War almost broke out between the two NATO countries in 1996 already over an uninhabited rocky island. This time, however, it’s over much more: the Greek islands of Lesbos, Chios, Samos and Ikaria off Turkey’s west coast, as well as the Dodecanese islands, which are also near the Turkish coast and belong to Greece – the largest of which is Rhodes. Turkey accuses Greece of violating conditions under which it received the islands after the world wars, and therefore questions Greece’s claim to the islands.
This wasn’t meant as a joke, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned in June, reminding Athens of Greece’s 1922 defeat in the war against Turkey : “I call on Greece to respect international agreements and not militarize these islands. I am not joking, I am saying it seriously. I hereby warn Greece once again to adopt reason and renounce all dreams, speeches and actions, which it will regret in the end, just as it did 100 years ago. Turkey will not renounce its rights in the Aegean and it will use the powers it has under the international agreements on the demilitarization of the islands”.
Erdogan invokes two treaties. First is the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, which established the borders of the new Republic of Turkey and gave Greece the islands of Lesbos, Chios, Samos and Ikaria. It also refers to the 1947 Treaty of Paris, by which Italy ceded the Dodecanese Islands to Greece after World War II. The treaties stipulated that the islands were to be demilitarized, that is, that Greece was not to use them for military purposes.
But Athens has stationed military forces on the islands, in violation of the treaties, criticized Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Cavusoglu two days before Erdogan’s appearance. “We protest against this violation of international law. We have written to the United Nations : These islands have been granted to Greece under certain conditions, the treaties are very clear on that. But Greece is violating the conditions and militarizing the islands. If Greece doesn’t stop doing that, then consequently Greek sovereignty over the islands is up for debate”.
Greece’s response
For its part, Greece responded on May 25th with a letter to the United Nations. In it, it urges Turkey not to question its sovereignty over the Aegean islands and to respect the existing borders with Greece.
In the letter, Greece reiterates its view : that the only difference with Turkey is the demarcation of the two countries’ maritime zones – the continental shelf and the exclusive economic zone. In addition, Greece appeals to Turkey, for its part, to work for a peaceful resolution of this outstanding issue, in the spirit of good neighborliness. But in order to resolve this decades-old dispute around the maritime zones, the governments of both countries would first have to agree on some fundamental points.
The problem lies in asking whether islands can also claim these maritime zones. However, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the constitution of the oceans, so to speak, provides that islands can also claim a territorial sea and also an exclusive economic zone and a continental shelf, which is extremely important precisely for fishing and mineral resources. And Greece assumes that the islands in the Aegean can do exactly that and Turkey denies this right of the Greek islands. Either Turkey and Greece come to an agreement, which seems unlikely at the moment, and now, after these last verbal escalations more and more unlikely. The other possibility would be an international court or arbitration. To be honest, however, this path is just as unlikely.
An agreement and also going to court would namely require good bilateral relations and negotiations, which is not the case between Turkey and Greece. Even more: Turkey has long since left the level of the dispute over the maritime zones. Now it is about state sovereignty over islands like Rhodes, Kos, Lesbos, Chios. Indeed, international treaties would provide for demilitarization of certain Aegean islands, but can the Turkish demand for demilitarization of the islands really be coupled with the question of who owns the islands?
The causality here is pretty weak. The situation is more two separate legal situations. Namely the transfer of the islands to Greece on the one hand, and then a requirement for demilitarization, which Greece may have broken on the other hand. That would then be a breach of the treaty, but not of the kind that would retroactively invalidate the transfer of the islands.
In the North Aegean, the islands of Limnos and Samothràki are ruled by the 1923 Lausanne Straits Agreement. This agreement provided for the demilitarization of the straits – the Dardanelles as well as the Turkish and Greek islands around it. But this agreement was replaced in 1936 by the Montreux Straits Agreement and there the word demilitarization no longer appears. In addition, it must be taken into consideration that the right of self-defense applies to all Greek islands. Nobody can deny that to Greece. There is a strong Turkish army positioned opposite the Greek islands. Greece remembers the 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus. Removing the Greek military would mean that the islands would be left defenseless in the event of an attack.
Moreover, the Turkish government initially did not object to remilitarization, but sometimes legally interpreted the agreements differently in subsequent years. You would think the islands have only been militarized since last week to begin with – when in fact it’s been going on since the 1960s. Turkey never said anything about it before, and now all of a sudden it’s making it a big issue. Yet these islands have been militarized for decades. In that sense, this seems like an artificial crisis.
An artificial crisis – but why did Turkey launch it? One motive can be gleaned from the words of Turkish Foreign Minister Cavusoglu when he protested the militarization of the islands in June: “Greeks are putting up a front against Turkey everywhere. They are lobbying the Americans not to give Turkey their F-16 fighter jets. We’ve never done anything like that, despite all our disagreements with Greece. They arrive, they smile in our face, they hug us. And then they turn around and internationally spray hatred and anger and lies and insinuations against us.”
The Turkish foreign minister was alluding to a speech by Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis to the U.S. Congress in Washington in May. In it, Mitsotakis demanded that the Americans not supply weapons to the eastern Mediterranean – by which he meant, in particular, the F16 fighter jets that Ankara is seeking. This appearance had embittered the Turkish government, because Mitsotakis had been in Ankara only a few weeks earlier and had said nothing about it. The Greek prime minister’s appearance in Washington was a trigger for the new dispute in the Aegean Sea.
The more Turkish President Erdogan threatens Greece, the more Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis looks for allies and pushes the issue to the public – also to put pressure. He does not want to get involved in Erdogan’s provocations and hopes for a de-escalation.
https://www.mfa.gov.tr/background-note-on-aegean-dispute.en.mfa
By The European Institute for International Law and International Relations.
