/topics/politics-polity/7126-greece%E2%80%99s-green-agenda-on-energy-and-climate 2

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ambitious EU-energy transition goals for total decarbonisation by 2050, indicating at the same time that it is not interested in going ahead with the development of hydrocarbon resources. Exploration activities in the unexplored reserves south of Crete and in the Ionian Sea were mostly suspended. The 2021–2022 energy crisis, however, revived interest in hydrocarbons. After a temporary sharp decrease in the consumption of natural gas in 2020 due to the economic decline caused by the coronavirus pandemic, the natural gas share in the EU’s energy consumption continued to grow in 2021 as many EU countries started implementing their carbon-neutral energy policy and Germany is set to shut down its last nuclear power plants by the end of 2022. Since the gas price4 has spiked, electricity costs around Europe have also skyrocketed, despite the fact that gas only accounts for 18–20% of the EU’s electricity mix. The increased consumption, combined with the decrease in the EU’s gas production, further increased the EU’s gas import dependence. In 2020, over 85% of gas consumed in the EU was imported from outside the Union. The share of natural gas has increased particularly rapidly in Greece, Portugal and Spain (Liuhto 2022, 21–60). Some energy experts believe that the Eastern Mediterranean region subsumes into the category of regions in which the transition process to the green economy and climate cooperation is linked to the natural gas as transitional fuel in the objective to attain long-term decarbonisation energy and climate goals. Since the East Med countries lack significant nuclear capacity, are heavily reliant on gas consumption and have significant quantities of natural gas (though some of them are still assumed), gas should remain an important energy source to back up intermittent renewables and replace more polluting oil and coal in the medium term (Franza 2021, 28). In February 2022, the European Commission decided, amid strenuous opposition among the member states, to include nuclear energy and gas in its sustainable finance taxonomy. After months of debate and political lobbying, the EU’s executive arm presented a draft for low-carbon, green investments and sent it to member states for consideration.5 On the same trajectory, in April 2022, the Greek government made a U-turn in its hitherto energy policy and announced its intention to accelerate efforts to explore and exploit potential oil and gas reserves as it seeks to form a key part of a  Gas is predominantly priced using two mechanisms: (1) oil price indexation, or oil price escalation, where the value of gas is determined based on the price dynamics of oil products, and (2) market-based pricing where gas prices are set through the interaction between gas supply and demand. Gas producers and infrastructure operators will only generate a profitable return when their assets are used at a reasonable rate of throughput and at revenues that cover their costs over the longer term. They need security of demand. The consumers, by investing in specific gas-fired infrastructure, are committed to using gas and hence they need security of supply. Accordingly, as far as consumption is concerned, states are interested in access to energy, preventing disruptions and reducing price volatility. As far as production is concerned, states are interested in selling enough raw materials to provide economic welfare (Correljé 2016, 29; Chi Kong 2016, 41–62). 5  https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy-environment/news/eu-puts-green-label-fornuclear-and-gas-officially-on-the-table/ 4

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European-wide effort to reduce dependence on Russian natural gas and oil.6 Simultaneously, it was announced that Greece will boost coal mining by 50% and extend the operation of all its coal-fired power plants to 2028, instead of closing them down by 2023 as previously planned, to reduce dependence on natural gas. Moreover, in early April 2022, Greece decided to push back phase-out of lignite plants to reduce dependence on Russian natural gas by boosting coal mining by 50% and extending the operation of all its coal-fired power plants to 2028, instead of closing them down by 2023 as previously planned.7 The Greek society is deeply divided about this issue. Proponents of the development of hydrocarbons believe that Greece is about to reap a windfall and this opportunity should not be missed. In their view, domestic production is vital as Russian hydrocarbons cannot be replaced via the tight global LNG and pipeline markets. Whilst European economies are desperately in need of increased oil and gas supply in the short term, suppliers will be focused on longer-term contracts to de-risk upstream development (Rigas 2022). Proponents of the exploration of hydrocarbons in Greece usually refer to the small oil-producing fields in Prinos and North Prinos (120 million oil barrels since 1980) together with a neighbouring natural gas field in South Kavala in Northern Greece. The largest part of the basin is located offshore between the island of Thasos and the opposite mainland to the west. Only the northeastern portion of it lies onshore in the Delta Nestos plain. It is true that the companies that won the tender have been operating there since the 1970s with no accidents and no leaks of oil into the sea. Moreover, the oil and gas production in the area did not result in significant atmospheric emissions, taking into account the progress made in the efforts to reduce emissions and protect the environment, through the use of emission control technologies and the continuous monitoring and assessment of atmospheric emissions and local air quality (Proedrou and Papaconstantinou 2004; Papailias and Mavroidis 2018). In this regard, other well-known energy experts believe that natural gas can essentially contribute to the energy transition because it can be combined with emerging “green” applications as a necessary transitional fuel and as an important bridge of green energy transition with the ultimate goal of achieving lower pollutant/carbon emissions. More precisely, it has been argued that gaseous hydrocarbons can complement renewable energy sources. Part of their revenues can be invested in green technologies (hydrogen, carbon capture–storage, development of natural gas storage) (IENE 2022, 25–28). Environmental organisations, however, have raised serious objections to those arguments that are very popular in the Greek society. They are deeply opposed to the plans for extraction of new oil and gas in the Mediterranean and heavily question the overall utility of the extraction of hydrocarbons in Greece due to the

 https://www.ekathimerini.com/economy/1182312/speeding-up-hydrocarbons-research/  https://www.ekathimerini.com/news/1181612/greece-pushing-back-phase-out-oflignite-plants-due-to-tackle-energy-crisis/ 6 7

