Aegean dispute

Territorial waters give the littoral state full control over air navigation in the airspace above, and partial control over shipping, although foreign ships (both civil and military) are normally guaranteed innocent passage through them. The standard width of territorial waters that countries are customarily entitled to has steadily increased in the course of the 20th century: from initially 3 nautical miles (5.6 km) at the beginning of the century, to 6 nautical miles (11 km), and currently 12 nautical miles (22 km). The current value has been enshrined in treaty law by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea of 1982 (Art.3). In the Aegean the territorial waters claimed by both sides are still at 6 miles. The possibility of an extension to 12 miles has fuelled Turkish concerns over a possible disproportionate increase in Greek-controlled space. Turkey has refused to become a member of the convention and does not consider itself bound by it. Turkey considers the convention as res inter alios acta, i.e. a treaty that can only be binding to the signing parties but not to others. Greece, which is a party to the convention, has stated that it reserves the right to apply this rule and extend its waters to 12 miles at some point in the future, although it has never actually attempted to do so. It holds that the 12-mile rule is not only treaty law but also customary law, as per the wide consensus established among the international community. Against this, Turkey argues that the special geographical properties of the Aegean Sea make a strict application of the 12-mile rule in this case illicit in the interest of equity.[2] Turkey has itself applied the customary 12-mile limit to its coasts outside the Aegean.

Tensions over the 12-mile question ran highest between the two countries in the early 1990s, when the Law of the Sea was going to come into force. On 9 June 1995, the Turkish parliament officially declared that unilateral action by Greece would constitute a casus belli, i.e. reason to go to war. This declaration has been condemned by Greece as a violation of the Charter of the United Nations, which forbids "the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state".[1]

The national airspace is normally defined as the airspace covering a state's land territory and its adjacent territorial waters. National airspace gives the sovereign state a large degree of control over foreign air traffic. While civil aviation is normally allowed passage under international treaties, foreign military and other state aircraft (unlike military vessels in the territorial waters) do not have a right to free passage through another state's national airspace.[3] The delimitation of national airspace claimed by Greece is unique, as it does not coincide with the boundary of the territorial waters. Greece claims 10 nautical miles (19 km) of airspace, as opposed to currently 6 miles of territorial waters. Since 1974, Turkey has refused to acknowledge the validity of the outer 4-mile belt of airspace that extends beyond the Greek territorial waters. Turkey cites the statutes of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) of 1948, as containing a binding definition that both zones must coincide.[4] Against this, Greece argues that:

• its 10-nautical-mile (19 km) claim predates the ICAO statute, having been fixed in 1931, and that it was acknowledged by all its neighbours, including Turkey, before and after 1948, hence constituting an established right;[5]
• its 10-mile claim can also be interpreted as just a partial, selective use of the much wider rights guaranteed by the Law of the Sea, namely the right to a 12-mile zone both in the air and on the water;
• Greek territorial waters are set at the 6-mile boundary only because of Turkey's casus belli.

The conflict over military flight activities has led to a practice of continuous tactical military provocations, with Turkish aircraft flying in the outer 4-mile zone of contentious airspace and Greek aircraft intercepting them. These encounters often lead to so-called "dog-fights", dangerous flight maneuvers that have repeatedly ended in casualties on both sides. In one instance in 1996, it has been alleged that a Turkish plane was accidentally shot down by a Greek one.[6]

In the context of the Aegean dispute, the term continental shelf refers to a littoral state's exclusive right to economic exploitation of resources on and under the sea-bed, for instance oil drilling, in an area adjacent to its territorial waters and extending into the High Seas. The width of the continental shelf is commonly defined for purposes of international law as not exceeding 200 nautical miles. Where the territories of two states lie closer opposite each other than double that distance, the division is made by the median line. The concept of the continental shelf is closely connected to that of an exclusive economic zone, which refers to a littoral state's control over fishery and similar rights. Both concepts were developed in international law from the middle of the 20th century, and were codified in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea in 1982.

