What is Turkey attempting with the new bill on “disputed areas” in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean?

A study by Bloomberg correspondents successful Ankara has raised questions, according to which Turkey is preparing to taxable a measure to parliament successful bid to found maritime jurisdiction successful disputed areas of the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean. According to sources cited successful the report, the determination could trigger renewed tensions successful a portion with existing and imaginable earthy state reserves.

The draught instrumentality is said to correspond Turkey’s archetypal measurement toward consolidating its claims and officially declaring rights implicit imaginable earthy state vigor resources, according to the aforesaid anonymous sources.

However, the study does not intelligibly explicate what precisely this Turkish legislative inaugural entails, since Turkey has already submitted to the UN the amerciable and unilaterally drawn outer limits of its continental support successful the Eastern Mediterranean. It is truthful unclear whether this is simply a legislative regularisation based connected those existing claims.

In the Aegean, meanwhile, it is not known precisely what this regularisation would supply for, arsenic Turkey has repeatedly challenged not lone Greece’s sovereign rights but besides the sovereignty of definite islands, thereby illegally claiming maritime zones that autumn nether Greek sovereignty.

These moves by Ankara are believed apt to beryllium presented domestically arsenic a effect to Greece’s initiatives, including the Greek-Egyptian EEZ delimitation agreement, the Marine Parks project, and the statement with Chevron for exploration successful the blocks southbound of Crete.