Turkey, Greece wary of territorial waters claims
Recent
and highly publicised gas finds in the eastern Mediterranean between
Israel and Cyprus, coupled with cash-strapped Greece’s eagerness to
better exploit natural resources, has thrust the question of exclusive
economic zones into the spotlight.
Over the past couple years Athens and
Ankara have moved to mend once tense relations despite long-entrenched
opposing views on sea rights in the Aegean. But recent reports in Greek
media that the country is preparing to unilaterally delimitate the zones
carries the potential for friction.
Turkey’s chief foreign affairs official
insists, however, that the two countries have “channels” to discuss and
deal with any dispute.
At the crux of Athens’ standing position
on maritime jurisdictions is the landmark UN Convention on the Law of
the Sea, or UNCLOS, of which Greece and all EU member-states are
signatories, but Turkey is not.
The convention, in force since 1994,
recognises nations’ rights to extend their territorial waters up to 12
nautical miles (22 kilometres) and an exclusive economic zone up to 200
nautical miles (370 kilometres) from a defined coastal baseline. To
date, neither Turkey nor Greece have officially claimed an economic zone
or extended their territorial waters to the full 12 miles in the
Aegean.
Greek foreign ministry spokesman
Grigoris Delavekouras reiterated this month, during a regular press
briefing, that “Greece’s policy is the delimitation of all maritime
zones with all its neighbours, and we are pursuing this not just for the
obvious economic benefits … but also because it is a decisive step
toward strengthening regional stability.”
Conversely, Selcuk Unal, the spokesman
for Turkish foreign ministry, told SETimes that the latest debate over
delimitation has created “unnecessary expectations” in the Greek public
opinion towards this issue.
“We aren’t objecting as long as Greece
carries out its oil and gas drilling activities with no harmful effect
on Turkey’s rights and benefits,” Unal said, adding, “In other words,
there is no obstacle against Greek economic activities over uncontested
regions.”
The Turkish spokesman was alluding to
repeated references to the issue during the recent Greek elections in
2012, with vociferous demands by both the right and left that the next
government unilaterally delimitate such zones around island-dotted and
peninsular Greece.
Aware of the growing attention to the
economic zone question, Turkey Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told a
gathering of Turkish diplomats in Izmir earlier this month that if
Greece takes unilateral steps in that direction and disregards Turkey’s
national position, then Turkey will not hesitate to respond.
“However, I expect that there would be
no need for such an action,” Davutoglu said. “We have already a
functioning mechanism with Greece through other channels.”
Unal also noted that with high-level
meetings between the two countries’ leaders expected in the next few
months, Turkey preferred to settle the issue through negotiations.
“We want to preserve the positive agenda
that exists over Greece-Turkey relations just in a period when both
parties are in constant dialogue and mutual visits,” Unal said.
Adding to the mix of politics, economic
interests and often acrimonious recent history is the 320 articles plus
annexes and the intricate legal framework entailed in international
maritime law, a body of work not easily summarised into brief news
reports.
“At present, there are two different
concepts, the exclusive economic zone is a new concept; continental
shelf is an old concept. EEZ is a superior concept to continental shelf,
as the latter involved only minerals in the subsoil and seabed, the EEZ
includes fisheries, the environment and energy from the sea and above
the waves,” Theodore Kariotis, an economics professor who has written on
the Aegean dispute, told SETimes.
Ankara insists on bilateral negotiations, while Athens would like the issue settled in the International Court of Justice.
For Kariotis, Ankara’s deep aversion to
UNCLOS lies directly with the convention’s 121st article, specifically
paragraph B, which gives complete economic zone rights to the mainland
and islands as well.
Turkey’s long-standing position on the
issue is that implementation of provisions in the convention are
“complicated” when it comes to the Aegean because of its specific
geographical properties.
The arguments repeatedly used by Ankara
over the decades are that the Aegean, with its 2,400 plus islands, is a
“semi-enclosed sea” and that “special circumstances” exist, which have
not been included in UNCLOS.
Undoubtedly, one major obstacle in any
possible future negotiations between Athens and Ankara will revolve
around the small island of Kastellorizo located 570 kilometres southeast
of Athens but only 2 kilometres across from the small Turkish coastal
town of Kas.
“If the area of Kastellorizo is given
‘full effect’ during a delimitation, then Greece will have a maritime
border with Cyprus; if Kastellorizo receives ‘partial effect’ then
Turkey will have a maritime border with Egypt, and Greece will not have
one with Cyprus,” Kariotis said.
Referring to the Kastellorizo aspect,
Haritini Dipla, a Swiss-educated professor of international law and
specialist on maritime law and islands’ status, said any international
court would look at Kastellorizo and its islets’ geographical position.
In particular, a court would look at
“the effect it has on the baseline … the area of the maritime zone which
it has a right to, in relation to the area of the island itself,” she
said.
“Of course, Kastellorizo is populated,
and has the right to maritime zones, possibly however, they
[international judges] may give it a reduced influence in the median
baseline. No one knows how much, this depends, of course, on the
arguments of the two countries and on the judges’ opinion,” she said,
highlighting the complexity of the issue.
Source: setimes.com
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