The dispute between Turkey and Greece is to what degree the Greek islands off the Turkish coast should be taken into account for determining the Greek and Turkish economic zones. Turkey argues that the notion of "continental shelf", by its very definition, implies that distances should be measured from the continental mainland, claiming that the sea-bed of the Aegean geographically forms a natural prolongation of the Anatolian land mass. This would mean for Turkey to be entitled to economic zones up to the median line of the Aegean (leaving out, of course, the territorial waters around the Greek islands in its eastern half, which would remain as Greek exclaves.) Greece, on the other hand, claims that all islands must be taken into account on an equal basis. This would mean that Greece would gain the economic rights to almost the whole of the Aegean.[2]

In this matter, Greece has the UN Law of the Sea on its side, although the Convention restricts the application of this rule to islands of a notable size, as opposed to small uninhabitable islets and rocks. The precise delimitation of the economic zones is the only one of all the Aegean issues where Greece has officially acknowledged that Turkey has legitimate interests that might require some international process of arbitration or compromise between the two sides.[5]

Tensions over the continental shelf were particularly high during the mid-1970s and again the late 1980s, when it was believed that the Aegean Sea might hold rich oil reserves. Turkey at that time conducted exploratory oceanographic research missions in parts of the disputed area. These were perceived as a dangerous provocation by Greece, which led to a buildup of mutual military threats in 1976 and again in 1987.[5]

On 2 September 2019, Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan appeared in a photograph with a map that depicted nearly half of the Aegean Sea and an area up to the eastern coast of Crete as belonging to Turkey. The map was displayed during an official ceremony at the National Defense University in Istanbul[7] and shows an area labelled as "Turkey's blue homeland" stretching up to the median line of the Aegean, enclosing the Greek islands in that part of the Aegean without any indication of the Greek territorial waters around them. The Greek side expressed its regret, with the Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias stating that Turkey's tactics are "communication campaigns that cannot change international legitimacy, merely establishing Turkey's image as a perpetrator".[8]

On 13 November 2019, Turkey submitted to the United Nations a series of claims to Exclusive Economic Zones in the Eastern Mediterranean that are in conflict with Greek claims to the same areas – including a sea zone extending west of the southeastern Aegean island of Rhodes and south of Crete. The Turkish claims were made in an official letter by Turkey's Permanent Representative to the UN Feridun Sinirlioglu, which reflect Ankara's notion of a "Blue Homeland" (Mavi Vatan). Greece condemned these claims as legally unfounded, incorrect and arbitrary, and an outright violation of Greece's sovereignty.[9]

Turkey holds the view, unlike most other relevant states,[10][11][12][13][14][15] that no islands can have a full Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ)[16][17] and should only be entitled to a 12 nautical mile reduced EEZ or no EEZ at all rather than the usual 200 miles that Turkey and every other country are entitled to. In this context, Turkey, for the first time on December 1, 2019, claimed that the Greek island of Kastellorizo shouldn't have any EEZ at all, because, from the equity-based[18] Turkish viewpoint, it is a small island immediately across the Turkish mainland (which, according to Turkey, has the longest coastline), and isn't supposed to generate a maritime jurisdiction area four thousand times larger than its own surface. Furthermore, according to Turkey's Foreign Ministry, an EEZ has to be coextensive with the continental shelf, based on the relative lengths of adjacent coastlines[15] and described any opposing views supporting the right of islands to their EEZ as "maximalist and uncompromising Greek and Greek Cypriot claims".[18][19] On 20 January 2020, the Turkish President Erdogan challenged even the rights of Crete, Greece's largest island and 5th largest in the Mediterranean, stating that "They talk about a continental shelf around Crete. There is no continental shelf around the islands, there is no such thing, there, it is only sovereign waters."[20]

