“The Blue Motherland is a strategy. This is not another claim. It didn’t just end up in a long list of Greco-Turkish disputes. Blue Homeland includes all previous claims and offers the opportunity for new ones. The Blue Home strategy allows Turkey to claim the entire Eastern Mediterranean outside of international law, but with the logic of power. This is a vital space that Turkey needs around itself, and based on this, it claims without relying on international law at all,” said the Deputy Minister of Education and Deputy Professor of International Law and Foreign Policy at Panteion Angelos Sirygos University from Cyprus. .

Speech at the eventThe question of the delimitation of maritime zones in the Eastern Mediterranean“The plenary session of the Presidents of the Greek Bar Associations and the Pan-Cyprus Bar Association (PDA) was jointly organized in Nicosia, Mr. Sirygos stressed that Turkey’s goals in Greece and Cyprus are twofold:

“As for Greece, its goal is to draw the country into negotiations on all issues, even on such issues as the belonging of Lesbos, Chios, Samos, Ikaria, Dodecanese, Lemnos, Samothrace to Greece. As for Cyprus, to confirm that hydrocarbons cannot be exploited without the consent of Turkey.”

“In its perception, it is obvious that Turkey perceives Cyprus and, in particular, the relations of Greece with Cyprus, as its relations with the occupied territories. He cannot understand – for Cyprus – that this is a different state, that he has his own policy. He believes that the Greeks are imposing their point of view on the Cypriot government. Whatever happens to Turkey and the occupied territories, Turkey transfers it to the encirclement of Cyprus. In this context, he sees a united Greece and Cyprus.”

After presenting maps of Turkey’s occasional claims to Greece and Cyprus from November 1973 to the end of 2020, and referring to the agreements that have been signed in recent years, Mr. Sirygos answered the question whether he thinks that between Greece and Turkey: “I believe that as the days and weeks pass and we get closer to the elections in Turkey, the risk of an episode will increase, but this is not what Turkey is aiming for. Turkey admits that “shooting in our direction can kill someone”, but this is not its goal. Its goal is to draw us into full-fledged negotiations.”

As Mr. Sirigos emphasized, in accordance with its strategy, Turkey, as a continental state, eliminates the rights to the islands located within 200 miles from its coasts. “For an island to qualify for a maritime zone, it must be at least 400 miles away. Because everything that is at such a distance is destroyed by the Turkish continental shelf. Only the continental coasts of another state can claim maritime zones. Thus, according to Turkey, the Aegean Sea is divided in half.”

Sirygos spoke of the many parallel crises that will develop in the coming period, which he said will concern southern Crete with the possible exploration work of Orouts Reis, the presence of the drilling ship Abdulhamit between Rhodes and Cyprus, the demilitarization of the eastern Aegean island and immigration, with mainly communicative movements from Turkey. “All this will take you one step further towards what we would call a violation of international law.”

In conclusion, Mr Sirigos compared Turkish foreign policy to the Spanish inns of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, which, he said, everyone who entered found what the previous ones had left: “This also applies to Turkish foreign policy: it it doesn’t matter who claimed it. Everything remains as in hotels for the use of all subsequent ones.

Source: RES-IPE