The dangerous game in the Eastern Mediterranean / 1 – What the law says and what Ankara says

31 August 20204 years ago babelfish

The Montego Bay Convention regulates territorial waters, the exclusive economic zone, the continental shelf. A Turkish government with its feet on the ground, would immediately subscribe to it and would try to enforce it as far as it interests itself. Erdogan, who has no feet on the ground, has not signed the convention and does not respect it, but claims to impose a right of his own

To understand what is happening between Greece and Turkey, we need to familiarize ourselves with three concepts: territorial waters, the exclusive economic zone, the continental shelf.

1. The "territorial waters" , of 6 miles but which, on the indication of the State, can rise to 12. In the event that the coast lines between two States are closer than 24 miles, in which case the criterion of equidistance between the two respective coastlines, unless the parties will otherwise.

2. The "exclusive economic zone" (EEZ, better known with the English acronym EEZ – exclusive economic zone ): an area of the sea, adjacent to the territorial waters, in which a coastal state has sovereign rights for the management of "resources natural, biological or non-biological, which are found in the waters above the seabed, on the seabed and in the relative subsoil ". So arranged by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, better known as UNCLOS or the Montego Bay Convention . An EEZ extends up to 200 nautical miles from the coastline from which territorial waters are measured. Except for the case that the coastline between two states is closer than 400 miles, in which case the criterion of equidistance is used again.

As for islands, the convention is extremely precise: "the territorial sea, contiguous zone, exclusive economic zone and continental shelf of an island are determined in accordance with the provisions of this Convention relating to other terrestrial territories"; with the only exception of "the rocks that do not occur to human settlement nor have an autonomous economic life".

It happens that Greece has a territory for a fifth consisting of 6,000 islands, of which 227 are inhabited, as well as about 200 fairly well distributed between Crete (to the south) and the coast of Thrace (to the north): so that, according to the convention, it can demand an EEZ substantially corresponding to the entire Aegean Sea. In addition, of course, the Ionian islands, between Puglia and Albania, which command an EEZ just over half of the Ionian Sea, peacefully recognized by Italy with a recent agreement.

Particularly the case of the small archipelago of Castelrosso (regularly inhabited as anyone who saw the famous Mediterranean film, Oscar winner just a few years ago knows), to the east facing the Turkish coasts of Lycia, which could command an EEZ towards Egypt until just over half of the Mar di Levante. Except that, at least two previous decisions of the International Court of Justice have established a "reasonable relationship, between the EEZs belonging to each State and the length of its coasts (criterion of proportionality)", always without prejudice to the reserve of 12 miles of territorial waters. Thus, Turkey could perhaps have an argument to ask the Court to deny the Greek claim in this part of the Levant Sea. It is no coincidence that this area was not included in a recent agreement between Greece and Egypt, which also delimited the stretch of that sea in front of Crete and Rhodes.

Even more particular is the case of the so-called 'Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus', that is the part of the Republic of Cyprus that Turkey militarily invaded in 1974, expelling all the Greeks. A puppet state, not recognized by any state in the world, except of course by Turkey. The same, in its own right, Ankara claims most of the Cypriot EEZ: in 2018 it even sent military ships to seize an Italian drill ship, the Saipem 12000 , without the government of the very weak Gentiloni daring to react. It remains, however, that that state is a puppet state and, therefore itself, not entitled to any maritime law that is one.

3. The "continental shelf" , where a State has the exclusive right to exploit the "mineral resources and other non-living resources of the seabed and subsoil", possibly competing with the rights to the overlying water column and regulated by the EEZ regime. This third concept improves the situation of the Turks, as several Greek islands (for example, Lemnos, Agiostrati, Lesbos, even Schiro), as well as Castelrosso, could lie on the Anatolian continental shelf.

Athens naturally objects, and the convention also provides for arbitration by the International Court of Justice. What might agree with Turkey, as at least one previous decision regarding the British Channel Islands even denied them command of any EEZ, based on their location on the French continental shelf, limiting their space to just 12 miles of water. territorial.

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Yet Turkey not only does not appeal to the International Court, but it has not signed the Montego Bay Convention either. Because? Well, because both that convention and the aforementioned previous decisions of the Court unambiguously establish the right of Greece to extend its territorial waters up to 12 nautical miles.

It happens that the distribution of the Greek islands in the Aegean is such that, with the extension of Greek territorial waters to 12 miles, the Turkish navigation spaces would be greatly reduced. This would not be a problem for civilian ships, but it certainly would be for military ships: submarines have to navigate on the surface, for example. This is rejected by Turkey to the point that, in 1995, the Turkish Parliament declared that a possible extension by Greece would amount to a casus belli. As Ankara keeps repeating, on Saturday the first Turkish vice president Fuat Oktay.

There is also a precedent, in 1973, when Ankara sent hydrocarbon exploration ships between Lemnos, Lesbos and Schiro: exactly as today Greece considered it an invasion and Turkey refused the arbitration of the International Court, which Greece had requested. Meanwhile, the Montego Bay Convention has strengthened Turkey's position in reference to the continental shelf, but also Greece's position in reference to 12 miles, so that the whole legal framework set out above has no possibility of being applied for the simple reason that Turkey rejects it.

For the same reason, the German mediation proposal failed: Ankara, which, at the end of 2019, had signed a bilateral agreement with Tripoli delimiting the respective EEZs completely contrary to the convention, withdrew from the German talks, as soon as it learned that Athens it had responded with a bilateral agreement with Cairo in accordance with the convention. German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas therefore tried again, only to hear himself repeated: from the Greek Dendias that Athens would defend its rights (ie the Montego Bay convention); from the Turkish Cavusoglu that Ankara claimed there were no pre-conditions (ie no Montego Bay convention) and indeed defined the reference to the convention as a "maximalist approach".

In fact, when Turkey speaks of its "rights", it means those deriving from a law of its own: which assigns itself a very generous interpretation of the unsigned convention, while denying Athens its rights certainly deriving from the convention and related to territorial waters. This law which is unique to Ankara also has a name: "Mavi Vatan" , the Blue Homeland. Which Ankara claims to be based "on international law, on the jurisprudence of the International Court of Justice", exactly when this international law is refused to sign, that court refuses to sue.

Consistently, the creator of the “Mavi Vatan” , this admiral Cem Gürdeniz, duly supported by Erdogan himself, speaks the language of force. As we will see in the next article.

The post The dangerous game in the Eastern Mediterranean / 1 – What the law says and what Ankara says appeared first on Atlantico Quotidiano .

This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL http://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/quotidiano/il-pericoloso-gioco-nel-mediterraneo-orientale-1-cosa-dice-il-diritto-e-cosa-dice-ankara/ on Mon, 31 Aug 2020 04:17:00 +0000.