Turkey's view, however, is a 'unique' interpretation not shared by any other country and not in accordance to the United Nations' Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) treaty, ratified by 167 countries but not Turkey. Turkey has refused to ratify the UNCLOS, and argues that it is not bound by its provisions that award islands maritime zones. The UNCLOS, and particularly Article 121 clearly states that the islands can have exclusive economic zones and continental shelf just like every other land territory.[21] The Ambassadors of the United States and Russia to Athens, Geoffrey Pyatt and Andrey Maslov respectively, while commenting on Turkey's view, stated that all the islands have the same rights to EEZ and continental shelf as the mainlands do.[22][23][24] Also the then US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, Aaron Wess Mitchell, criticized the Turkish view, stating that it "is a minority of one versus the rest of the world."[25]

On 28 November 2019, President Erdoğan signed a controversial[26][27][28] Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in Istanbul with the Prime Minister of the Government of National Accord of Libya (GNA), Fayez al-Sarraj, to demarcate maritime zones in the Eastern Mediterranean on an area between Turkey and Libya, appearing to "write [the Greek island of] Crete off the map entirely" in the words of Foreign Policy's Keith Johnson.[29]

This agreement drew condemnation by Greece and the international community, including the rival Tobruk government led by the Libyan House of Representatives and Khalifa Haftar, the European Union, United States, Russia, Egypt, Cyprus, Malta, France, Germany, Italy, Serbia, Israel, Syria, and the Arab League, as a violation of the International Law of the Sea and the Skhirat Agreement.[lower-alpha 1] The Tobruk-based House of Representatives consequently started a bid to suspend the GNA from the Arab League, but did not succeed.[55] The United States stated that it was "provocative" and a threat to the stability of the region.[56][57] Acting foreign minister Israel Katz announced Israel's opposition to the maritime border accord between Ankara and Tripoli, and confirmed that the deal was "illegal" according to the Israeli official position, while at the same time noting that Israel does not want a conflict with Turkey.[58]

In response to these developments, the GNA Ambassador to Greece Mohamed Younis Menfi was summoned to the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Athens, where he was given an ultimatum of seven days, to disclose until 5 December the agreement his country signed with Turkey on maritime boundaries, or will be considered "persona non-grata" and be expelled from Greece.[59] The authorities of the European Union also urged for the disclosure of the deal's details.[42] Also, the Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis met with the Turkish President on the sidelines of the 2019 London summit to discuss about it.[60] Greek Foreign Minister Dendias revealed that, earlier this year, in September, his GNA counterpart, foreign minister Mohamed Taher Siala had reassured the Greek side that Libya would never sign any illegal agreements with Turkey that would violate the Greek sovereign rights.[61][62] On 6 December, the GNA Ambassador to Athens was expelled from Greece,[63] prompting strong reactions in both the GNA and Turkey.[64][28] Furthermore, the President of the Tobruk-based Libyan Parliament, Agila Saleh Issa Gwaider, who condemned and opposed the GNA-Turkey deal, was invited to Athens by the President of the Greek Parliament Konstantinos Tasoulas for talks.[65]

Ankara asked for the agreement on maritime boundaries from the Government of National Accord (GNA) in the Libyan Civil War, in exchange for Turkey's long-time support against the rival Tobruk-based House of Representatives.[66]

It is believed that Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is exploiting the weakness of the GNA headed by Fayez al-Sarraj to force it to sign "illegal" agreements which are a serious breach of international laws that disregards the lawful rights of other eastern Mediterranean countries. Through these exploitations, Turkey is trying to assert its regional power and its control of the Mediterranean sea, at the expense of the rights of the other Mediterranean nations and undermining the peace-making efforts to resolve the Libyan Civil War and the curb of migrant influx to Europe.[67][68][69][70][71][72]

