What If Greece Extends Its Territorial Waters to 12 Miles in the Aegean?

Greece is firm on its position to extend its territorial waters to 12 nautical miles in the Aegean as is clearly provided by International Law and specifically by the UN’s Treaty on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

Despite Turkey’s threats that the extension of Greek territorial waters is a cause of war, Athens has not moved from its longstanding position that the expansion of territorial waters to 12 nautical miles is an inalienable sovereign right.

Greece has refrained from doing so insisting that it will choose the time when appropriate.

In 2021, Greece extended its territorial waters in the Ionian Sea to 12 miles. “Greece is growing,” PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis said during a parliamentary debate explaining that the country’s territorial waters from the northernmost Ionian islands to Cape Tainaro in the Peloponnese will be extended to 12 nautical miles.

The move constituted the first extension of the country’s sovereignty since the Dodecanese became part of Greece in 1947.

Extension in the Ionian Sea did not cause any objections from its neighbors Italy and Albania.

But, the Aegean is a different proposition altogether. Turkey has threatened in the past that such a move, which it says in effect turns the Aegean into a Greek lake, is a cause of war (casus belli).

“I hope they won’t make a mistake and think of extending the territorial waters to 12 miles. This is a wrong calculation,” Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said earlier in 2022.

“They should not try to test us,” Akar added, stressing that Greece should better make do with its existing six miles of territorial waters.

Greece, territorial waters and the Law of the Sea

Territorial waters are an extension to the sea of the national sovereignty of a country beyond its shores.

They are considered to be part of the country’s national territory.

They 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 territorial waters.

Greece has a legal right to extend its territorial sea to 12 nautical miles, as provided for by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

Virtually all coastal states abide by the Law of the Sea. Turkey since 1964 has expanded its territorial waters in the Black Sea and the Mediterranean to 12 nautical miles.

When ratifying the Convention, Greece tabled a statement declaring that “the time and place of exercising these rights … is a matter arising from its national strategy.”

Successive Greek governments refrained from exercising this legal right. Six nautical miles have been in force since 1936, and since then there has been a continuing debate on whether Greece should extend to 12 nautical miles.