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potential environmental hazards. In the first place, they warn of costs associated with oil and gas extraction, which may lead to economic loss, since the overwhelming majority of tourism and recreation activities take place near the coast. The economic impacts of an oil spill on industries connected to the marine environment, for example, the fishing and tourism industries, are also linked to the environmental impact on commercially viable species and the aesthetic impacts of an oil spill. In this respect, they argue that any profits from the oil exploration activities will largely be reaped by the hydrocarbon companies, whereas the benefits to citizens will be minimal as oil and gas will remain at the same prices set by international stock exchanges (Archipelagos Institute of Marine Conservation 2019). According to the same argumentation, the reserves to be exploited are relatively small; however, the drilling is of particular concern, given the large depth associated with the offshore fields as well as the seismic activity in the area, resulting in a logistically and technically challenging operation. Inevitably those activities will increase the environmental impacts with different characteristics: direct and indirect, short and long term, temporary and permanent, singular and cumulative (Kuyer et al. 2019). Since the main exploration activities in Greece have been so far offshore, it should not escape our attention that offshore drilling is mostly linked to pollution. The latter is usually caused by accidents and oil spills that, in turn, entail not only environmental degradation but also socio-economic impacts on recreational and tourist activities such as fisheries, mariculture, but also on power plants, shipping, salt production or seawater desalination, and seafood industry for the years that follow. The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is a case at hand (Romo-Curiel et al. 2022). Τhe case of the Caspian Sea is a representative example of the environmental hazards offshore drilling might entail and is of inordinate importance for this study because the Caspian Sea has much in common with the Mediterranean Sea, which is a semi-closed sea. The Caspian Sea, bordered by Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkmenistan, is a unique ecological system with rich natural resources, which include mineral, biological, agroclimatical, balneological and recreational components. It is also the world’s largest inland body of water, about the size of Japan. Intensive oil and gas development in the Caspian region resulted in extensive air, water and land pollution, wildlife and plant degradation, exhaustion of natural resources, ecosystem disturbance, desertification and considerable losses in biological and landscape diversity. Moreover, the pollution, along with declining water levels due to climate change, has posed a severe threat to many species, and the future of the sea itself is at risk. The UN Environment Programme has drawn attention to the fact that the Caspian “suffers from an enormous burden of pollution from oil extraction and refining, offshore oil fields, radioactive wastes from nuclear power plants and huge volumes of untreated sewage and industrial waste introduced mainly by the Volga River”. Environmental damage has exceeded revenues from exploitation of natural resources. Negative environmental changes seem to have caused growth of human morbidity and mortality. Life rate in the Caspian littoral states is lower by 15–20 years than in developed countries. Some areas have become dead zones, and the Caspian shelf mainly loses its validity as a place for spawning

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of the Caspian Sea fishes. The fishing activities, the famous country’s caviar industry, are also undermined (Palasciano 2019; Jafari 2010). Last but not least, the installation of offshore units in the Aegean will certainly complicate the already complicated maritime dispute, adding another controversial issue to the large set of unresolved issues. When an offshore unit is located in the Economic Exclusive Zone, it is considered to be a “ship” and the flag state would have exclusive jurisdiction over it; but if it is considered to be an “installation”, the exclusive jurisdiction is on the coastal state (Argyriou and Christeas 2015, 8). The provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) provide for a more or less clear legal regime for installations and structures in the Economic Exclusive Zone (Article 60) in which the coastal state shall have the exclusive right to construct and authorise and regulate the construction, operation and use of installations and structures for various purposes. The coastal state shall have exclusive jurisdiction over such installations and structures. The coastal state may, where necessary, establish reasonable safety zones around such artificial islands, installations and structures in which it may take appropriate measures to ensure the safety of navigation. The breadth of the safety zones shall be determined by the coastal state, taking into account applicable international standards. Such zones shall be designed to ensure that they are reasonably related to the nature and shall not exceed a distance of 500 metres around them, measured from each point of their outer edge, except as authorised by generally accepted international standards or as recommended by the competent international organisation. However, as already analysed, Turkey is one of the 16 states that has not signed the convention and does not feel bound by it, while Greece and Turkey have not delimitated either their continental shelf or their EEZs in the Aegean. History has shown that in the case of interstate hostilities offshore units become targets of attacks (cf. the 19 October 1987 attack on the Iranian R-7 and R-4 offshore oil platforms in Reshadat and the 18 April 1988 attack on Iranian offshore). Safeguarding such installations from external threats is logistically and administratively very challenging, requiring the transport of men, weapons, ammunition and equipment around a wide geographical area in time (Argyriou and Christeas 2015, 10–11). On the other side of the Aegean Sea, Turkey has also not tapped its potential for renewable, clean energy. The country is not compelled to comply with EU rules about gradual decarbonisation; however, it is more in need of differentiating its energy mix than other EU countries. Geography has endowed Turkey with great strategic importance emanating from its location at the crossroads between Europe, Asia and the Arab world and on both sides of the Bosporus Straits. And yet, geography has been less generous in the allocation of natural resources. The country is heavily reliant on imports, especially oil and gas (93% and 99%, respectively), driven by economic and population growth in the last decade and despite serious efforts to diversify its energy mix towards renewables with renewable electricity generation tripling in the same period. To address this problem and enhance its energy security, Turkey has oriented itself towards the controversial nuclear energy commissioning its first nuclear power facility in 2023 and domestic exploration and production of fossil fuels. In May 2013, the government passed a

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new law (the Turkish Petroleum Law) aimed at creating a more attractive upstream fiscal regime for domestic oil and gas production and tapping its domestic potential of shale gas, gas hydrates and coal bed methane. Concurrently, it granted the Turkish Petroleum Corporation numerous exploration and production licences to facilitate its offshore investment campaign along with increased operations onshore, including shale oil and gas. Turkish Petroleum Corporation’s biggest success so far has been the discovery of the giant Sakarya field in the Black Sea. The field is planned to commence production in 2023, giving Turkey bargaining power in the renewal of its natural gas import contracts (International Energy Agency 2021, 11–12). In recent years Ankara fostered business and trade partnerships with (potential) energy partners. Foreign ambitions of Turkish energy firms, especially state-owned ones, are a principal determinant of Turkey’s external oil and natural gas strategy. Turkish business groups have growingly made investments in the Caspian Sea and Middle East countries, especially but not exclusively in the energy sector. These firms have recently adopted an assertive approach towards the energy exploration and exploitation activities in the Middle East, the Central Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caspian Sea (Yilmaz-Bozkus 2018). Turkey’s long-planned aspiration has been to become a regional natural gas hub, connecting big consumer markets in Europe to supplier regions surrounding Turkey, including the Middle East, the Caspian region and Central Asia (Austvik and Rzayeva 2017, 539–547). In the National Energy Report for the period 2015–2019 that seems to also shape today’s Turkish policy in this field, it is explicitly stated that  the country must be more proactive in order to become regional energy hub. Among the priorities mentioned in the report are the diversification of external purchases, completion of planned pipeline projects and effective energy diplomacy (Iseri & Cagri Bartan 2019, 115-116). To that aim, the Turkish state has carried out with zeal explorations for gas both in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea. In August 2020, the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced Turkey’s biggest gas discovery ever. Initial findings show that the estimated reserve capacity is 320 billion cubic metres (bcm) of gas. The offshore reserve is located 175 km offshore Ereğli in the Black Sea (Özertem 2020). Against this background it is not surprising that Ankara has been seeking hydrocarbon-related wealth co-exploitation in the Aegean.8 The year 2022 brought about contradictory developments in the energy architecture of the Eastern Mediterranean. On the one hand, the war in Ukraine underscored the need for affordable access to energy resources. On the other hand, it removed a bone of contention between Greece and Turkey. In January 2022, the US State Department decided to withdraw its diplomatic support to the East Med pipeline project for reasons associated with environmental protection/energy transition/turn

 See Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar’s public statement in https://www.ekathimerini.com/ news/1177810/ankara-seeking-wealth-co-exploitation-in-aegean/ 8

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to renewables, lack of economic and commercial viability, as well as tensions in the region created by the project.9 The Greece–Cyprus–Israel and probably Egypt-supported pipeline had been designed to ship East Med gas via Greece to Western Europe de facto thwarting Turkey’s aspiration to become regional energy hub. However, the 10 billion m3/yr. pipeline, 1300  km of the total 1900  km of which would be offshore, making it among the longest undersea gas links in the world, had always been, for economic and technical reasons, more of a pipedream than a realistic pipeline project (Stergiou and Karagianni 2019, 68). Nevertheless, as some energy experts have noted10 this could be an opportunity for Greece to reframe the dialogue around energy and climate change in the region, to shift attention to the production of electricity through renewables, to the electrical interconnection of Egypt with Crete and the Greek mainland (EuroAfrica Interconnector), as well as the electrical interconnection of Israel and Cyprus with the European networks (EuroAsia Interconnector). The interconnection of the European, African and Middle Eastern electricity grids could essentially help Europe to meet the increased demand for green electricity. At the same time, the Mediterranean region has the potential to support the EU in building its hydrogen economy. The Greek Aegean, in particular, with its large number of islands, is forecast to have enormous production capacity (Rau et al. 2022). Electricity emanating from clean energy can prove a powerful conduit for channelling the region’s focus. Electricity interconnections are often easier to build than gas pipelines and much more compatible with new technologies: offshore wind, hydrogen, carbon capture and storage, sustainable mobility, smart cities and many others. At the moment there is no adequate grid capacity, while there is still a long and complex licensing procedure, which can in some cases exceed a decade if there are court cases and local opposition. In this undertaking, the regional allies should include Turkey as well because Turkey will be hit by the climate change exactly as the other Mediterranean countries and probably even more due to the inadequate infrastructure in large parts of its territory. Also, for economic reasons, Greece, Turkey and the Republic of Cyprus must make efforts to achieve the climate targets they have set themselves. Otherwise, the instruments of European climate policy, such as stricter emissions trading and the probable introduction of a European CO2 limit compensation system, will place an extraordinarily high burden on these countries. There is a threat of higher energy and fuel prices for the population and negative effects on the balance sheets of companies, which will have to reckon with additional costs due to the rising CO2 price (Rau et al. 2022, 6). Pursuing cooperation against the climate change is of paramount importance not in order to bridge the differences in the Aegean over the maritime zones or the demilitarisation of islands, etc. Those will continue to exist and divide the two