On 4 December 2019, the Turkish Minister of Energy and Natural Resources, Fatih Dönmez, announced Turkey's intentions to start awarding licences to drills for natural gas in Greek waters which Ankara claimed through the Turkey-GNA deal, once it is approved by the two countries' parliaments.[73] The same day, Turkish President Erdogan stated that he is "ready" to start negotiations with Athens for the delimitation of maritime borders between Turkey and Greece, under the condition that the negotiations are based on Turkey's peculiar perception which is stripping the Greek islands of their sovereign rights, and is violating the UNCLOS treaty.[74] The intentions for drills in Greek waters, was confirmed by President Erdogan on a public broadcast of the Mavi Vatan map and the Turkey-GNA deal.[75] On 5 December 2019, the Turkish Parliament ratified the contentious GNA-Turkey maritime borders deal, where it had a strong backing by four of Turkey's five major political parties - with the exception of the pro-Kurdish People's Democracy Party (HDP).[76][77] The Libyan Parliament however blocked the ratification and rejected the deal unanimously, with the President of the Parliament sending a letter to the United Nations declaring it as null and void.[78][79][80][81] Even though the ratification by the Libyan Parliament failed, GNA deposited the maritime agreement to the United Nations on December 27,[82] with Turkey following on March 2 of the next year.[83]

Experts fear that Greece and Turkey are closer to an armed conflict due to Turkey's recent moves.[84] On 9 December, the vessels of the Libyan Navy which are under the control of the Libyan National Army, announced that they received mandate to sink any Turkish research vessels or drillships that may attempt to conduct researches south of Crete, as part of the Turkey-GNA deal.[85] In reaction, France signaled its intention to send French frigates and ships to the south of Crete, in coordination with Athens, and Italy sent the Italian frigate "Martinengo" to monitor, patrol and safeguard the sea around Cyprus, which has been the subject of claims by Turkey.[86][87]

On 30 May 2020, the Turkish Petroleum Corporation (TPAO) applied to the Turkish Ministry of Energy for exploration permits on the Greek continental shelf, just 6 miles off Crete, Karpathos and Rhodes.[88][89] TPAO's applications were published to the Turkey's Government Gazette, with a map showing the 24 blocks that Ankara has demarcated from Turkey's shores to the point where its claimed sea borders meet these of Libya, based on the Turkey-GNA maritime agreement. This promted strong reactions both in Greece and abroad, with the Turkish Ambassador to Athens, Burak Özügergin, being summoned to the Greek Foreign Ministry, and the European Union's High Representative of Foreign Affairs, Josep Borrell warning Ankara that the good EU-Turkey relations "will depend critically on the respect of the sovereignty of Cyprus and Greece on the waters under dispute".[90][91][92] Furthermore, the United States criticized Turkey, with the US Assistant Secretary of State for Energy Resources Francis R. Fannon stating, during a quadrilateral conference organized by both the American-Hellenic Chamber of Commerce and the Atlantic Council with the participation of USA, Greece, Israel and Cyprus, that such "provocative actions" must end and that the Turkey-GNA agreement "cannot as a legal matter affect the rights or obligations of third states" such as Greece.[93][94][95]

On 9 June, and in response to Turkey's moves in the region, Greece and Italy signed through their Foreign Ministers Nikos Dendias and Luigi Di Maio a "historic" agreement for the demarcation of the EEZ between the two countries. The agreement confirms the full rights of islands to their continental shelf and EEZ, in line with the UNCLOS. It uses the median line that was used for the 1977 Italy-Greece continental shelf demarcation agreement as the basis of the EEZ boundary.[96][97] In the mutually agreed minor adjustments, part of the EEZ of the small Greek islands of Strofades, Othoni, and Mathraki was traded off for an equal area elsewhere (i.e part of the EEZ of Italy's Calabria).[98][99][100] According to Dendias, this creates an extremely favorable legal precedent for Greece in its dispute with Turkey.[100] The United States, the Libyan House of Representatives, and the LNA led by Halifa Haftar, welcomed the EEZ agreement between Greece and Italy, with the US calling it "exemplary" and "an example of how these things should be done [in the region]", while reiterating their opposition to the Turkey-GNA EEZ agreement.[101] Following the agreement, the Libyan House of Representatives sent an official invitation to the Hellenic Parliament for a similar EEZ agreement to be reached between Libya and Greece as well.[102] Furthermore, on June 18, a high-level delegation from Greece is visiting Egypt to negotiate and sign an agreement demarcating the Egyptian-Greek EEZ.[103]

