A latest NAVTEX issued by Turkey on Thursday announced that the Piri Reis oceanographic vessel will conduct research in the central Aegean between Oct. 4 and 14, a development that triggered an immediate reaction by Athens, given that the coordinates issued by an Izmir maritime station are within a prospective Greek continental shelf.
Hours after the announcement, a Hellenic Navy hydrographic station on the northeast Aegean Island of Limnos issued a “counter-NAVTEX”, calling the earlier Izmir notice to mariners, which essentially reserves maritime blocks in the north-central Aegean, “illegal”.
Delimitating a continental shelf between Greece and Turkey in the Aegean has been futile exercise for more than a half a century, especially in light of Ankara’s refusal to recognize provisions of the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) to delineate such geographical indicator. A continental shelf is the submerged prolongation of a coastal state’s land mass.
The Turkish side had issued a similar NAVTEX last month, with Athens responding with a “counter-NAVTEX” at the time.
At the same time, the Greek side has downplayed similar such actions by Ankara, with DM Nikos Dendias telling reporters this week that specific vessel is “not worrying us”.