 https://www.keeptalkinggreece.com/2022/01/09/eastmed-usa-withdraw-support/  https://www.ekathimerini.com/multimedia/podcasts/1175819/beyond-the-eastmed-pipelinean-opportunity-for-greece/ 9

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countries. As the  political relations did not even slightly improve, despite the remarkable improvement in the bilateral economic relations, so nothing different is going to happen in the foreseeable future. Furthermore, it should always be kept in mind that according to Articles 74(3) and 83(3) of the UNCLOS in the absence of a delimitation agreement in a maritime area the interested parties shall abstain from unilaterally carrying out activities (i.e. seismic surveys, exploration, drilling) that may exacerbate tension and jeopardise the reaching of a final delimitation agreement. Yet despite the high confidence of the scientific community in the systemic nature of climate change, and many of its direct impacts, its impact on national security interests is not as easy to ascertain. Surely, the conflict resolution concepts that have been proposed or applied so far have not worked out, most probably because they all have been connected to the same framework, negotiations on the distinctive issues making up the maritime dispute: maritime zones, territorial waters, etc. Therefore, a new paradigm of coexistence is imperative and long overdue. As also other scholars have noted (Flouros 2022, 122), there is an urgent need for a Disaster Risk Reduction Strategy targeting climate change as cardinal security strategy threat.   The new paradigm should go beyond the legal and geopolitical aspects of the dispute, not because they are not important or their settlement is unlikely but because they have another scope, focusing rather on the need to survive the climate change that will affect the region in dire and far-reaching ways. It is not a liberal suggestion, though it might look like one. It is derived from the common threat posed by the climate change that is expected to prompt more severe security threats than those the two countries have been perceiving as daunting all the years before. The extent of the ongoing climate crisis, however, is not a security threat that can be addressed by Turkey or Greece alone. It requires joint ventures mainly in the energy sector but also at other levels where human activity harms the environment, compounding the climate crisis. Above all, it requires joint actions to stave off the repercussions of the crisis: wildfires, overfloods and disastrous windstorms which will be testing infrastructure and civil protection capacity with unprecedented intensity. In order to address it Greece and Turkey will have to invest vast amounts of money instead of the armaments where the money flows now, to establish joint task forces of experts and most probably to create common capabilities. The new “energy paradigm” entails a new manner in which different political interests and social formations interact with technological change. Putting the climate crisis at the heart of national security analysis is a key step in anticipating its impacts not just on the physical environment, but also on the economy and the geopolitical landscape. The state has to play a role in exercising different governing capacities in steering sociotechnical transitions and provide care for the most vulnerable. Of great importance for this structural shift is also the ability of the private sector to generate and implement innovation and low-carbon strategies. As climate stress intensifies, richer countries will rely on their accumulated wealth and technological prowess. Poorer nations, on the other hand, could meet rapid decline and suffer from devastating chain reactions such as scarcity of resources, insecurity, instability and forced migration (Bouzarovski 2018, 23–26).

