Greece plans to further extend its territorial waters, potentially including parts of the Aegean Sea, Foreign Minister George Gerapetritis said Friday, despite a longstanding Turkish threat of war if Greece expands its maritime limits in the narrow sea that separates the two NATO member neighbors.
Gerapetritis made the remarks during a parliamentary session on Friday. He did not say which parts of Greece’s coast could be covered by a new expansion but noted that the move was expected after Greece signed maritime agreements with Italy and Egypt.
The issue matters because extending territorial waters in the Aegean is one of the few steps Greece can take unilaterally that Turkey has warned could trigger a military response.
In 1995 Turkey’s parliament declared a casus belli, a cause for war, if Greece extends its territorial waters beyond six nautical miles in the Aegean. Greece says the threat violates international law.
A fight over a narrow sea
A territorial sea is the band of water off a country’s coast where it exercises sovereignty, similar to its land territory. Countries can set rules on navigation and security there, while foreign ships generally retain a right of passage under international law.
A nautical mile is used in maritime boundaries. One nautical mile equals about 1.15 miles.
Greece has long kept its territorial waters in the Aegean at six nautical miles even though it argues it has the right to extend them, as many coastal states do, to 12 nautical miles.
It already expanded its territorial waters in the Ionian Sea, on the western side of Greece, to 12 nautical miles.
Why Turkey calls it a red line
Turkey says the Aegean’s geography makes a 12-mile expansion different from similar moves elsewhere.
The Aegean Sea is crowded with Greek islands, many of them close to Turkey’s coastline. Turkey argues that if Greece extended territorial waters around those islands, large parts of the Aegean would become Greek-controlled waters, limiting Turkey’s access to open sea lanes and expanding the area where Greece would have stronger policing and enforcement rights.
The dispute has fueled decades of tensions that extend beyond the sea itself. Greece and Turkey also clash over where their continental shelves begin and end, questions tied to seabed rights and possible energy resources, and disputes that affect air patrols and overflights in the region.
Gerapetritis’s remarks come as Greece and Turkey try to keep tensions lower than they were during earlier flareups.
Even so, disagreements keep reappearing in the Aegean and the eastern Mediterranean.
Greece announced plans in July for marine parks in the Ionian and Aegean seas, with Turkey criticizing the planned Aegean park near the southern Cyclades islands.