Normally I don't like to repeat these topics over and over here. From our point of view, this problem's solves are crystal clear and too serious to be a propaganda material. But let me make a brief summary one last time for you again.
Greece claims that Meis Island has the right to a continental shelf and exclusive economic zone. Based on this claim, it creates a sea area 4,000 times larger than itself. How acceptable is this claim?
Greece claims that Meis Island has the right to a continental shelf and exclusive economic zone. Based on this claim, it creates a sea area 4,000 times larger than itself. There is no such example in the world. It's like the US claiming the entire east pacific ocean because of the Hawai Islands.
In fact, the Greek thesis tries to impose the hundreds of miles of sea areas between the Greek islands of Mesi, Rhodes, Kerpe, Kaşot and Crete as if there was a piece of land and a virtual uninterrupted coastline from Meis to Crete. It bases all its claims on this virtual shore, the vast majority of which is the open sea.
However, the International Law of the Sea determines that the states with a coast can only be drawn as a "Straight Base Line" provided that the coastal topography complies with the principles of Article 7 of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
Moreover, apart from the "Normal Base Line" and "Straight Base Line" drawings, as a special condition, UNCLOS Article 47 also includes methods for determining the "Base Line in archipelago", but this special method does only apply by the "Archipelago State" ( It can be used for states known as Islands State/Archipelago State. It is clear that Greece cannot benefit from the special provisions of Article 47 of UNCLOS since it is not an Archipelago or an Archipelago State. Because Greece is a state with a mainland, not a state like Indonesia, which consists of only islands.
Moreover, the faces of the Greek islands facing the Eastern Mediterranean have a total coastal length of 167 kilometers, and it is illegal for them to demand a maritime jurisdiction against the Anatolian coast of 1870 kilometers. In addition, islands more than 200 miles from the mainland do not produce EEZ, that is, they are included in the EEZ area of the mainland, they cannot form an EEZ above it. As a result, Greece's creation of a territorial sea border by drawing a straight baseline as if there is no sea between the islands of Crete and Rhodes and determination of the EEZ from this line is never acceptable in terms of Turkiye's maritime rights and interests, it is also against international maritime law and is a violation of law.
The fact that it is an exclusive economic zone, ignoring the Anatolian coasts, where Meis Island sits right behind and on the continental shelf, is in itself unlawful.
If we show an example of this; Spain has islands off the Moroccan coast. At the top of the map below, you can see the real EEZ of Spain, and at the bottom, you can see what the EEZ would have been if Spain had made unlawful demands like Greece.
By acting in accordance with the maritime law, Spain and Morocco take the mainland as a basis for delimitation, abide by the principles of geographical superiority, non-closure and proportionality, and do not recognize a maritime jurisdiction area other than territorial waters to the Spanish islands on the opposite side (in front of the Moroccan mainland). Therefore, the claim that Greece is the EEZ of Meis and other islands does not coincide with the legal and actual facts and is certainly not an acceptable situation in terms of international law.
Other issue: The maritime border between Turkiye and Greece has not yet been determined by an agreement. For this reason, the width of the territorial waters of both Turkiye and Greece in the Aegean Sea is considered to be 6 nautical miles, but Greece wants to increase this to 12 miles with a unilateral fait accompli.
By upsetting the balance of Lausanne in 1936 and increasing the width of its territorial waters to 6 miles, Greece now wants to increase it to 12 miles and transform the Sea of Islands into a Greek lake.
As it is known, the Turkish Grand National Assembly announced its determination to the world public opinion on 08 June 1995 that the vital rights and interests of our country will be protected if Greece expands its territorial waters. If Greece finds favorable conditions and extends its territorial waters to 12 miles; Without taking into account the EGAYDAAKs (Islands whose sovereignty has not been transferred to Greece), the rate of offshore areas in the Sea of Islands will decrease to approximately 20%, and the coverage rate of Turkiye's territorial waters will decrease to 8.7% and that of Greece' share will be 62%.
In this way, in the eastern Sea of Islands, which is important in terms of continental shelf sharing, Turkish territorial waters will increase by 17%, Greek territorial waters will increase by 60%, and open sea areas will decrease by 64% to 9%. If the EGAYDAAKs are accepted under Greek sovereignty, Greece's territorial water coverage ratio will increase to 72% in the entire Islands Sea and to 68% in the eastern Islands Sea.