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As experienced environmentalists have pointed out a long time ago (Algan 2004), the degradation of shared ecosystems like the seas or transboundary waters has adverse effects primarily at a regional level and hence solutions are mostly possible through regional cooperation. Environmental stress in water basins requires a holistic evaluation of all human activities in the circumferences and the hinterland of such water basins for measures to be taken and plans to be implemented for those lands. A state cannot solve global, regional and/or transboundary environmental problems singlehandedly.  Many years ago,  functionalists, in the context of what later was to be labelled as ecofunctionalism, had argued that the new environmental challenges had led states not to create sovereignty but to deny it, not to exclusive political integrations but to collective functional integrations. Long before the current climate crisis, they pointed out that the dramatic changes in the scientific technological field were apt to breed problems that, for the first time in history, are global in their  very nature and their scale (Groom and Taylor 1975). As David Mitrany used to say to elucidate the functional approach: the states should be bound together by these interests which are common, where they are common and to the extend that they are common (Mitrany 1966, 115-116).  Even scholars who are critical of the ecofunctionalism (Boardman 1999), have admitted that the urgent nature of global environmental problems justifies coercive responses by states nationally or internationally. The reduction of global warming can only be achieved by enhanced multilateralism. The main challenge is to persuade short-sighted and narrowly self-interested politicians to respond to enlightened scientific prediction in a timely way.     The interests of the two countries might be best served if a joint management or condominium arrangement were established, whereby Greece and Turkey would be able to continue their shared navigational uses of the region and would also be able to participate in management decisions affecting the environment and the resources in the Aegean waters that have not been properly managed in the last decades (Van Dyke 1996, 400–401). Most critically, policymakers in Greece and Turkey need to bolster the ability of their societies to withstand and adapt to climatic stresses through greater political and economic inclusion and by prioritising policies that protect the most vulnerable sectors of their citizenry. Except the  inevitable promotion of renewable energy sources, climate adapted planning, higher ecosystem sustainability, better meteorological forecasting should also be facets of this common strategy. Should the two countries ignore that or, even worse, instrumentalise existing vulnerabilities against each other, their people will be paying a mutual heavy price, heavier than what they are already paying. Such measures could be the improvement of housing and infrastructure, education and awareness-raising of the most vulnerable communities, implementation of early warning systems, strengthening of local emergency and healthcare services, and general improvement of the adaptive capacity of the community and local institutions. Transformative changes in fire management practices in the Mediterranean countries are necessary for reducing risk and vulnerability and increasing natural and societal resilience (Cramer et al. 2020).

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Natural disasters are not the only threat to Greece and Turkey the climate change might entail. In the Middle East, Russia, Central Asia and Iran, too, temperatures are much higher than usual, threatening many populated areas. Since more regions struggle to maintain their farming and economies, hunger and war will drive great numbers of people to seek salvation elsewhere, in countries where citizens are already struggling with high prices and insecurity. The two countries are situated on the routes of all these people who, driven by hunger, war or devastating environmental degradation, seek a better future in Europe. Immigration has already become one of the most polarising policy issues in Europe, revitalising the discussion about a possible fortification of the European states against the mass waves of impoverished and miserable people. Given that the Turkish and Greek states are located at the EU’s most sensitive external border and their Balkan neighbours might decide to entirely close their borders to refugees and migrants, as happened in 2015, the two countries will be left alone to address a problem in the context of which humanity is increasingly retreating in favour of barbarism. This is another field in which sooner or later Greece and Turkey will have to redefine their concepts of national security in order to prevent the common security threats and find, most probably against their will, a new political commitment that accepts the Aegean Sea as a common asset uniting the two countries rather than separating them.

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Chapter 9

Conclusions

The analysis of the Greek-Turkish maritime dispute, as it has been laid out in the framework of this book, undoubtfully shows that it is an almost unsolvable dispute. The positions of the two parts are irreconcilable over the whole set of the interrelated controversial issues making up the conflict: the delimitation of territorial waters, the national airspace (the control of the military and civil air traffic control zones, the so-called flight information regions), the delineation of Economic Exclusive Zones, the delimitation of their continental shelf as well as the “demilitarised” status of the Eastern Aegean Greek islands. A very crucial issue in this complex  of disagreements is whether islands can generate continental shelf and Economic Exclusive Zones  (EEZs). While Greece refers to the provisions of the treaties on the law of the sea on this issue, Turkey insists on a geophysical interpretation of international law that has been adopted in some representative courts’ and arbitration tribunals’ decisions. For Turkey, due to the Greek islands’ proximity to the Turkish coast, the Greek islands should not be appertained EEZ and continental shelf at all. These intertwined issues have been plaquing with some intervals the bilateral relations for about 50 years. For Greece the only pending issue is the maritime delimitation agreement for the continental shelf and a possible Economic Exclusive Zone in the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean. Turkey, on the other hand, has been repeatedly trying to impose its own broader agenda with issues in the bilateral relations, using from time to time an aggressive rhetoric, enriched with war threats and an assertive, gunboat diplomacy against Greece and the Republic Cyprus. Greece believes that it has been confronted for decades with an aggressive and illegal Turkish revisionism, while Turkey is convinced that Greeks have been endeavouring to transform the Aegean Sea into a “Greek lake”, depriving Turkey of vital communications, transport and defence capabilities. On the other hand, Greece has been preoccupied by the strong concern that any change in the status quo in the Aegean would allow Turkey to fulfil its real aspirations, i.e. to occupy half of the Aegean and thus cutting it off from its motherland. By examining thoroughly all relevant treaties and numerous judicial cases with similar content and have been juxtaposing them with the legal arguments of both sides, one can infer that both sides interpret completely differently the international jurisprudence. They invoke the international law, whenever they believe that is favourable to them, and security

