By David Lepeska, Ahval
As Athens announced plans this week to boost its military might amid continuing sky-high tensions with Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan met Fayez al-Sarraj, prime minister of the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA), in Istanbul, where the two leaders examined ways to strengthen their maritime borders agreement.
Ankara has been supporting the GNA in its fight against General Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA) for a few years, but significantly expanded its military backing following the maritime deal last November. Observers have criticised the deal for essentially ignoring the sizable Greek island of Crete, while acknowledging that it increased Turkey’s negotiating leverage.
“With that agreement, Turkey scored points on the political plane,” Nicholas Ioannides, lecturer at the University of Nicosia and an expert on maritime and international law, told Ahval in a podcast.
Yet, as per the Vienna Convention and the decision of the European Council, a two-party agreement generates no obligations for any third state, particularly when that third state has legal entitlements in the relevant area.
“The delimitation between Turkey and Libya overlooks fundamental rights for Greece. So it cannot be binding. It cannot be final,” said Ioannides. “According to international law, that agreement does not have any legal consequences.”
It did have the political consequence of driving Greece, last month, to make a similar deal with Egypt, reclaiming some of the maritime areas handed to Turkey in its GNA deal. The Greece-Egypt agreement arrived on the eve of initial German-brokered Turkey-Greece talks, which Ankara quickly backed out of in response.
Indeed, Greece advocates third-party arbitration or adjudication by a body like the International Court of Justice. In 1976, Greece took its continental shelf dispute with Turkey to the ICJ, which decided the two states had not agreed to give it jurisdiction. Turkey does not approve the ICJ’s jurisdiction, nor has it signed the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, the primary maritime legal document, which is why many expect the current dust-up to lead to negotiations rather than a court decision.
“Usually powerful states are reluctant to submit their disputes to an international court because they like to have greater control over the process. They may exert pressure on the other party and achieve better results,” said Ioannides, who believes a lasting resolution will only be achieved with the involvement of a respected adjudicator. “When they have recourse before an international, impartial and principled body, the outcome is more equitable.”
Dispute resolution expert Harry Tzimitras grew up and studied in Greece, taught in Turkey for years and is now director of the Cyprus Centre at the Peace Research Institute Oslo. He agreed that Greece has embraced international law in part because Athens believes it supports its perspective and offers a sort of shield of protection from Turkey.
“The Turkish position has always been that primarily these are political disputes – with an important legal element, yes, but political disputes – and therefore they should be resolved politically,” Tzimitras told Ahval in a podcast. He said that Ankara’s aggressiveness in the eastern Mediterranean, including sending exploratory missions into disputed waters, would likely put Turkey at a disadvantage before a judicial body like the ICJ.
External powers have failed to broker bilateral talks. Last week, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg sought to shepherd the two member states into a negotiation, releasing a statement saying that Turkey and Greece had agreed to initial talks. Athens quickly refuted the news, scuttling that NATO effort.
The European Union has been deeply divided, with France strongly backing Greece and sending warships to the eastern Mediterranean, and Germany seeking to oversee talks between Turkey-Greece and on the Libyan conflict. The EU’s seven Mediterranean states are expected to meet in Paris on Thursday and will likely be pressed by French President Emanuel Macron to take a firm stance against Turkey.
The United States, which kept Turkey and Greece from going to war over Cyprus in 1974 and over a disputed Aegean islet in 1996, has also sent mixed messages. President Donald Trump regularly sings Erdoğan’s praises, yet last week U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the partial end of the American arms embargo on Cyprus, allowing for non-lethal weapons sales to the EU member state and close Greek ally.
“Neither the United States nor the EU have meaningful leverage over Turkey,” said Tzimitras, adding that this has left Athens and Ankara largely on their own and moving toward military confrontation.
The first step, said Tzimitras, is for the two sides to begin a dialogue that could cool tensions, increase understanding and hopefully lead to negotiations. Once achieved, the next concern would be the issues to be taken up in those talks.
“Turkey is always trying to broaden the agenda, to include as many issues as possible,” said Tzimitras, pointing to disputes over sovereignty, maritime zones, continental shelves, airspace, the militarisation of Aegean islands and the Muslim minority in western Thrace.
“Is it possible that this whole list could form part of the agenda? I think it is unlikely,” he said. “A more likely list would be one that would include most, if not all, of the issues pertaining to maritime zones and perhaps the airspace.”
For those talks to have any chance of succeeding, Athens and Ankara must both arrive with a willingness to compromise – a word not always seen in positive terms in the Mediterranean region. Talks are likely to begin with the median line, which because of several Greek islands’ proximity to the Turkish coast is, in the case of Turkey and Greece, hugely favourable to the latter and would presumably be redrawn.
A key element of that effort would be Kastellorizo, a tiny Greek island a few miles off the coast of Turkey in the eastern Mediterranean. Turkey began seismic activity near Kastellorizo last month, backed by naval vessels, which prompted Greece to put its military on high alert and dispatch troops to the island. If Kastellorizo were given its own continental shelf, Turkey’s claims would be extremely limited.
“In the majority of cases, small isolated islands get reduced effect in the delimitation process. They don’t get the same amount of waters as continental lands,” said Ioannides, adding that security concerns and its being part of the larger Dodecanese island chain made Kastellorizo’s case unique.
Greece and Italy have been able to use their islands in the Ionian Sea to delineate a median line that has served a continental shelf boundary, allowed for an extension into nearby waters and could define a boundary for an exclusive economic zone in the future, according to Ioannides.
The Republic of Cyprus’ EEZ agreements with Egypt, Israel and Lebanon were based on an initial median line. Tzimitras pointed out that Israel, like Turkey, has yet to sign or ratify the Law of the Sea.
“This has not stopped the Republic of Cyprus from reaching a delimitation agreement over its EEZ with Israel,” he said. “The fact that the Law of the Sea has not been signed by Turkey should not be an obstacle … International law does not put any obstacles in place if countries have a true willingness to solve their bilateral or multilateral disputes.”
Ioannides saw a significant hurdle to Turkey and Greece resolving a difference of opinion that has lasted decades.
“They’ve conducted 60 or 70 rounds of bilateral discussions on the Aegean dispute to no avail. That’s why I’m not very optimistic about it,” he said, wondering how far Athens might be willing to deviate from the median line. “There might be a deadlock again.”