On 2 January 2020, the leaders of Greece, Cyprus, and Israel signed an accord to build the EastMed pipeline. The planned pipeline will transport natural gas from the Levantine Basin to Greece and from there to Italy and the rest of Europe.[104][105][106] Energy expert Brenda Schaffer interprets the EastMed pipeline (forecasted to be able to cater to 10% of Europe's gas needs, and decrease reliance on Russia) as a joint attempt to exclude Turkey from the "Club Med" gas club,[29] and the decision to sign the pipeline accord was taken in response to the Turkish-GNA deal.[107]

Unlike the issues described so far, the question of flight information regions (FIR) does not affect the two states' sovereignty rights in the narrow sense. A FIR is a zone of responsibility assigned to a state within the framework of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). It relates to the responsibility for regulating civil aviation. A FIR may stretch beyond the national airspace of a country, i.e. over areas of high seas, or in some cases even over the airspace of another country. It does not give the responsible state the right to prohibit flights by foreign aircraft; however, foreign aircraft are obliged to submit flight plans to the authorities administrating the FIR. Two separate disputes have arisen over flight control in the Aegean: the issue of a unilaterally proposed revision of the FIR demarcation, and the question of what rights and obligations arise from the FIR with respect to military as opposed to civil flights.

By virtue of an agreement signed in 1952, the whole airspace over the Aegean, up to the boundary of the national airspace of Turkey, has been assigned to Athens FIR, administered by Greece. Shortly after the Cyprus crisis of 1974, Turkey unilaterally attempted to change this arrangement, issuing a notice to airmen (NOTAM) stating that it would take over the administration of the eastern half of the Aegean airspace, including the national airspace of the Greek islands in that area. Greece responded with a declaration rejecting this move, and declaring the disputed zone unsafe for aviation due to the conflicting claims to authority. This led to some disruption in civil aviation in the area. Turkey later changed its stance, and since 1980 has returned to recognizing Athens FIR in its original demarcation.[5] In practice, the FIR demarcation is currently no longer a disputed issue.

As of 2009, the current controversy over the FIR relates to the question whether the Greek authorities have a right to oversee not only civil but also military flight activities in the international parts of the Aegean airspace. According to common international practice, military aircraft normally submit flight plans to FIR authorities when moving in international airspace, just like civil aircraft do. Turkey refuses to do so, citing the ICAO charter of 1948, which explicitly restricts the scope of its regulations to civil aircraft, arguing that therefore the practice of including military aircraft in the same system is optional. Greece, in contrast, argues that it is obligatory on the basis of later regulations of the ICAO, which it claims have given states the authority to issue more wide-reaching restrictions in the interest of civil aviation safety.

This disagreement has led to similar practical consequences as the issue of 6 versus 10 miles of national airspace, as Greece considers all Turkish military flights not registered with its FIR authorities as transgressions of international air traffic regulations, and routinely has its own air force jets intercepting the Turkish ones. In popular perception in Greece, the issue of Turkish flights in the international part of Athens FIR is often confused with that of the Turkish intrusions in the disputed outer 4-mile belt of Greek airspace. However, in careful official usage, Greek authorities and media distinguish between "violations" (παραβιάσεις) of the national airspace, and "transgressions" (παραβάσεις) of traffic regulations, i.e. of the FIR.

One of the routine interception maneuvers led to a fatal accident on 23 May 2006. Two Turkish F-16s and one reconnaissance F-4 were flying in the international airspace over the southern Aegean at 27,000 feet (8,200 m) without having submitted flight plans to the Greek FIR authorities. They were intercepted by two Greek F-16s off the coast of the Greek island Karpathos. During the ensuing mock dog fight, a Turkish F-16 and a Greek F-16 collided midair and subsequently crashed. The pilot of the Turkish plane survived the crash, but the Greek pilot died. The incident also highlighted another aspect of the FIR issue, a dispute over conflicting claims to responsibility for maritime search and rescue operations. The Turkish pilot reportedly refused to be rescued by the Greek forces that had been dispatched to the area. After the incident, both governments expressed an interest to revive an earlier plan of establishing a direct hotline between the air force commands of both countries in order to prevent escalation of similar situations in the future.

