Türkiye’s Blue Homeland (Mavi Vatan) and Maritime Jurisdiction Areas Law - Cem Gürdeniz

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[00:00:00]Turkey's Blue Homeland, Mavi Vatan, and Maritime Jurisdiction Areas Law.

[00:00:06]Cem Gürdeniz. When the concept of the Blue Homeland emerged in June 2006, one of the most critical periods of decline and siege in the history of Turkey's maritime geopolitics was being experienced.

[00:00:22]However, the origin of this process was not only in the 2000s, but also much further, especially in the 1970s to the continental shelf crisis that started in the Aegean Sea.

[00:00:35]In fact, the maritime jurisdiction struggle that Turkey is experiencing today is not a problem that emerged suddenly.

[00:00:43]Throughout the history of the Republic, Turkey has acted with a land-centered security approach for a long time, and the seas have often been considered as secondary strategic areas.

[00:00:55]During the Cold War, Turkey's security reflex was largely shaped around land defense, as it was positioned against the Soviet threat on NATO's southern flank.

[00:01:05]The seas were mostly discussed from the perspective of transportation, fisheries, and coastal security.

[00:01:11]However, the world was changing. Energy transportation, subsea natural resources, maritime trade routes, data cables, offshore energy infrastructures, and street security were bringing the seas back to the center of great power competition.

[00:01:26]While maritime transportation formed the backbone of the globalizing economy, the energy and data lines under the sea were becoming the new geopolitical veins of states.

[00:01:35]Turkey, on the other hand, although surrounded by seas on three sides, has not been able to adequately read this transformation at the strategic level for many years.

[00:01:44]1976 continental shelf crisis. The period when Turkey experienced the first major break in maritime jurisdiction areas in the Aegean was the 1970s. After the OPEC oil crisis in 1973, interest in the hydrocarbon potential in the Aegean Sea increased rapidly. The two countries came seriously face-to-face for the first time after Greece started unilateral attempts to explore the continental shelf in the Aegean without taking into account Turkey's rights. For Turkey, the issue was not only the oil exploration license. The problem was based on whether or not the islands in the Aegean would produce maritime jurisdiction areas. This crisis showed that the Aegean is no longer just a political problem between two NATO allies, but has turned into a direct issue of geopolitical sovereignty.

[00:02:33]In 1976, the crisis escalated after the activities of Turkey's research vessel Hora MTA Seismic 1, and the issue was brought to the international agenda. The Bern MOU, which was signed in the same year and froze the problem until today, was actually one of the first important documents of Turkey's will to manage the continental shelf problem in the Aegean on legal and political grounds. The essence of the Bern MOU was that the parties should avoid unilateral steps in the Aegean continental shelf and were invited to try to solve the problem through negotiations. This agreement was very important for Turkey because it functioned as a political brake mechanism that prevented Greece from creating a fait accompli in the Aegean.

[00:03:17]However, in the following years, the Athens administration moved away from the spirit of this agreement and continued its policies aimed at creating a de facto situations in the Aegean, forcing Turkey's reactions. A significant part of the crises experienced today are actually the continuation of the continental shelf dispute that started in 1976 and has never been fully resolved. For this reason, it is necessary to read the problems in the Aegean not only in terms of current crises, but also in terms of strategic continuity of nearly half a century. 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, UNCLOS, and the continental shelf.

[00:03:53]The 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, UNCLOS, introduced a new global maritime order that fundamentally transformed the classical law of the sea. Beyond territorial waters, the convention placed concepts such as the continental shelf, exclusive economic zone, EEZ, contiguous zone, offshore regime, and deep sea mining at the center of international politics and state sovereignty.

[00:04:21]From that point onward, states no longer viewed the seas merely as navigation routes, but increasingly as strategic spaces tied to seabed hydrocarbons, fisheries, biological wealth, maritime trade routes, and underwater economic resources.

[00:04:37]However, the regime established by UNCLOS created serious problems for Turkey, particularly regarding the maritime jurisdiction generated by islands.

[00:04:47]The Aegean is not an ordinary sea. It is a semi-enclosed and highly unique geography filled with hundreds of islands, islets, and rocks situated directly opposite the Anatolian mainland.

[00:04:59]If the convention is interpreted in the maximalist manner advocated by Greece, Turkey's vast mainland coastline in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean would effectively be deprived of equitable maritime jurisdiction areas, confining Turkey to narrow coastal waters despite possessing one of the longest continental coastlines in the region.

