Aegean dispute: Encyclopedia II - Aegean dispute - The islands

Aegean dispute - The islands

While all the issues described so far are related to zones of influence at sea or in the air, there have also been a number of disputes related to the territories of the Greek islands themselves. These have related to the demilitarized status of some of the main islands in the area; to Turkish concerns over alleged endeavours by Greece to artificially expanding settlements to previously uninhabited islets; and to the existence of alleged "grey zones", an undetermined number of small islands of undetermined sovereignty.

Aegean dispute - Demilitarized status

Several of the Greek islands in the eastern Aegean have at various times during the 20th century been placed under a status of demilitarization. This was done, after the decades-long period of wars between Greece and Turkey which culminated in the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922), in order to ease possible Turkish fears of further Greek expansionism. After the Cyprus crisis of 1974, Greece proceeded to break the demilitarized status of these islands, at first secretly but later openly too. Turkey denounces this as an aggressive act by Greece and as a breach of international treaties.^[12] Under 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). 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 superceding 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.^[13] Greece, however, cites Turkish official declarations to that effect made in 1936, assuring the Greek side that Turkey would consider the Greek obligations lifted.^[14]

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, and that Turkey thus cannot base any claims of its own on them. Turkey argues that the demilitarization agreement constitutes a so-called 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. With respect to these islands, Greece has no legal grounds for claiming that the demilitarized status has been formally superceded. However, in recent years it has argued that it is entitled to discount its former obligations on the grounds that, after the Turkish occupation of Cyprus and various other acts perceived as aggressive by Greece, re-armament is an act of legitimate self-defence.^[15]

Aegean dispute - Greek settlement programmes

In mid-1995, the Greek government launched an initiative to provide economic incentives to private individals to settle permanently on some of the small, mostly uninhabited peripheral islets in the area.^{[citation needed]} Turkish media and some government officials reacted with suspicion, citing as a reason for concern that Greece might use this to prejudice a future arrangement regarding the continental shelf issue in its favour. This would be because the UN Law of the Sea distinguishes between islands that can sustain human habitation and those that cannot. Turkey at that point did not question Greek sovereignty over these islets as such; however, it insisted that it would not accept an artificially changed status quo as a basis for later negotiations.^[16] Greece claimed that the motives behind this programme were simply to boost regional infrastructure and economic development in its outlying rural areas, which were suffering severely from depopulization. This issue soon lost much of its relevance, as from 1996 onwards it became overshadowed and absorbed by the much more serious issue of the so-called “grey zones”, where the sovereignty of the islands itself was in question.

Aegean dispute - Grey zones

The first time a dispute between the two countries in the Aegean touched on questions of actual sovereignty over territories was in early 1996, on the occasion of a naval havary at the tiny barren islets of Imia/Kardak, situated between the Dodecanese island chain and the Turkish mainland. The conflict 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 were then forced prematurely to adopt an intransigent stance, publicly asserting their own claims of sovereignty over the islets, in order to save face. 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.^[17]

During the crisis and in the months following it, both governments were busy elaborating legal arguments for why each considered the islets their own. 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.

During this process, another question arose: the same legal reasons Turkey was bringing forward with respect to Imia/Kardak could be seen to apply not only to this one case, but to a possibly large number of other small formations across the Aegean too. Most of them, unlike Imia/Kardak, had undeniably been in factual Greek possession, which had never been challenged by Turkey, and several of them were inhabited.

Since then, Turkish authorities have spoken of "grey zones" of undetermined sovereignty, i.e. of islets whose possession has never been validly transferred away from Turkey. However, Turkey has not attempted to factually sieze possession of any of them. In fact, the Turkish government has avoided stating exactly which islets it wishes to include in this category. At various occasions, Turkish sources have indicated that islands such as Pserimos, Agathonisi, Fournoi and Gavdos^[18] (situated south of Crete) might be included. A recent publication by Turkish scholars ^[19] lists the following (among other, even smaller ones):

• Kalogeroi,
• Antipsara,
• Pontiko (between Samos and the Turkish coast),
• Fournoi,
• Arkoi,
• Agathonisi (Gaidaros),
• Pharmakonisi,
• Kalolimnos (near Imia/Kardak),
• Pserimos,
• Yiali (between Kos and Nisiros),
• Kandheliousa (south of Kos),
• Sirina (SE of Astipalia)

The issue of “grey zones” has added yet another source for occasional military irritation, in addition to the 10-mile airspace and the FIR. According to some reports, the Turkish airforce has adopted a policy of ignoring Greek claims to all air-space and territorial waters around such formations that it counts as “grey zones”. This has occasioned Greek accusations that Turkish fighter planes are violating not only the outer zones of maritime airspace, but even the airspace directly over Greek islands themselves.^{[citation needed]}

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "The islands", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki