Aegean Sea continental shelf case : Greece v. Turkey revisited

Abstract

The present paper addresses the legal dispute between Greece and Turkey concerning the Aegean Sea continental shell. It is a dispute regulated by International Law and more specifically by the branch of International Law regulating the regime in seas and oceans. It gradually answers the question of whether there are prospects for its resolution, after examining the legal framework governing the Law of Seas and describing carefully the occurrences of the dispute in the Aegean. Since we should not take for granted that the area where the problem is located is known to the reader, we shall first try to provide some geographical information about it: Greece is a country in Southern Europe, bordering the Aegean Sea, Ionian Sea, and the Mediterranean Sea, between Albania and Turkey, which is located in Southeastern Europe and Southwestern Asia, bordering the Black Sea, between Bulgaria and Georgia, and bordering the Aegean Sea and the Mediterranean Sea, between Greece and Syria. The geographical and geological formation of the Mediterranean make it a complex and ideal case to apply the principles of the International Law of the Sea. The eastern part of the Mediterranean is one of the richest in the world in oil resources. This fact causes disputes for the exploration of the seabed between some of the twenty-one Mediterranean countries who count on the exploitation of the natural resources for their economic survival and development. Economic political and security reasons could lead to a disagreement about the delimitation of the maritime boundaries, especially between riparian neighbours. The source of the dispute between Greece and Turkey, the Aegean Sea, is a part of the Mediterranean Sea, located in the East, between the Greek peninsula on the West and Asia Minor on the East, with its 612 km. of length and 299 km. of width. There are about 2,000 Greek islands in the area and the term "Archipelago" was formerly used to describe the sea.