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considerations whenever they believe the international law does not favour their argumentation.  Since the early 1970s, Turkey and Greece have bitterly disagreed over maritime jurisdiction and energy exploration rights in the Eastern Mediterranean, based on conflicting views about the extent of their continental shelves. Although explorations had been conducted in the Aegean Sea since the 1930s, the discovery of a small commercial find in the island of Thassos in 1973 in the Northern Aegean was the spark of an antagonism between the two countries which has brought them several times to the verge of a war, whenever a survey ship came into disputed areas. In November 1973, Turkey seriously questioned the legal status quo in the region, awarding exploration rights in 27 maritime areas in the Aegean Sea, concurrently attaching maps to the awards, which implied that half of the Aegean seabed was Turkish. After such an incident in July–August 1976, Greece made an unsuccessful appeal to the UN Security Council and the International Court of The Hague. Greece’s firm position ever since has been that the two countries should jointly seek the adjudication by Internationals Courts to solve their differences, while Turkey, that is not signatory member of the UNCLOS and thus does not recognise in principle the International Court of justice and the International Court for the Law of the Sea, has preferred bilateral negotiations. In the 1990s, the dispute was widened, when Greece acquired the possibility to extend its territorial waters from the present 6 miles to the internationally recognised norm of 12 nautical miles. Given the large number of Greek islands and the general geomorphology of the Aegean that could give Greece control of about 64% of the sea, compared with about 10% for Turkey, if the latter ever decided to make use of the same right, Turkey felt compelled to react. In 1995, the Turkish National Assembly declared that any extension of Greek Territorial Waters to 12 nautical miles would constitute a casus belli, raising the horrifying possibility that two NATO allies might actually go to war over this issue. NATO’s neutrality, however, has not proved conducive for the settlement of the dispute. On the contrary, NATO’s silence on a very thorny issue, this of the fortification of the Eastern Aegean islands, in spite of some demilitarisation provisions required by the Lausanne Treaty, although it bears as Defence Organisation the responsibility of the defence architecture of the region, allowed this matter to become a real apple of discord between the two countries. In the context of this issue, Turkey began from 2021 onwards questioning Greece’s sovereignty over the islands  that have been fortified by Greece, completing previous similar claims of various small islands and rocks in the Aegean  on the ground that these are not mentioned by name in the respective treaties. Following a number of bilateral crises in the 1990s over the Aegean and Cyprus, Athens realised that the pattern of antagonism and recurring turbulence between the two countries was counterproductive and an obstacle in its aspiration to become a member of the Eurozone and saw the need to re-establish relations on new foundations. In the minds of many Greek foreign and security policy elites, the European Union was the best vehicle to achieve the new goal. They started from the conviction that the strengthening of Turkey’s European orientation would engage the

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country in a medium and long-term process that would eventually lead to the adoption of a more cooperative attitude. Therefore, Greece consented at the 1999 European Council in Helsinki to grant Turkey the candidate status provided that Ankara would improve its relations with Greece and Cyprus. Between 1999 and 2004, the two countries came closer to overcoming the tensions through a series of diplomatic measures, particularly with a view to easing Turkey’s accession to the European Union. Various delays in the Greek-Turkish negotiations as well as the change of the Greek foreign policy orientation from 2004 onwards, however, rendered the Helsinki agreement obsolete. Moreover, from 2010 to 2011 onwards bilateral relations backslid to a state characterised by mutual enmity and mistrust. In the aftermath of Arab Spring, Turkish President Erdogan was prompted to fill the power vacuum in the Eastern Mediterranean by deploying hard-power means and tactics for achieving short-term strategic gains. Turkey adopted an assertive and revisionist foreign policy that embraced the “geography of the Ottoman empire” under the new strategic concept of Blue Motherland, while Greece was almost exclusively preoccupied by handling the most sever financial and economic crisis in its history.  In late 2019, the Eastern Mediterranean rivalries became intertwined with longtime Turkey-Greece disagreements over continental shelves, territorial waters, airspace and Economic Exclusive Zone, when Turkey signed an agreement with Libya’s Government of National Accord on maritime boundaries, which was responded by Greece with two agreements on delimitation of maritime zones with Italy and Egypt in 2020. Ankara felt provoked by the rivaling agreements and sent research ships, escorted by military ships, to disputed areas in the Aegean for explorations, thereby questioning Greece’s sovereignty in the region. Athens responded by mobilising its naval force. The two countries were locked for several months in a stiff standoff the region had witnessed in 20 years. Since a possible confrontation could destabilise NATO’s southeast flank for good, this cycle of escalation that risked spiraling into a multinational conflict, caused great uncertainty within the North Atlantic alliance. Although Greece and Turkey agreed to establish a de-confliction mechanism at the NATO level in 2021, that could significantly decrease – though not eliminate – the risk of an accident or incident occurring between the two sides, the tensions between the two countries have been dragging on  enriched with new Turkey’s demands for an immediate demilitarisation of the eastern Aegean islands. Ever since, whenever an energy research ship comes into the East Mediterranean to collect data concerning presumed hydrocarbons reserves, the armies of the two countries are on red alert. All these considered, one can conclude that the Greek-Turkish maritime dispute is almost insolvable. The positions of the two sides on the various issues of the dispute are so diametrically opposed that it is almost unlikely to find a common approach to them. Greece and Turkey have markedly different positions both as to the existing disputes between them and as to 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 exist. Aggravatingly, both sides appear unflinching