[00:05:18]For this reason, Turkey did not become a party to UNCLOS.

[00:05:22]Yet, Ankara's position extends beyond simply remaining outside the convention.

[00:05:26]Turkey has consistently maintained a persistent objector position regarding several key provisions, particularly articles 3, 33, and 121 concerning territorial sea breadth, contiguous zones, and the maritime jurisdiction entitlements of islands.

[00:05:41]Since the negotiations leading to the convention, Turkey has objected to interpretations that mechanically grant islands full maritime jurisdiction, regardless of geography, proportionality, and the presence of adjacent continental coasts. In fact, Turkey's opposition to islands automatically generating continental shelf and EEZ areas predates UNCLOS itself. Since 1958, Ankara has defended the principle that islands located directly in front of a continental mainland cannot produce disproportionate maritime effects that override the rights of the mainland state.

[00:06:13]Turkey bases this position not on temporary political calculations, but on pre-1958 customary law, equitable principles, and the geopolitical realities of the Aegean.

[00:06:24]Granting tiny islands and rocks a maritime impact greater than the Anatolian mainland with its thousands of kilometers of coastline is viewed by Ankara as incompatible with geography, equity, and strategic stability.

[00:06:37]Therefore, Turkey's approach to UNCLOS is not conjectural, but deeply strategic.

[00:06:43]Its objections stem primarily from the unique geographical structure of the Aegean Sea.

[00:06:48]Ankara argues that a rigid and mechanical application of island-generated maritime jurisdiction in such a confined geography could produce outcomes that effectively prevent a continental state from accessing the open sea.

[00:07:00]Greece's 12-mile claim.

[00:07:03]Greece's long-standing objective of extending Greek sovereignty across much of the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean has been closely aligned with the framework established by the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, UNCLOS.

[00:07:16]Even before the convention formally entered into force, Athens had already embraced Article 3, which grants coastal states the right to extend their territorial waters up to 12 nautical miles.

[00:07:26]Beginning in 1981, Greece openly signaled that it intended to exercise this right in the Aegean.

[00:07:31]Following UNCLOS's entry into force in 1994, the dispute became far more acute.

[00:07:37]For Turkey, the prospect of a unilateral Greek extension of territorial waters to 12 miles in the Aegean, created a major strategic and geopolitical concern.

[00:07:45]Under the existing 6-mile regime, Greece already exercises control over roughly half of the Aegean Sea, 43.5%.

[00:07:53]A 12-mile expansion would dramatically alter the maritime balance and could effectively transform the Aegean into a de facto Greek inland sea, severely restricting Turkey's access to international waters.

[00:08:08]In response, the Turkish Grand National Assembly adopted a historic resolution in June 1995, authorizing the government to take all necessary measures, including military ones if required, to prevent such a unilateral move.

[00:08:23]This declaration marked the first time Turkey openly stated that it would not accept a fait accompli in the Aegean.

[00:08:31]The decision represented far more than a military warning. It signaled the emergence of a new Turkish maritime geopolitical consciousness.

[00:08:40]From that point onward, Ankara began to regard maritime jurisdiction areas not merely as technical legal matters, but as issues directly connected to national sovereignty, security, strategic depth, and geopolitical survival.

[00:08:54]Although the speaker of the Turkish Grand National Assembly publicly stated in 2005, during a meeting with his Greek counterpart, that this parliamentary decision should eventually be reconsidered, no Turkish government since then has taken concrete steps toward reversing or withdrawing it.

[00:09:11]Kardak crisis.

[00:09:13]At the end of 1995 and the beginning of 1996, the Kardak crisis erupted between Turkey and Greece.

[00:09:20]Although it is often portrayed as a limited sovereignty dispute over two small uninhabited rocks, Kardak was in fact the manifestation of a much deeper and broader geopolitical problem in the Aegean Sea.

[00:09:32]The issue was never confined to Kardak alone. The crisis exposed the unresolved status of numerous islands, islets, and rocks whose sovereignty had not been explicitly transferred to Greece under the treaties of Lausanne, 1923, and Paris, 1947. This group of disputed geographical formations later became publicly known in Turkey A as Ege Adaları, islands, islets, and rocks whose sovereignty was not transferred to Greece by treaties.

[00:10:01]As a result, the legal and strategic status of these formations national security agenda in a far more visible and systematic way.