Thus, the Sea of Islands would become a Greek inland sea, with the exception of two small offshore sections surrounded by Greek territorial waters. In such a case, Turkiye's territorial integrity will be disrupted; Approximately 90% of the Sea of Islands continental shelf and exclusive economic zone will belong to Greece; Turkiye's economic activities such as fishing, tourism and scientific research will be completely restricted by the extraction and exploitation of natural resources in the Islands Sea.
Moreover, our military ships will be unable to perform training and exercises. In short, by expanding its territorial waters to 12 miles, Greece will establish absolute dominance in the Sea of Islands by solving all problems in its favor, especially the continental shelf, exclusive economic zone and airspace.
As a matter of fact, the news and comments in the Greek media are in line with this expectation. In fact, even an increase of one mile in the territorial waters according to the 6 mile regime will cause a decrease of about 12% in the open sea areas in the Sea of Islands.
When the issue is examined from a legal point of view; While Article 3 of the 1982 UNCLOS gives the states the right to determine the width of territorial waters up to 12 miles; does not dictate the absolute width of the territorial sea as 12 miles, the provision also reveals the existence of situations where the territorial sea should be less than 12 miles. On the other hand, 1982 UNCLOS; Article 123 dictates that general rules cannot be applied for the Sea of Islands, which is a semi-enclosed sea.
Article 300, on the other hand, governs the provision that “the states parties must fulfill their obligations under the provisions of this contract in good faith and use the rights, powers and freedoms recognized in this contract in a way that does not constitute an abuse of right” and this article actually prevents Greece from expanding its territorial seas unilaterally.
In view of this legal situation, the problem mainly arises from the policy of unilateral and unlawful expansion of the territorial seas of Greece.
At this point, I think the issue that should be demanded should be to return to the balance of Lausanne and to lower the territorial waters to 3 miles. As a result of the 3-mile territorial waters to be re-established in accordance with the Treaty of Lausanne, peace, stability and security will be re-established in the Sea of Islands.
3- The 12 Islands/Menteşe Islands(Dodecanese) were ceded to Greece by the Treaty of Paris in 1947 by Italy on the condition of not having weapons on these islands, but now Greece violates this precondition.
In accordance with the relevant provisions of the 1923 Lausanne and 1947 Paris Peace Treaties, Thassos, Ipsara, Bozbaba, Samothrace, Lemnos, Lesbos, Chios, Samos, Ahikeria, Batnoz, Lipso, Ileryoz, Kelemez, Kos, Incirli, Symbeki, Iki, Herke, Rhodes, Kerpe , Çoban Island, Istanbulya and Meis Island are in non-military status.
This non-military status; prohibits all kinds of weapon deployment, including exercise/training, all kinds of flights, transit, permanent/temporary deployment of military aircrafts, excluding those of the base establishment of the Land, Naval and Air Forces, and the internal security forces on them. .
The "NonMilitary Status" of the Islands includes their territorial parts as well as their territorial waters and airspace.
The reason why the islands are placed under non-military status is the importance of these islands in terms of their proximity to Turkiye and therefore Turkiye's security. Turkiye's security is essential. Greece has accepted and signed each of these agreements.
Greek sovereignty over the islands and Turkiye's security concerns were only balanced by placing the islands under non-military status.
When the 1923 Lausanne Peace Treaty conference minutes and documents are examined; It was stated that the definitive provisions regarding the demilitarization of the islands so that they would not be used as land, naval and air bases in attacks against Turkiye were also included in the text of the agreement.
In particular, I would like to draw attention to the islands, which were transferred to Greece on condition of non-military status, but where the transfer condition was abolished by Greece itself by militarizing and arming, and their positions right near our Anatolian coasts.
In this case, it is clear that the sovereignty transfer condition of these islands is to be in non-military status. While it should have been in this non-military status, Greece, which broke this status, essentially abolished the condition of transferring the sovereignty of these islands to itself. I think that Turkiye should urgently demand the demilitarization of these islands and take all kinds of legal and diplomatic initiatives.
The 'Seville MAP' drawn in 2002 is a map that is completely against Turkiye's interests. Why did this map appear and what is its purpose?
According to the map commissioned by the European Union to the University of Sevilla and ignoring Turkiye's rights, the area given to us is 41 thousand km2, and the area that we should actually claim is 189 thousand km2. In other words, they wanted to take 148 thousand km2 of homeland from us. This map has been used and is being used by many institutions and organizations of the EU, especially the energy agency. Considering the points that the EU has criticized and objected to Turkiye, it is understood that this map is politically based. The aim is to share the Eastern Mediterranean, which is known to have very rich hydrocarbon deposits, excluding Turkiye.