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and intransigent about them, since any concession in those matters would literally be regarded as national treason. Greece could never accept as issue of negotiations anything else beyond the continental shelf. Turkey, in response, could never come to terms with the notion that all the other issues of the maritime dispute it has been trying to raise de facto throughout the last five decades are already settled. Greece’s application to the International Court of Justice in 1976 and the judgement of the Court that lacked jurisdiction to adjudicate the case illustrate how hazardous it is to institute proceedings unilaterally, while a simultaneous joint recourse to the court has been categorically denied by Turkey. These all has established a mechanism of mistrust and hostility that seems almighty. Characteristically, while in 2022, Turkey attempted a U-turn in its foreign policy trying to reach out to most countries in the region in a quest for a new, smoother and ultimately more beneficial modus vivendi, Greece was left out. Ankara normalised its relationship with Israel, while openly demonstrated the similar desire with Egypt. However, this is not the case with Greece which it continues to antagonize with aggressive rhetoric and even provocative actions. Following threatening statements by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan about opening the border and new refugee flows as well as a possible offensive action by Turkey should Greece not demilitarise the Eastern Aegean islands throughout  the whole 2022,1 Greece placed once again its armed forces in their entirety on high alert across the country. Apparently, Ankara felt provoked and betrayed by Greece’s decision to purchase modern weaponry from the USA and France in 2021 and 2022, a period in which the two countries were supposed to foster their cooperation. Beyond that, Turkey is convinced that Greece can be instrumentalised by foreign powers against Turkey. Beyond this all, however, the two countries have to coexist in an area that is going to experience fundamental changes in the foreseeable future. In 2021 in the wake of unprecedented wildfires, it turned out that a thermal dome has settled above the Mediterranean, trapping extremely high temperatures in a catastrophic spiral.2 The extreme heatwaves have triggered mega-fires and released high levels of carbon dioxide, further exacerbating global warming. Thus, it became obvious that Eastern Mediterranean except a region of political rivalries, competing exploitation of energy resources and conflict is also an area of very close, unbreakable interdependence. Due to anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases, climate is changing in the Mediterranean Basin, historically and projected by climate models, faster than global trends. The Mediterranean is recognised by international organisations and climate experts as a climate change “hotspot”, i.e. as a region that is expected to  Thoughout 2022, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and other Turkish politicians threatened to use military force against Greece, regurgitating the Turkish demand that Greece demilitarize its islands in the Eastern Aegean, otherwise face “disaster”. https://www.ekathimerini.com/ news/1186488/erdogan-issues-threat-of-military-force/ 2  In January 2022, Greece and Turkey were also hit by a catastrophic storm and blizzard causing chaotic scenes in both countries. It seems that this is going to be a normality in the future. 1

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experience wide-ranging and long-lasting environmental reverberations. For the future, the region is expected to remain among the regions most affected by climate change, particularly when it comes to precipitation and the hydrological cycle. Temperatures are going up 20% faster than the global average, and this is already having real and serious consequences. Reasons for concern include sea-level rise-­ related risks, land and marine biodiversity losses, risks related to drought, wildfire, alterations of water cycle, endangering food production, health risks in both urban and rural settlements from heat and altering disease vectors. Against this background, the insistence of the two countries on exploration and production of hydrocarbons entailing a geopolitical competition to secure control of fossil fuels or to extend their Economic Exclusive Zone at the expenses of their neighbours instead of prioritising the fight against the common existential threat seems an obsolete praxis. Climate change is a particularly pressing threat for the Mediterranean and is shared by all states of this region, irrespective of their present socioeconomic or political standing. The use of hydrocarbons has historically been the main driver of rising environmental damage and global greenhouse gas emissions. This study tried to examine as thoroughly as possible every aspect of the maritime dispute, geopolitical, legal and environmental. There have been so far numerous studies about whether the two members of NATO can solve their differences, whether international law and multilateral cooperation can be instruments at all, etc. which have enriched our understanding about the dispute. Many of them have been cited in the framework of this study. The ongoing climate crisis, however, has rendered most of them obsolete. Not because they are tenuous or biased but because the conditions on the ground have so radically changed. We already know that the Mediterranean region is warming 20% faster than the global average. Scientists warn that the consequences of climate change will have an asymmetrical effect on the Mediterranean coastal ecosystem. We need to be prepared on a local level, but we also need international cooperation to deal with natural disasters such as floods and wildfires. Rising temperatures alone have a cost for human security, particularly among the more vulnerable populations. Nonetheless, the complexity of the region requires the mobilisation of the right incentives to attract leading green investments and mitigate the political risk. In this regard, the two countries could examine the possibility of joint ventures aimed at producing electricity from renewables in the Aegean, temporarily singling out issues of sovereignty, as the functionalists have suggested 50 years ago. Seeking the means toward a “working peace system” through depoliticised technical cooperation.  Common fight against common existential natural, environmental threats that are also expected to trigger a mass migration wave towards Europe through Turkey and Greece is not an option to discuss about using known theoretical tools of the various schools of international relations or legal formulas to satisfy both sides. It is a matter of survival, which sooner or later Greece and Turkey will be faced with. This common enemy might, in turn, compel both sides to cooperate for the very first time in their history closely, despite their geopolitical competition, their security concerns or simply the mutually felt hatred in large portions of both societies, which will

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without doubt continue to exist. Cooperation will not be a choice but a necessity in order to survive. The sooner the two sides realise this, the better they will address their impeding natural disasters. Anything else is literally just an attempt to resist the future.

