Greece’s newly appointed foreign minister Tuesday revealed Athens was prepared to start talks with Türkiye to resolve the long-standing issue over maritime borders that has brought the two neighbors to the brink of war many times.
The Greek government wants to “take advantage of the ongoing positive climate” in order to come to an agreement on delineating the areas in which each country has exclusive economic rights, including the right to explore for natural gas, Giorgos Gerapetritis said.
Türkiye has disputed areas of potential gas reserves claimed by Greece in parts of the Eastern Mediterranean. It’s also where Greece says it’s seeking to start a search for offshore oil and gas reserves. Türkiye claims much of where several sizable offshore natural gas deposits have been discovered.
The feud over exploratory drilling rights had culminated in a naval standoff three years ago.
Another key issue at the heart of Greek-Turkish tensions that Gerapetritis wants resolved is the extent of the continental shelf – and by extension, Greek sovereign territory – of Greek islands near Türkiye’s coastline in the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean.
“All that remains is to determine whether Türkiye also sincerely wishes to forge a path of rapprochement, without this meaning that Greece will go back on its red lines or its national priorities,” Gerapetritis said after talks with his Greek Cypriot counterpart, Constantinos Kombos.
Türkiye, which has the longest continental coastline in the region, doesn’t recognize that Greek islands off its borders have a continental shelf and rejects maritime boundary claims of Greece and Greek Cyprus, stressing that these exaggerated claims violate the sovereign rights of both Türkiye and Turkish Cypriots, while Greece insists that position contravenes international law.
In November 2019, Türkiye and Libya signed a maritime delimitation deal that provided a legal framework to prevent any fait accompli by regional states. Accordingly, attempts by the Greek government to appropriate huge parts of Libya's continental shelf, when a political crisis hit the North African country in 2011, were averted.
The agreement also confirmed that Türkiye and Libya are maritime neighbors.
In response, Egypt and Greece signed an agreement in August 2020, designating an EEZ in the Eastern Mediterranean between themselves. Maritime zones give rights to states over natural resources and the Eastern Mediterranean, which remains largely unexplored.
Greece often accuses NATO ally Türkiye of stepping up hostility in the Eastern Mediterranean over their outstanding conflicts, which also include overlapping claims over their airspace, the ethnically split island of Cyprus, irregular migration and the status of the Aegean islands.
Greece has been building a military presence on the Aegean islands since the 1960s in violation of both the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne and the Paris Treaty of 1947, which awarded the islands to Greece on condition that they are kept demilitarized. Ankara argues the move is a provocative action that frustrates its good faith efforts for peace.
However, despite standing issues, the neighbors have promised to shelve disputes that have caused repeated rounds of tension and even the risk of war over decades in the wake of devastating earthquakes in southeastern Türkiye in February.
Just before his reelection last month, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis told The Associated Press (AP) in an interview that he would extend “a hand of friendship” to Türkiye.
In a separate interview, he wholly rejected any possibility of discussing the status of the islands with Ankara and claimed the delimitation of maritime zones was the only outstanding issue between the nations.
Mitsotakis has since promised to seek a reformulation of a roadmap with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan at the upcoming NATO summit in Vilnius.
When the two leaders spoke over the phone last week, both expressed hope that the recent thaw would be “auspicious” for better relations.
