A letter allegedly signed by Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan alludes to secret negotiations between Ankara and the Islamist administration, which succeeded the Assad regime in war-torn Syria late last year, to delimitate maritime boundaries in the northeastern corner of the Mediterranean between the two states.
Erdogan’s Turkey has been the most prominent and significant backer of assorted rebels and anti-Assad fighters for a decade and a half, most deemed as Islamists and even jihadis affiliated with al Qaeda, while the Turkish military controls swaths of land on the Syrian side of a common border – supposedly to prevent the areas from being controlled by Kurdish militias.
According to the Nordic Monitor website, a well-known anti-Erdogan outlet, “multiple Turkish institutions have been instructed to draft an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) agreement with Syria. The aim is to safeguard the interests of both Turkey and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (KKTC), a breakaway (pseudo) state on the Mediterranean island recognized only by Ankara.”
The controversial, and by all accounts, illegal and void map showing the 2019 Turkey-Libya maritime delimitation accord.
If the report proves accurate, the development will follow the pattern set by the controversial 2019 Turkey-Libya maritime MoU, which Athens and the EU consider illegal and void.
“With the overthrow of the Baath regime and the transfer of power to a transitional government, efforts are being carried out in coordination with our relevant institutions to determine the maritime boundary with Syria and to delimit maritime jurisdiction areas beyond territorial waters, in a way that protects our country’s rights and interests,” Nordic Monitor has Turkish FM Hakan Fidan as writing in a letter. The latter is dated June 16, 2025, and addressed to the speaker’s office of Turkey’s grand assembly.
File photo: Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan
Fidan also appears as committed to “defending the rights and interests” of the Turkish Cypriot pseudo-stated established in the one-third of Cyprus that Turkey occupies.