The question of the demilitarized status of some major Greek islands is complicated by a number of facts. Several of the Greek islands in the eastern Aegean as well as the Turkish straits region were placed under various regimes of demilitarization in different international treaties. The regimes developed over time, resulting in difficulties of treaty-interpretation. However, the military status of the islands in question did not constitute a serious problem in the bilateral relations until the Cyprus crisis of 1974, after which both Greece and Turkey re-interpreted the stipulations of the treaties. Greece, claiming an inalienable right to defend itself against Turkish aggression, reinforced its military and National Guard forces in the region. Furthermore, Greece maintains the position that it has the right to demilitarize its islands in the same context as the rest of Europe, where the appliance of demilitarization statute on islands and territories ceased with the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the Warsaw Pact; i.e. the cessation of demilitarization of Italy's Panteleria, Lampedusa, Lampione and Linosa islands, and West Germany from the NATO side, and the cessation of demilitarization of Bulgaria, Romania, East Germany, Hungary and Finland from the Warsaw Pact's side.[108] Turkey, on the other hand, denounces this as an aggressive act by Greece and as a breach of international treaties.[4] From a legal perspective, three groups of islands may be distinguished: (a) the islands right off the Turkish Dardanelles straits, i.e. Lemnos and Samothrace; (b) the Dodecanese islands in the southeast Aegean; and (c) the remaining northeast Aegean islands (Lesbos, Chios, Samos, and Ikaria).

These islands were placed under a demilitarization statute by the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923, to counterbalance the simultaneous demilitarization of the Turkish straits area (the Dardanelles and Bosphorus), Imbros and Tenedos. The demilitarization on the Turkish side was later abolished through the Montreux Convention Regarding the Regime of the Turkish Straits in 1936. Greece holds that, by superseding the relevant sections of the earlier treaty, the convention simultaneously lifted also the Greek obligations with respect to these islands. Against this, Turkey argues that the Montreux treaty did not mention the islands and has not changed their status.[4] Greece, on the other hand, cites Turkish official declarations, by the then Turkish Minister for Foreign Affairs, Rustu Aras, to that effect made in 1936,[109] assuring the Greek side that Turkey would consider the Greek obligations lifted.[5]

These islands were placed under a demilitarization statute after the Second World War by the Treaty of peace with Italy (1947), when Italy ceded them to Greece. Italy had previously not been under any obligation towards Turkey in this respect. Turkey, in turn, was not a party to the 1947 treaty, having been neutral during WWII. Greece therefore holds that the obligations it incurred towards Italy and the other parties in 1947 are res inter alios acta for Turkey in the sense of Article 34 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, which states that a treaty does not create obligations or rights for a third country, and that Turkey thus cannot base any claims on them. Turkey argues that the demilitarization agreement constitutes a status treaty (an objective régime), where according to general rules of treaty law such an exclusion does not hold.

The remaining islands (Lesbos, Chios, Samos, and Ikaria) were placed under a partial demilitarization statute by the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923. It prohibited the establishment of naval bases and fortifications, but allowed Greece to maintain a limited military contingent recruited from the local population, as well as police forces. With respect to these islands, Greece has not claimed that the treaty obligations have been formally superseded. However, in recent years it has argued that it is entitled to discount them, invoking Article 15 of the Charter of the United Nations. It argues that after the Turkish occupation of northern Cyprus and the Turkish threat of war over the 12 miles issue, re-armament is an act of legitimate self-defence.[5]