[00:10:11]The importance of these formations lies not in their landmass, but in the maritime zones they may generate.

[00:10:17]The territorial waters potentially produced by 153 disputed islands, islets, and rocks correspond to nearly 6% of the Aegean Sea.

[00:10:27]In other words, the surrounding maritime jurisdiction areas are strategically far more valuable than the rocks themselves.

[00:10:34]Following the Kardak crisis, Turkey began to emphasize more strongly that the Aegean dispute was not limited to continental shelf delimitation or territorial waters.

[00:10:45]It also involved the unresolved sovereignty of numerous geographical features whose ownership had never been legally settled through international treaties.

[00:10:53]Consequently, the scope of the Aegean disputes expanded significantly.

[00:10:57]Territorial waters, continental shelf delimitation, national airspace, the fear line, the demilitarized status of Eastern Aegean islands, and the sovereignty of disputed islands, islets, and rocks became interconnected components of a much larger geopolitical equation.

[00:11:14]The Kardak crisis also transformed Turkey's military and diplomatic posture in the Aegean.

[00:11:20]Ankara concluded that the dispute could not be managed solely through legal arguments and diplomatic texts. De facto state practice, continuous naval presence, operational capability, and deterrence also became essential instruments of policy.

[00:11:34]In the aftermath of Kardak, the Turkish Navy adopted a far more visible and active operational posture in the Aegean.

[00:11:40]Subsequent structural reforms, including changes in force and command organization following the 1999 Gölcük earthquake, further accelerated this transformation. Turkey increasingly shifted from a reactive defensive approach toward a more active maritime strategy aimed at visibly asserting and protecting its sovereign rights in the field.

[00:12:00]Eastern Mediterranean problem.

[00:12:02]In the early 2000s, developments in the Eastern Mediterranean further intensified the geopolitical pressure on Turkey.

[00:12:10]The Greek Cypriot administration's unilateral declaration of an exclusive economic zone, EEZ, in 2003, based on its agreement with Egypt, was not merely an energy-related initiative. It represented the first major step in a broader strategy aimed at excluding Turkey from the Eastern Mediterranean geopolitical equation.

[00:12:28]Soon afterward, the so-called Seville map began circulating within European Union circles.

[00:12:34]Following the accession of the Greek Cypriot administration to the European Union in 2004, the EU's maritime vision effectively expanded Greek and Greek Cypriot maritime jurisdiction claims from the Atlantic Ocean to the shores of Syria, Egypt, and Israel.

[00:12:47]From Turkey's perspective, this development posed a serious strategic threat.

[00:12:52]The implications of the Seville map were profound. It provided a framework that could enable Greece to dominate almost the entire Aegean Sea and allowed tiny islands such as Kastellorizo, Meis, located only a few kilometers from the Anatolian coast to generate disproportionately vast maritime jurisdiction areas in the Eastern Mediterranean.

[00:13:09]At the same time, the Greek Cypriot administration, despite being an island entity, was projected as entitled to extensive maritime zones against continental Turkey.

[00:13:18]Moreover, the legitimate rights of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, TRNC, over the seabed and surrounding maritime areas were effectively disregarded.

[00:13:25]Under this framework, Turkey's operational and geopolitical space in the Eastern Mediterranean was being compressed toward the Gulf of Antalya.

[00:13:32]The Seville map was not simply an academic exercise. Over time, it evolved into one of the political reference points influencing EU policy discussions and provided intellectual and legal support for the maximalist maritime claims advanced by Greece and the Greek Cypriot administration.

[00:13:50]The Annan plan scandal.

[00:13:52]During the same period, the Annan plan referendum took place on 24 April 2004.

[00:13:58]Encouraged by Ankara's political support and extensive European Union propaganda, the Turkish Cypriot population voted in favor of the plan.

[00:14:07]Had the Greek Cypriot side also approved it, Turkey would likely have lost the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, its most critical geopolitical pillar in the Eastern Mediterranean.

[00:14:17]For this reason, the concept of the Blue Homeland, Mavi Vatan, emerged as far more than a doctrine concerning maritime jurisdiction areas.

[00:14:26]It became a strategic line of resistance against the geopolitical isolation of Turkey, the liquidation of the TRNC, and the gradual encirclement of Anatolia from the surrounding seas.

[00:14:37]This is precisely why the term homeland was consciously chosen.