Author Index

A Ali Suat Bilge, 44 Andreas Papandreou, 45–47, 52

H Henry Kissinger, 40 Hulusi Akar, 62, 105

B Bitsios, 44 Bulent Ecevid, 43

I Ismail Cem, 52, 54

C Caglayangil, 44 Candarli, 40 Cihat Yayci, 9, 62 Costas Simitis, 52, 54, 55

J Jean Tzounis, 44 Joseph Luns, 16 K Karolos Papoulias, 47, 48, 52 Konstantinos Karamanlis, 42, 44, 56

D Davutoglu, 7, 59–61 M Mesut Yilmaz, 47, 48, 52 E Erdem, 46 Evangelos Venizelos, 55 G George Papandreou, 54

N Nazmi Akiman, 46 O Öcalan, 54 Özal, 46, 47

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Stergiou, The Greek-Turkish Maritime Dispute, Contributions to International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15515-4

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Author Index

P Peter Carington, 47 Piri Reis, 46, 78, 79

S Sismik, 43, 47 Suleiman Demirel, 42–44

R Recep Tayyip Erdogan, 33, 56, 59, 61–64, 66, 68, 71, 105, 114 Roussen Esref, 13 Rustu Aras, 13

T Tansu Ciller, 52 Turan Güneş, 40

Subject Index

A Agathonisi, 9, 66 AKP, 59–69 B Berne Declaration, 44, 46 Blue Homeland, 62, 79, 81 Bosporus, 13, 26, 66, 68, 104 C Chios, 3, 10, 12, 14, 15, 40 Climate change, xii, xiii, 87, 88, 90, 92, 93, 97–100, 103, 106, 107, 109, 114, 115 Climate crisis, xii, 91, 92, 97, 99, 107, 115 D Davos, 47 Dodecanese islands, 3, 10, 12, 13, 40 E Egypt, xii, 29, 57, 71, 72, 74, 76–78, 106, 113, 114 Energy geopolitics, 92 Energy transitions, 90–93, 102, 105 European Union (EU), xii, 16, 54–57, 60, 64, 71, 72, 78, 79, 86, 93, 100, 101, 104, 106, 109, 112, 113 Evros, 6, 40, 47, 56

F Flight Information Region (FIR), x, 8, 9, 42 Fossil fuels, 85, 87–93, 99, 104, 115 Fournoi, 9 G Gavdos, 9, 52 Green Deal, 100 H Helsinki, 54–56, 113 Hydrocarbons, xii, xiii, 39, 73, 78, 79, 86–92, 99–103, 113, 115 I Ikaria, 6, 10, 12, 14, 15 Imbros (Gokceada), 10, 13–15 Imia/Kardak islets, 10 International Court of Justice (ICJ), 1–3, 18, 22, 24, 27, 28, 30–34, 40, 42–46, 55, 56, 74, 114 International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea in Hamburg (ITLOS), 1, 22, 32 Italy, xii, 6, 9, 10, 13–16, 71, 75, 76, 113 K Kara-Ada, 6 Kastellorizo, 4–6, 10, 14, 15, 32, 72, 77, 78

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Stergiou, The Greek-Turkish Maritime Dispute, Contributions to International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15515-4

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122 L Lampedusa, 14, 19 Lampione, 14, 19 Limnos, 10, 12, 13, 46 Linosa, 14, 19 M Madrid Declaration, 52 Montreux Convention, 13, 16, 66–68 Mytilene, 10, 12, 14, 15 N New Turkey, 57, 60, 62, 63, 66 North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), ix–xii, 16–19, 42, 45–47, 51, 52, 54, 55, 59, 63, 64, 66, 67, 78, 81, 86, 112, 113, 115 North Sea, 28–30, 40, 43 Notice to Airmen (NOTAM), 9, 42 P Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK), 45 Pantelaria, 14 Paris Peace Treaty, 6, 10, 13, 17, 18

Subject Index Pserimos, 9, 66 R Rabbit Islands (Tavcan), 10, 13, 15 Renewables, 87–93, 99, 101, 104, 106, 115 S Samos, 3, 6, 10, 12, 14, 15 Samothrace, 10, 12, 13, 15, 16, 40, 46 Six Powers, 13, 14 T Tenedos (Bozcaada), 10, 13–16 Treaty of Lausanne, ix, 8, 10, 15, 66 U UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), 1, 2, 5, 7, 12, 21–25, 27, 31, 33, 34, 71, 73–76, 78, 104, 107, 112 United Nations, xii, xiii, 1, 2, 5–7, 17, 18, 21–23, 29, 32, 34, 71–73, 75, 77, 79, 92, 98, 104