Imia/Kardak

The first time a dispute between the two countries in the Aegean touched on questions of actual sovereignty over territories was in early 1996 at the tiny barren islets of Imia/Kardak, situated between the Dodecanese island chain and the Turkish mainland.[110] The conflict, triggered by the stranding of a Turkish merchant ship on the islets, was originally caused by factual inconsistencies between maps of the area, some of which assigned these islets to Greece, others to Turkey. The media of the two countries took up the issue and gave it a nationalistic turn, before the two governments even had the time to come to a full technical understanding of the true legal and geographical situation. Both governments finally adopted an intransigent stance, publicly asserting their own claims of sovereignty over the islets. The result was military escalation, which was perceived abroad as quite out of proportion with the size and significance of the rocks in question. The two countries were at the brink of war for a few days, until the crisis was defused with the help of foreign mediation.[111]

During the crisis and in the months following it, both governments elaborated legal arguments to support their claims to sovereignty. The arguments exchanged concerned the interpretation of the Treaty of Lausanne of 1923, which forms the principal basis for the legal status of territories in most of the region, as well as certain later diplomatic dealings between Turkey, Greece and Italy.

In the wake of the Imia crisis, the Turkish government widened its argumentation to include not only Imia but also a possibly large number of other islands and small formations across the Aegean. Since then, Turkish authorities have spoken of "grey zones" of undetermined sovereignty. According to the Turkish argument, these islets, while not explicitly retained under Turkish sovereignty in 1923, were also not explicitly ceded to any other country, and their sovereignty has therefore remained objectively undecided.

The Turkish government has avoided stating exactly which islets it wishes to include in this category. On various occasions, Turkish government sources have indicated that islands such as Pserimos, Agathonisi, Fournoi and Gavdos[112] (situated south of Crete) might be included. Most of them, unlike Imia/Kardak, had undeniably been in factual Greek possession, which had never previously been challenged by Turkey, and all but the final two listed below have Greek residents and infrastructure. In a 2004 publication by Turkish authors close to the Turkish military leadership[113] the following (among other, even smaller ones) were listed as potentially "grey" areas:

• Oinousses (between Chios and the Turkish coast),
• Antipsara (west of the islands of Psara and Khios),
• Fournoi,
• Arkoi,
• Agathonisi (Gaidaros),
• Pharmakonisi,
• Kalolimnos (near Imia/Kardak),
• Pserimos,
• Gyali (between Kos and Nisyros),
• Syrna (SE of Astypalaia)
• Kandheliousa (south of Kos),
• Vrachoi Kalogeroi (small rocks 41 km northeast of Andros)

While Turkey has not attempted to challenge Greek sovereignty on the ground, its claims about "grey area" islands add to the number of minor military incidents, already numerous due to the 10-mile airspace and the FIR issues. The Turkish Air Force routinely ignores Greek national airspace around such formations that it counts as grey zones. According to Greek press reports, the number of airspace violations rose sharply in 2006, as did the number of unauthorised Turkish military flights directly over Greek islands themselves.[114] Renewed reports of systematic Turkish military flights directly over Greek islands like Pharmakonisi and Agathonisi were made in late 2008 and early 2009.[115]

During the late 2010s, tensions rose again as Turkish fighter aircraft increased the number of direct armed overflights above inhabited Greek islands. While most overflights continue to occur above small islands that Turkey considers "grey areas", such as Agathonisi or Oinousses, some incidents have also repeatedly been reported involving major and undisputed islands such as Rhodes, Lesbos, Chios or Leros.[116][117][118][119] These overflights are perceived in Greece as among the most provocative acts by Turkey, directly challenging Greek territorial sovereignty.[120]

In 2020, Turkish fighter aircraft also begun overflights above the Greek mainland, on Evros.[121][122]

A regional Foreign Minister conference held on 11 May 2020 with the participation of Cyprus, Egypt, France, Greece and the United Arab Emirates, concluded with a joint declaration condemning Turkey for its practice of conducting armed overflights above the inhabited Greek islands.[123][124]