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Ankara warns Athens not to exceed the allowed limits for the militarization of the island. It is the latest chapter in climbing in the eastern Mediterranean
by Michele Pignatelli
Ankara warns Athens not to exceed the allowed limits for the militarization of the island. It is the latest chapter in climbing in the eastern Mediterranean
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«If the militarization of Kastellorizo it will exceed the limits established by the Paris Treaties of 1947, “it will be Greece that loses.” This was stated by the Turkish Foreign Minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, after the Turkish media showed images of Hellenic soldiers arriving on the island. And the clarifications of the Greek source were of little use, according to which they are not new units but a simple alternation.
The controversy thus returns to feed i winds of war blowing in the eastern Mediterranean, while Ankara, in a new gesture of defiance towards Athens and its European allies, extends the energy explorations of the ship Oruc Reis off the coast of Cyprus until 12 September.
The islet “Mediterraneo” and the knot of territorial waters
It was precisely the race for gas fields Discovered in recent years to rekindle rivalries and territorial disputes this summer that have never abated, of which the islet that was the scene of the Mediterranean film – the smallest in the Dodecanese, just 12 square kilometers – is the emblem. It was returned from Italy to Greece after World War II, with the Paris Peace Treaties, but it is only two kilometers off the southern coast of Turkey.
Athens, like the other islands of the Aegean Sea, takes this into account to define its continental shelf and therefore its exclusive economic zone, in accordance with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (1982); Ankara, which has not signed the Convention and would be sanctioned with that criterion, would instead like to trust distance from its long coast and claims control of the waters immediately south of Katellorizo (and not only: just think of the disputes with Cyprus), as reiterated by President Recep Tayyp Erdogan: “The desire to chain us to our shores – thundered – ignoring the 780 thousand square kilometers of Turkey and taking into account an island of 10 square kilometers, it is the clearest proof of injustice.
The rush through the fields
In addition to the discovery of deposits, the recent partition agreements of the eastern Mediterranean between the two main contenders and other countries have also contributed to heating the dispute over territorial waters: Turkish -libico signed in November 2019 between Erdogan and the Prime Minister of the Government of Tripoli, Fayyez Serraj; and that concluded in response on August 6 between Greece and egypt.
