Bloomberg: Turkey Moves to Legislate ‘Blue Homeland’; Athens Dismisses Expansionist Narrative

Bloomberg connected Friday echoed galore property reports retired of Turkey implicit the caller play claiming that the Erdogan medication will submit authorities formally codifying its revisionist “Blue Homeland” (Mavi Vatan) doctrine into home law.

Such a move, if it proves true, would aggravate tensions with Greece and Cyprus, among others, implicit maritime claims successful the Aegean and eastbound Mediterranean, arsenic Athens has repeatedly cited baseless Turkish claims regarding maritime instrumentality implicit the past fractional century.

The projected authorities would reportedly specify Turkish maritime jurisdiction zones and reenforce Ankara’s long-standing positions connected “grey zones” successful the Aegean, continental support interpretations extracurricular the halfway of UNCLOS provisions and the 2019 Turkey-Libya maritime memorandum – which Athens, the EU and different determination countries see arsenic baseless and illegal.

Greek officials person responded by stressing that unilateral maritime claims transportation nary ineligible standing under planetary law. Meanwhile, Greek Foreign Minister George Gerapetritis this week, successful fact, stressed immoderate effort to enforce maritime boundaries extracurricular internationally recognized ineligible frameworks is “bound to fail,” emphasizing that the UN Convention connected the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) reflects binding customary planetary law, careless of whether Turkey has ratified it.

Athens has consistently maintained that Greek islands person afloat sovereign and maritime rights, including entitlement to continental support and Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) provisions under planetary law. Greek officials besides cull Turkish references to “gray zones” successful the Aegean, arguing that sovereignty implicit the islands is intelligibly defined by planetary treaties.

Greek media besides person linked the projected authorities to broader Turkish revisionist claims successful the region, peculiarly pursuing caller tensions involving maritime enactment betwixt Astypalaia and Kos and the submission of maritime spatial zones to the EU.

In the past, diplomatic circles and geopolitical experts connected the Greek broadside person progressively – and often mockingly – linked Ankara’s “Blue Homeland” doctrine to a conception derisively called “turkography”, namely, a deeper effort by authoritative Turkey to institutionalize revisionist geopolitical narratives done home law, combining naval strategy, vigor claims and humanities individuality into a unified doctrine.

Athens maintains that such approaches cannot override the treaty-based planetary ineligible bid governing sovereignty and maritime jurisdiction successful the Aegean and eastbound Mediterranean.

Source: tovima.com