Media outlets in Greece on Thursday morning have official Ankara handing over a memorandum of understanding with the shaky and mostly Tripoli-based Libyan interim government which Athens has heatedly charged violates international maritime law and constitutes an egregious Turkish provocation.
The MoU, according to Amb. Çağatay Erciyes, who heads the Turkish foreign ministry's bilateral political and maritime-aviation-border affairs bureau, is based on the principle of "equal distribution", while again repeating a singular "Turkographic" view that islands do not "automatically have rights" to a continental shelf and an exclusive economic zone.
Turkey is one of a handful of countries that has not signed the UN International Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), alone among EU member-states and candidate states.
Erciyes added, according to reports, that this "basis" for the islands takes into "consideration their special position... the length of their coastlines and the region where they are found".
In touching on the internationally condemned agreement, billed as "bilateral" by Ankara, the Turkish diplomat said the MoU determines the continental shelf and exclusive economic zone between Turkey and Libya, with a line of 18.6 nautical miles.
"Some countries have said this agreement is against international law... this agreement was done on the basis of 'equal distribution', because in contrast to the claims by the Greek Cypriots and Greece, the island do not automatically have a right to a continental shelf and EEZ"