[00:14:41]The issue had evolved beyond questions of energy resources, fisheries, or maritime transportation. The surrounding seas had become an inseparable component of national sovereignty and strategic survival.

[00:14:52]For the first time in the Republican era, Turkey began to view its maritime domains not as peripheral spaces, but as vital strategic territories equal in importance to its land borders.

[00:15:02]Why is a maritime jurisdiction areas law necessary?

[00:15:05]The emergence of maritime jurisdiction areas, particularly the doctrine of the continental shelf, is directly connected to the major technological and geopolitical transformation that followed the Second World War.

[00:15:16]Until the early 20th century, the seas were largely regarded as spaces for transportation, trade, and naval maneuver. State sovereignty at sea was generally limited to narrow belts of territorial waters extending roughly to the range of coastal artillery. Beyond that limit, the high seas were governed by the classical principle of mare liberum, the doctrine of the freedom of the seas. This traditional understanding began to change dramatically after World War II.

[00:15:41]Rapid industrialization, growing energy demand, advances in offshore drilling technology, and the discovery of vast seabed resources transformed the into a new era of geopolitical competition.

[00:15:55]The seabed was no longer viewed merely as geography beneath the water, but as a strategic and economic frontier.

[00:16:03]The turning point of this transformation came on 28th September 1945 when US President Harry S. Truman issued the famous Truman Proclamations.

[00:16:13]Through two separate presidential declarations, the United States asserted jurisdiction and control over the natural resources of the continental shelf adjacent to its coasts, and introduced special measures for the protection of offshore fisheries resources.

[00:16:27]The Truman Proclamation marked the birth of the modern continental shelf doctrine.

[00:16:32]For the first time in modern history, a major power claimed exclusive sovereign rights over seabed resources beyond its territorial waters.

[00:16:40]In doing so, the centuries-old understanding of completely free and unrestricted high seas began to erode.

[00:16:47]This legal and geopolitical shift was institutionalized in the 1958 Geneva Convention on the Continental Shelf, which formally recognized the coastal state's sovereign rights over seabed and subsoil resources on the continental shelf.

[00:17:00]In essence, technology had reshaped law.

[00:17:03]The ability to exploit offshore hydrocarbons created an entirely new dimension of sovereignty. The Truman approach soon produced a domino effect across the world. Latin American states such as Chile, Peru, and Ecuador advanced claims extending up to 200 nautical miles in order to protect fisheries and marine resources. Over time, more coastal states adopted increasingly expansive maritime claims over adjacent seas and seabed resources.

[00:17:28]The next major stage came with the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, UNCLOS, which introduced the exclusive economic zone, EEZ, alongside the continental shelf regime.

[00:17:42]As the world population grew and the strategic importance of fisheries increased, states sought control not only over the seabed, but also over the water column itself and the living and non-living resources within it.

[00:17:53]The EEZ concept therefore granted coastal states sovereign economic rights over both the seabed and the superjacent waters extending up to 200 nautical miles.

[00:18:03]Following 1982, many maritime powers enacted comprehensive national legislation to consolidate their maritime claims.

[00:18:11]The United States, despite not becoming a party to UNCLOS, declared its EEZ by presidential proclamation in 1983 during the Reagan administration and regulated its maritime jurisdiction areas through domestic law.

[00:18:23]Brazil followed with its Blue Amazon strategy in 1992, establishing a broad legal framework for the protection and governance of vast maritime areas.

[00:18:32]China gradually transformed its South China Sea claims into domestic legal doctrine through the nine-dash line framework.

[00:18:38]Russia enacted its own maritime jurisdiction law in 1998.

[00:18:42]In other words, the world's major maritime states sought to reinforce maritime sovereignty not only through international law, but also through national legislation and continuous state practice.

[00:18:51]From this perspective, the fact that Turkey is still debating such a law as late as 2026 reflects a serious institutional delay.

[00:18:58]Turkey possesses nearly half a million square kilometers of maritime jurisdiction areas and approximately 8,883 kilometers of coastline, yet it still lacks a comprehensive legal framework regulating these areas under domestic law. Instead of a unified maritime jurisdiction law, Turkey A currently relies on fragmented and scattered mechanisms, Council of Ministers decisions, continental shelf coordinate declarations submitted to the United Nations, NAVTEX practices, fisheries regulations, hydrocarbon licensing measures, and overlapping institutional authorities. These instruments exist, but they do not constitute an integrated strategic legal architecture.

[00:19:38]A comprehensive maritime jurisdiction areas law would consolidate all these scattered practices under a single sovereign framework. Such legislation would significantly strengthen Turkey A state practice in areas that constitute one of its most critical geopolitical spheres of interest. More importantly, it would prevent opposing actors from institutionalizing their own maximalist claims through EU mechanisms, international energy licensing systems, multinational corporate partnerships, and domestic legislation. Indeed, this is precisely what Greece and the Greek Cypriot administration have attempted to do for years. The Greek Cypriot administration distributed offshore energy exploration licenses to major international energy companies, while Greece mobilized European Union institutions, formed regional energy consortiums, and gradually built an interconnected legal and political ecosystem in the Eastern Mediterranean designed to marginalize Turkey A.

[00:20:36]For Turkey A, therefore, such legislation would not merely be a technical legal reform. It would represent the consolidation of maritime sovereignty through domestic law. In geopolitical terms, it would transform maritime claims from fragmented administrative practice into an integrated national strategy backed by legislation, institutional continuity, and long-term state policy.

[00:20:58]Conclusion. What is publicly referred to today as the Blue Homeland Law is, in reality, the culmination of nearly half a century of geopolitical and legal struggle. The issue cannot be reduced solely to the current tensions in the Eastern Mediterranean.

[00:21:14]It is the product of a long historical process extending from the 1976 continental shelf crisis and the Bern agreement to the 1995 resolution of the Turkish Grand National Assembly, from the Kardak crisis to the Egay Doc dispute and the strategic implications of the Seville map.

[00:21:33]Turkey can no longer manage its maritime jurisdiction areas through fragmented regulations and temporary administrative measures. It now requires a unified strategic framework grounded in a coherent state policy.

[00:21:47]Sovereignty is not established merely by defending legal arguments in international forums or by repeatedly invoking the concept of the blue homeland.

[00:21:57]Sovereignty must also be exercised through concrete state practice.

[00:22:01]A state must be able to issue licenses, regulate and tax economic activity, supervise foreign operations, subject scientific research to national authorization mechanisms, regulate fisheries, establish security zones, and impose sanctions when necessary.

[00:22:18]In this sense, domestic legislation forms the legal foundation of de facto maritime sovereignty.

[00:22:24]The major geopolitical struggles unfolding today from the South China Sea to the Arctic are shaped not only by naval deployments but also by maritime sovereignty strategies institutionalized through domestic law.

[00:22:38]This is precisely what China has pursued in the South China Sea, what the United States has implemented in Alaska and the Pacific, and what Russia has done in the Arctic.

[00:22:47]Turkey must now act with the same level of long-term strategic awareness.

[00:22:52]For this reason, the adoption of a comprehensive maritime jurisdiction areas law would represent a delayed but strategically indispensable step. The matter is no longer simply one of maritime law. It concerns Turkey's geopolitical independence, energy security, freedom of navigation and maneuver in the Aegean, the future of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, the balance of power in the Eastern Mediterranean, and the protection of sovereign rights at sea.

[00:23:21]Just as the concept of the blue homeland represented a strategic and intellectual awakening, a maritime jurisdiction areas law would constitute the legal and institutional consolidation of that awakening.

[00:23:34]Recommendations for Turkia.

[00:23:36]Within the framework of such legislation, Turkia should formally declare an exclusive economic zone in the Eastern Mediterranean.

[00:23:44]In the Aegean, the 153 islands, islets, and rocks classified within the EGAYDAK framework, which may directly affect future maritime jurisdiction delimitation, should be explicitly identified and incorporated into the legal framework by name.

[00:23:59]In addition, special fisheries protection zones should be established in areas connected to these disputed geographical formations.

[00:24:06]Furthermore, following the enactment of this law, Turkia should intensify seismic research and drilling activities in areas overlapping with the continental shelf claims affected by the offshore licensing blocks unilaterally declared by the Greek Cypriot administration in 2007, particularly in relation to blocks 1, 4, 5, 6, and 7.

[00:24:25]From Ankara's perspective, these licensing areas overlap with Turkia's continental shelf claims in the Eastern Mediterranean, and therefore constitute contested zones.

[00:24:34]Such steps would not merely represent energy policy initiatives. They would demonstrate the transformation of maritime sovereignty from a theoretical doctrine into an integrated geopolitical state policy supported by law, diplomacy, economic instruments, and sustained maritime presence.